The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters (Arbor House Library of Contemporary Americana) (59 page)

No matter how many emigrants stopped by, Johnson provided them with whatever food they needed. I’ve heard it said he butchered as many as ten steers in a day, to care for the needy. He gave us a supper of beef, cheeses and milk lumpy with cream, biscuits made of flour ground on his hand mill by Indians, and beef tallow in place of lard. And would he take payment? Not so you’d notice it. Along with Captain Sutter, he was the blessedest man in California.

Vernon was even seedier than Marysville, if possible. Almost every house was a “tap,” or saloon, and contained, as somebody said, “an apartment consecrated to the god of gambling, where a parcel of hawks, with whetted beaks, were lying in wait for green pigeons.”

We got there just after a big organization had tried to drive off the Chileans and Mexicans, which seemed pretty rude to me, and a good deal of brawling was going on over town. We didn’t tarry, but struck out for fresh diggings.

In the summer heat we toiled from one dale to another, finding even less than before. And at last, pinched for money, my father and Mr. Kissel and Uncle Ned Reeves hired out as hands to companies. It was heartbreaking, but we had to eat.

For a while, as Todd and I ranged the hills hunting small game to cook, they worked at a flume, where a syndicate had run ten miles of wooden flume troughs out of a steep-sided canyon, with a rushy stream, down over ridges and trees to a dry ravine far below where the gold lay. It was a rich strike, worth all the trouble. There’s no telling how long it took to build that water-toting flume; in one place they had it up on a trestle nearly a hundred feet high. When it got down to the gold, the water was led off in a series of ditches and canals, and the precious ore taken out in the same way as sluicing and such. But they needed lots of water.

Another time we signed on to block off a river from its course; we made a new channel, so that mining could commence in the old bed. There were twenty men owned the claim, besides us, which didn’t own anything, and what they wanted was to make a race and
carry off the water naturally, you might say, but it didn’t work; the canyon sides were too steep. The water kept breaking back into the old channel and carrying off valuable tools and gear. So in the end we made a big flume, which carted that whole river right out of its banks and into a new place. Then, by pumping out the mud and puddles, and removing the boulders, they set up sluice boxes and got to work. I saw them take out $5227 from behind one boulder in a single pan of dirt. It made a person hungry. After the flume was done, my father and us weren’t needed any more, so we found a new job, at the same old wage of six dollars a day.

Things were so dismal we talked very little around camp now, the way we used to, but generally went straight to bed after supper. And I noticed that my father seldom wrote home, either. I reckon he figured the bundle of nonsense he mailed when we found the nuggets would hold them for a while.

We worked with a gang that found gold at bedrock, nearly a hundred feet down, and needed help to sink a shaft six feet wide, which was made exactly the way people dig a well, with a windlass and bucket above. That is, the dirt from the bottom was brought up bucket-cranked on the windlass. It was dangerous. A good many people were killed by cave-ins, or falling rocks, in those shafts. This job mightn’t have lasted very long except that twice on the way down we ran into “leads,” or veins of horizontal pay dirt, and opened “drifting” tunnels off in both directions, shoring up the roofs with timber. We tunneled that way when we got to bedrock, too, still sending all dirt up by the windlass-drawn bucket. It was slow but worth while, if the claim was rich, and this one was.

These same people did some outright tunneling into hillsides nearby, which kept us on the job for several more weeks. We had to pick through solid rock for nearly seventy-five feet, although they kept saying they’d sent for blasting powder. We were worn down to a nub when we finished. Todd and I worked on this job, wheel-harrowing
light loads of dirt out for washing. Carrying ten hours a day, we got half pay.

Toward the end of summer, eating, living, but with everybody’s hopes down to zero, we became so reduced we hooked up first with a party of Mexicans, then Chileans, quartz-mining. And the funny thing was, these foreigners were the nicest bunch we’d met; neither did they haggle nearly so much over the pay. Main trouble was, we couldn’t understand a word they said, except for one or two men, and they couldn’t understand us.

Some ways, both the Mexicans and Chileans were advanced over anybody in California. Their specialty was quartz-mining, where the gold is blended in with quartz, you know, to form what was called “quartz blossoms.”

