Life Amongst the Modocs: Unwritten History/Chapter 6
CHAPTER VI.
DOWN AMONG THE LIVE MEN.
CHANGE had certainly come over the actions and, I may say, the mind of the Prince, in the long weeks of my illness. I had fallen into his hands so helplessly and so wholly that I was in a way absolutely his. He did not shift the responsibility, nor attempt to escape it.
I could not, of course, then understand why my presence, or the responsibility of a young person thrown on him in this way, could have influenced him for good or evil, or have altered his plans or course of life in any way at all. I think I can now. I did not stop to inquire then. It so happens that when very young we are not particular about reasons for anything.
It is often a fortunate thing for a man that the fates have laid some responsibility to his charge. From what I could learn the Prince was utterly alone ; had no one depending on him ; had formed
no very ardent attachments ; expected, of course, to leave the mountains sometime, and settle down as all others were doing, but did not just then care to fix the time, or assume any concern about it.
Naturally noble and generous in all his instincts, he fell to planning first for me, and then for himself and me together. He saw no prospect better than that of an honest miner. He shrunk from initiating any one into the art of his own temporary calling, and resolved to possess a mining claim, build a cabin, and enter upon a real life. This made him a new man a more thoughtful, earnest man, perhaps no better. Besides, a recollection of his reverses at the Klamat possibly had a little to do in this making up the decision to turn over a new leaf in his life. Not the losses, either he could not care for that; but, rather, that he felt ashamed to have to do with a calling where men would stoop so low and go to such lengths to procure money.
After casting about for many days in the various neighbouring localities, the Prince finally decided to pitch his tent on the Humbug, a tributary of the Klamat, and the most flourishing, newly-discovered camp of the north. It lay west of the city, a day s ride down in a deep, densely-timbered canon, out of sight of Mount Shasta, out of sight of everything even the sun; save here and there where a land slide had ploughed up the forest, or the miners had mown down the great evergreens about their cabins, or town sites in the camp.
Do not doubt or be surprised at this name of
Humbug. Get your map and you will see it there
fifty miles or more west of Mount Shasta, twenty
miles from Greenhorn, thirty miles from Deadwood,
and about the same distance from Rogue s Gulch.
Hogem, Hardscrabble, and Hell-bent were adjoining,
and intervening mining camps of lesser note.
I asked the Prince to go down and see about my pony when we were about to set out, but the negro had confiscated him long since -claimed to have dis posed of him for his keeping. u He s eat his cussed head off," said he, and I saw my swift patient little companion no more.
On a crisp clear morning, we set out from the city, and when we had reached the foot-hills to the west, we struck a fall of snow, with enormous hare, ears as large almost as those of Mexican mules, crossing here and there, and coyotes sitting on the ground, tame as dogs, looking down on the cabins and camp below .
We had, strapped on our saddles behind us, blan kets, picks, shovels, frying-pans, beans, bacon, and coffee, all, of course, in limited quantities.
The two mules snuffed at the snow, lifted their little feet gingerly, spun around many times like tops, and brayed a solemn prayer or two to be allowed to turn back.
Snow is a mule s aversion. Give him sand, the heat of a furnace, and only sage-brush to subsist upon, and he will go on patient and uncomp laining ;
but snow goes against his nature. We began to leave the world below the camps, the clouds of smoke, and the rich smell of the burning juniper and manzanita.
The pines were open on this side of the mountain, so that sometimes we could see through the trees to the world without and below. Over against us stood Shasta. Grander, nearer, now he seemed than ever, covered with snow from base to crown.
If you would see any mountain in its glory, you must go up a neighbouring mountain, and see it above the forests and lesser heights. You must see a mountain with the clouds below you, and between you and the object of contemplation.
Until you have seen a mountain over the tops and crests of a sea of clouds, you have riot seen, and can not understand, the sublime and majestic scenery of the Pacific.
Never, until on some day of storms in the lower world you have ascended one mountain, looked out above the clouds, and seen the white snowy pyramids piercing here and there the rolling nebulous sea, can you hope to learn the freemasonry of mountain scenery in its grandest, highest, and most supreme degree. Lightning and storms and thunder under neath you ; calm and peace and perfect beauty about you ! Typical and suggestive.
