We employed men, built a house, ploughed, planted,
and opened a trading post, all in the short period of
a few weeks. Sometimes I would ride up into the
mountains towards Mount Shasta, as if hunting for
game, and spend a few days with my tawny friends.
Soon the rush of people subsided, and but few white men were found in the country. All up and down the streams their temporary shanties were left without a foot to press the rank grass and abundant weeds.
One day when our tame Indians, whom we had employed on the ranch, were out fishing, and Moun tain Joe and I had taken our rifles and gone up the Narrow Valley to look after the horses, a band of hostile Indians living in and about the Devil s Castle, some ten miles away on the opposite side of the Sacramento, came in and plundered our camp of all the stores and portable articles they could lay hands on.
This castle is the most picturesque object in all the magnificent scenery of northern California. It sits on a high mountain, and is formed of grey granite blocks and spires, lifting singly and in groups thou sands of feet from the summit of the mountain. Most of these are inaccessible. Here the Indians locate the abode of the devil. Hence its name.
I gathered up some half-tame Indians that could be relied on, while Mountain Joe went down the river ten or twenty miles to the little mining camps, and collected a company of whites. I