The Americans we saw quartz-mining had a system so ornamental it wasted most of their time, according to my view. To start with, the position of a quartz lead in a mountain is usually found at an angle of twenty to fifty degrees down from where it crops out at surface. Rather than work from the surface, the Americans went to the nuisance of sinking down a perpendial shaft way back from the outcropping, so they could hit the vein there and work
upward
, lifting the rock from the shaft by windlass, don’t ask me why. It was usually so damp down there they had to wear India rubber suits, and use all kinds of other equipment, too.

What’s more, their mill that ground the rocks was too complicated. My father and Uncle Ned both said so. It was built around cast-iron “stampers” that weighed up to a thousand pounds and moved up and down like a triphammer, smashing the quartz blocks. There were a bunch of convex arms, and a bedplate, and an amalgamating box, and so on, and altogether there were too many things to get out of whack.

But these Mexicans were foxy. They had what they called a
rostra
, a circular stone track with a post in the middle and a wooden arm that a donkey pulled round and round. It dragged a number of heavy stone blocks, and these smashed up the quartz. Quicksilver was placed in grooves in the stone track, to amalgamate with
the gold, which being heavy sought the lowest level. It was just that simple. The amalgam was taken out of the crevices and “retorted,” and the bunch we were with then smelted and shaped the gold into ingots before selling it.

The Chileans used the same sort of thing, only they had heavy iron wheels circling the track instead of dragging stone weights. All in all these fellows, both Mexicans and Chileans, were taking out a lot of gold, and it didn’t cost them much, either. They would have got rich if the Americans hadn’t kept driving them out.

Drifting along all summer, we made our living, but what a comedown from the expectations we’d had of that nugget-strewn creek! And the pity of it was, no matter how we worked now, we never got far ahead on account of the prices.

One day late in September, on a Saturday, at the end of a week with the Chileans, we came home to find Mrs. Kassel as fluffed up as a banty rooster. All of a sudden she was at the end of her tether. For a long time she’d sat back and let these menfolk take the bit, do exactly what they pleased, abandon their farm plans, lose one of her children, and generally lower the family into a misery such as they’d never known before. Now she was ready to take over. With all his ox’s strength, there wasn’t the slightest use in Kissel’s making any opposition, either.

Women are like that, my father said with a sigh. “Basically, they’re the stronger sex. We see it in medicine every day. They live longer, do more work, act less afraid—half the men you meet go around with a chip on their shoulder for fear somebody will call them a coward—endure pain better, are more steadfast, and have better instincts. In short, they’re closer to nature. Animalistic, they have less intelligence, relying instead upon emotion, but the bald truth is that they’re the superior sex by a long sea mile.”

So this evening when we came home, here was Mrs. Kissel with fire in her eye, chickens gathered close to her skirts—the pale, wan, skinny little things—and there was that bothersome Jennie, looking plumper and handsomer than she had a right to, standing alongside, ready to back her up.

“Anything wrong, mother?” inquired Mr. Kissel, mildly.

“The gold-pecking is over, Matthew. I’ve hoped and starved, and made do on nothing long enough. I don’t mind a-starving personally, though my daddy wouldn’t approve it, but I take objection when my offspring children are roped in likewise. Look at Deuteronomy. His bones stick out where his flesh ought to be. Glance at Leviticus. He don’t resemble anything so much as a scarecrow flopping on a pole.
Don’t
look at Lamentations. He ain’t fit to be seen; I’d ruther we remembered him as he was.”

Only the week before, our provisions had dropped so that my father traded a pair of surgical shears for dust enough to get a side of sowbelly, off a disgusted man that was aiming to set up as barber along the Feather River.

Kissel wrinkled up his brows in indecision. He just stood there, waiting.

“Well,” he said finally, laying down his pick and scratching his head, “I don’t know, exactly—”

“Matthew,” said Mrs. Kissel. “Slaughter the Brice oxen.”

“And don’t argue about it,” said Jennie.

“Said what, mother?”

“Slaughter them oxen. I’ve been talking to neighbors. There’s money to be made in the butchery business. Slaughter the steers. We’ll get to town with the mules. We’re moving camp.”