Sugar-pines, tall as pyramids, on either hand as we rode up the trail, through the dry bright snow, with great burrs or cones, long as your arm, swaying from the tips of their lofty branches ; and little pine squir
rels, black and brown, ran up and down, busy with
their winter hoard.
Once on the summit we dismounted, drew the sinches till the mules grunted and put in a protest with their teeth and heels, and then began the de scent.
The Prince had been silent all day, but as we were mounting the mules again, he said
" We may have a rocky time down there, my boy. The grass is mighty short with me, I tell you. But I have thought it all out, clean down to the bed-rock, and this is the best that can be done. If we can manage to scratch through this winter, we will be all right for a big clean up by the time the snows fly over again ; and then, if you like, you shall see an other land. There ! look down there," he said, as we came to the rim of a bench in the mountain, and had a look-out below, u that is the place where we shall winter. Three thousand people there ! not a woman, not a child ! Two miles below, and ten miles a-head!"
Not a woman ? Not much of a chance for a love affair. He who consents to descend with me into that deep dark gorge in the mountains, and live the weary winter through, will see neither the light of the sun, nor the smiles of woman. A sort of Hades. A savage Eden, with many Adams walking up and down, and plucking of every tree, nothing forbidden here; for here, so far as it would seem, are neither laws of Go d or man
When shall we lie down and sleep, and awake and find an Eve and the Eden in the forest ? An Eve untouched and unstained, fresh from the hand of God, gazing at her reflection in the mossy mountain stream, amazed at her beauty, and in love with herself; even in this first act setting an example for man that he has followed too well for his own peace !
This canon was as black as Erebus down there a sea of sombre firs ; and down, down as if the earth was cracked and cleft almost in two. Here and there lay little nests of clouds below us, tangled in the tree- tops, no wind to drive them, nothing to fret and dis turb. They lay above the dusks of the forest as if asleep. Over across the canon stood another moun tain, not so fierce as this, but black with forest, and cut and broken into many gorges scars of earth quake shocks, and sabre-cuts of time. Gorge on gorge, canon intersecting canon, pitching down to wards the rapid Klamat a black and boundless forest till it touches the very tide of the sea a hundred miles to the west.
Our cabin was on the mountain side. Where else could it have been but on the mountain top ? No thing but mountains. A little stream went creeping down below, a little wanderer among the boulders for it was now sorely fretted and roiled by the thousands of miners up and down.
There was a town, a sort of common centre, called The Forks ; for here three little strea ms joined
hands, and went down from there to the Klamat to gether. Our cabin stood down on the main stream, not far from the river.
The Forks had two butcher s shops ; and each of the rival houses sent up and down the streams two mules each day, laden with their meats ; left so much at each claim as directed, weighed it out themselves, kept the accounts themselves ; and yet, never to my knowledge, in any of the mining camps, did the but cher betray his trust. A small matter this, you say. No doubt it is. Yet it is true and new. Any new truth is always worthy of attention. I mention this particularly as an item of evidence confirmative of my belief, that we have only to trust man to make him honest, and, on the other hand, to watch and suspect him to make him a knave.
The principal saloon of The Forks was the "Howlin Wilderness;" an immense pine-log cabin, with higher walls than most cabins, earth floor, and an immense fire-place, where crackled and roared, day and night, a pine-log fire, that refreshes me even to this day to remember.
It is true the Howlin Wilderness was not high- toiied, was not even first-class in this fierce little mining camp of The Forks; but it was a spacious place always had more people in it and a bigger fire than other places, and so was a power and a centre in the town. Besides, all the important fights took place at the Howlin Wilderness, and if you wanted to be well up in the news, or to see the
Saturday evening entertainment, you had to have
some regard for the Howlin Wilderness.
The proprietors, who stood behind the bar, had bags of sand laid up in a bullet-proof wall inside the counter, between them and the crowd, so that when the shooting set in, and men threw themselves on the floor, fled through the door, or barricaded their breasts with monte-tables and wooden benches, they had only to drop down behind the bags of sand, and lie there, pistols in hand, till the ball was over.
