will be burned, my game driven off, and my people
will starve. As their father to whom they look for
protection and support, I cannot allow it to stand."
u It shall be as you say. Send some men with me. What care I for the cabin, and what is a mine of gold to me here? "
We went down, we burned the cabin to the ground. We did not leave even a pine board, and after the embers had cooled and a rain had settled the ashes, we dug up the soil and scattered seeds of reeds and grass on the spot. The stumps, chips, logs, everything was burned that bore the mark of the white man s axe.
A year or two afterwards I passed there, and all was wild and overgrown with grass, the same as if no man had ever sat down and rested there below the boughs.
Some pines that stood too close to the burning cabin had yellow branches at one side, and where the bark had burned on that side they were gnarled and seared, and stood there parched up and ugly, in a circle, as if making faces at some invisible object in their midst.
That is all there is really of the lost cabin, which once created such a commotion in northern California.
Men came, less numerous of course, each season, year after year, looking for the lost cabin, for it was pleasant to come up from the hot plains of the Sacramento, and up from the cities on the sea, and camp here by the cool streams, and travel