“Now, ladies,” cried my father, hopping around anxiously, about to unload some of his guff, “let’s be sensible. I’ll tell you what we’ll do—”

“Doctor,” said Mrs. Kissel, “I reckon you’re about the finest man we’ve ever knowed, and the smartest. But there’s times when your tongue kind of runs away from your brains and gets out ahead of itself. Jennie and I’ll just ask you to take a back seat on this particular occasion, if it ain’t too much trouble.”

“Of course, of course. I’ll be glad to, more than glad.” He looked very much the way he always did when my mother jumped him. Agreeable, but ready for travel.

“What was it you wanted done, ma’am?” asked Uncle Ned. He
liked Mrs. Kissel, and would have followed along after her like a dog, as my father once remarked, because of the way she’d fed him that first day.

“Unless I misrecollect, you’re handy as a joiner?”

“I’ve did carpentry, along with soldiering, mining, farming, and unmentionables.”

“When we get to town, I’ll ask you to knock these wagons apart and build a counter. We can’t sell meat under canvas. People want to view it in the open.”

Mr. Coe had left us his wagon and mules, together with most of his traps, except for his personal luggage.

“Why, mother, the children—”

“—can sleep in the tent along of us. We’ll double up. Mr. Reeves, since your wits ain’t turned to wool, I’d be obliged if you’d break camp and hitch up.”

“I’d admire to, ma’ma, begging your husband’s pardon.”

We were on the road in an hour, headed for Vernin, only a short distance away up the river. It was still light when we arrived, but Mrs. Kissel said we could slaughter in the morning. Jennie had four oxen left, and on these prices, they’d bring a sizable sum, sold out cut by cut.

It wasn’t any trouble to pick out a good spot to stop, centrally placed but not too near a tap, and Uncle Ned had the wagons half knocked down by dark. Mr. Kissel helped him, finally, but looked pretty glum about it As a farmer born and bred, he hated to see farm things destroyed for the use of another trade.

Early in the morning we were up and doing. Mr. Kissel took his ax and knives, let the oxen back a ways, and commenced work. Todd and I didn’t watch. Those animals had been good to us; now it seemed shameful to treat them so. But I guess it had to be done. Poor brutes, the ones waiting their turns took on like the furies, bellowing and stamping, and when Mr. Kissel finally came back, beginning to pack the meat, the tears were running down his face. I thinkthey were the rest of ours, too.

By mid-morning, we had a tidy butcher shop open for business,
selling at the customary prices. Mr. Kissel and Uncle Ned were butchers, and Mrs. Kissel bargained with the public, while Jennie minded the children.

My father bustled around, feeling neglected and out of things. But by and by Mrs. Kissel came out during a lull. She said, “Doctor, we’ve got seven mules and a riding horse, enough to do well packing supplies to the diggings. My neighbors mentioned it as employment, along with the butcher shop. More than that, we’ll need a cattle buyer, once this present supply dwindles thin.”

I could see him wrestling with his conscience. He felt he ought to stay on, but he’d been pining for months to see San Francisco. He had it fixed in his head that our real future lay there, now, in some mysterious kind of way. So he put her off with some soothery phrases, saying he’d certainly look into it; it sounded interesting. And if it would serve the group best, he’d be certain to do it.

But as things turned out, he got his chance for travel sooner than he expected. To put it in my father’s words, good came out of bad, the way children are born out of pain. One morning soon, after he’d actually made a trip with Todd and me up the Bear as far as the ranches, to buy six steers, which we then drove back, Jennie saw a man walking a pinto horse down the street, “Yonder’s a customer,” she said. It was so early we didn’t figure to sell anything till after breakfast but of course you never could tell. Some of these miners, specially the greenhorns just off the boats, couldn’t wait to start. We often had them knock us up in the middle of the night.

“He sits funny, sidewise and careless,” said Jennie. “It’s almost like—”

“Great jumping Jupiter!” cried my father.

“Coulter’s back,” said Mr. Kissel.

We ran out into the road, but mostly we stopped in surprise. You couldn’t help it. He wasn’t hardly the same fellow we’d seen last, but was pale and worn, and his left sleeve was pinned up to his shoulder.

Jennie burst into tears. “Oh, my God,” she cried, and then Coulter sang out as chipper and sarcastic as ever:

“You call that a way to say howdy to an old friend? I’d better wheel around and vamoose. Ho, boy,” jerking the reins, “let’s drift.”