These men were wisely silent and impartial in all misunderstandings that arose. They always seemed to try to quell a trouble, and prevent a fight ; per haps they did. At all events, when the battles were over, they were always the first to take up the wounded, and do what they could for the dying and the dead. There was a great puncheon, hewn from sugar-pine, that had once been a monte-table, back on the outside by the chimney. This was stained with the blood of many. Many bodies had been laid out, in the course of a year, to stiffen on this board.
" We will have a man for breakfast to-morrow," some one would say, when shots were heard in the direction of the Howlin Wilderness; and the pro phecy was nearly always fulfilled.
There was a tall man, a sort of half sport and half miner, who had a cabin close to town, who seemed to take a special interest in these battles. He was known as a Long Dan," always carried a pistol, and took a pride in getting into trouble.
" Look here," said Prince to him one evening,
after lie had been telling his six-shooter adventures,
with great delight, by the cabin fire, u Look here,
Dan, some of these days you will die with your
boots on. Now see if you don t, if you keep on
slinging your six-shooter around loose in this sort of
a way, you will go up the flume as slick as a salmon
die with your boots on before you know it."
Dan smiled blandly as he tapped his ivory pistol- butt, and said, " Bet you the cigars, I don t! When ever my man comes to the centre, I will call him, see if I don t, and get away with it, too."
Now to understand the pith of the grim joke which Dan played in the last act, you must know that u dying with the boots on " meant a great deal in the mines. It is the poetical way of expressing the result of a bar-room or street-battle.
Let me here state that while the wild, semi-savage life of the mines and mountains has brought forth no dialect to speak of, it has produced many forms of expression that are to be found nowhere else.
These sharp sword-cuts are sometimes coarse, sometimes wicked, but always forcible and driven to the hilt. They are even sometimes strangely poetical, and when you know their origin, they carry with them a touch of tenderness beyond the reach of song.
Take, for example, the last words of the old Sierra Nevada stage-driver, who, for a dozen years, had sat up on his box in storm or sun, and dashed down the rocky roads, with his hat on his nose, his foot on the break, and the four lines threaded through his fingers.
The old hero of many encounters with robbers and floods and avalanches in the Sierras, was dying now. His friends gathered around him to say farewell. He half raised his head, lifted his hands as if still at his post, and said :
" Boys, I am on the down grade, and can t reach the break!" and sank down and died.
And so it is that " the down grade," an express-ion born of the death of the old stage-driver, has a meaning with us now.
A Saturday or so after the conversation alluded to between Long Dan and the Prince, there were heard pistol-shots in the direction of the Howlin Wilder ness saloon, and most of the men rushed forth to see what Jonah fate had pitched upon to be thrown into the sea of eternity, and be the a man for breakfast" this time.
Nothing "draws" like a bar-room fight of Cali fornia. It is a sudden thing. Sharp and quick come the keen reports, and the affair has the advantage of being quite over by the time you reach the spot, and all danger of serving the place of barricades for a stray bullet is past.
I have known miners standing on their good be haviour, who resisted the temptations of hurdy- gurdy houses, bull-fights, and bull and bear en counters, who always wrote home on Sundays, read old letters, and said the Lord s Prayer ; but I never yet knew one who could help going to see the dead man or the scene of the six-shooter war-dance, when ever the shots were heard.
The Prince rushed up. The house was full ;
surging and excited men with their hats knocked
off, their faces red with passion, and their open red
shirts showing their strong, hairy bosoms.
"It is Long Dan," some one called out; and this made the Prince, who was his neighbour, push his way more eagerly through the men. He reached the wounded man at last, and the crowd, who knew the Prince as an acquaintance of the sufferer, fell back and gave him a place at his side.
The proprietors of the Howlin Wilderness had set up the monte-table, which had been overthrown in the struggle, and laid the dying Dan. gently there with an old soldier overcoat under his head.
When the Prince took up the helpless hand of the poor fellow, so overthrown in his pride and strength, and spoke to him, he slowly opened his eyes, looked straight at the Prince with a smile, only perceptible, hardly as distinct as the tear in his eye, and said in a whisper, as he drew the Prince down to his face :
"Old fellow, Prince, old boy, take off my boots."
The Prince hastened to obey, and again took his place at his side.
Again Long Dan drew him down, and said, huskily,
" Prince, Prince, old boy, I ve won the cigars ! I ve won em, by the holy poker ! "
And so he died.