# A La California/Chapter 9

CHAPTER IX.
WAITING UNDER THE MADROÑO.
Dreaming of the Tropics again.—The Honey-Bee in California.—A Good Joke on the Bear.—In the Valley of the Shadow.—Nina Hermosa.—On the Red Desert.—Fair Alfaretto.—Burning the Mezquites.—The Curse of the White Man.—A Wild Night's Ride in the Sierra.
Here, under the great Madrono, on the gently-sloping hillside we, the trout-fishing party, the Doctor, with his Henry rifle, moodily bent on somebody or something, he cares little what, so that it is large and dangerous—a grizzly, if he can find him; a California lion, if one comes in his way; a wild-cat, or an eagle, if nothing better offers; or possibly, by the rarest good fortune, a specimen of the mighty mountain vulture of California, first cousin to and almost the counterpart of the giant condor of the Andes—and myself, less aspiring hunter after pigeons, and such small game, were to meet and lunch after our morning's wanderings in the mountains. "I am either the first man up, or blamedly belated!" remarked the incorrigible drunkard, as he awoke in the coffin, in which his appreciative friends, by way of experiment, had conveyed him to the cemetery and left him beside a new-made grave; sat up, rubbed his eyes, and looked around him under the impression ​that the last trumpet had blown, and the dead of all time were called upon to come forth in response. There is no one else in sight, and I see no chicken bones, empty champagne bottles, or other "sign" of a lunch party having been here. On the whole, I think I must be the first man up on this occasion. I wonder where that Bill is with the lunch basket? It is barely half-past twelve o'clock, but I was off at daybreak, and climbing rocky mountain sides, and pushing through tangled chaparral and the blackened stumps of thickets, run through and killed by last autumn's fires, is tiresome work, especially when the few pigeons you see keep half a mile out of the way, beyond the reach of a gun, as they have done with me all this morning. I would like to see Bill about this time. Hall-o-o-o-o-o-a! Hall-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-a! No response. Well, this is a nice place for a quiet nap any way, and the air is just warm and soft enough to make it a luxury. I will improve my time.
"Ah me!
The hours o'er which we have least cause to weep
Are those we pass in childhood, or in sleep."
The first haven't come my way of late, but I can put in as square a day's work at the last as any man I have ever met yet. The Madrono boughs are loaded down with great, fleecy masses of creamy-white, bell-shaped blossoms, fragrant as the magnolia, and I see the black and yellow honey-bees swarming over them, while their low, steady humming falls with a soothing effect upon my drowsy ear. Even so I listened to and listlessly watched them, as I sat ​beneath the cocoa palms and breathed the fragrance of the orange and primavera blossoms at La Calera. Every flower gives its own distinct flavor to the honey gathered from it. The orange-flower honey of Orizaba is fit to grace the table of the gods. I wish I had a little of it now, with some nice warm biscuits, such as my mother used to make for me. This madroiio-flower honey ought to be delicious! I wonder if the bears of California have found out how good it is! The honey bee came to California with the Yankees, but the American variety soon found out that they could get along with next to nothing in the shape of a winter store, and so in a few years they took to loafing all summer, and shifting for themselves as best they might during the rainy season, leaving no margin for profit for their owners, who, after paying fabulous prices for them, were obliged to turn them adrift and import Italian bees to take their places. Singularly enough, the yellow rascals, as soon as they were independent, and under no obligation to work for anybody else, took to the mountains, and went to work with a will on their own hook. They have now spread through the whole State; and in some localities, as in San Bernardino and Los Angeles counties, bee-hunting, for their stores of delicious honey, has become a regular and profitable business.
If the California bears have not found out how good the honey is, the fact does no credit to their intelligence. In the valley of the Mississippi the bear is the wild bees'-most persistent enemy. But ​the bees sometimes make it very lively for him. I remember an old Arkansas hunter who told with infinite gusto one anecdote in point. Said he: "I had heard an angry growling and snapping in the bushes, and I knowed that a bar was thar and in trouble; but for the soul of me I couldn't make out what it was. I allowed that perhaps he might have got a bullet into him, and was tryin' to work it out by mouthing it; bar will do that sometimes; so I just crawled like a cat through the underbrush for about ten rods, pulling old Grim—that's what I used to call my old Kaintuck rifle for short—after me, and going mighty cautious, not to be heard. The growlin' and snappin' kept up all the time, and it was no trouble to find the right place. Jest when I got to the edge of the brush, I looked out into a little open space whar thar was no bushes, and right in the middle of it I seen a bar sittin' on a bee-gum that had been blowed down and split open, and jest shovelin' the honey into his mouth, hand over hand. The bees they was as thick as hair on a dog's back, all around and over him, and the way they was puttin' in their best licks in the way of stingin' him onto the nose and around the eyes and mouth, was a caution to snakes, you bet. Every time he shoveled a handfull of honey into his face he would give a growl and a slap or two at the bees. Arter a while, he reached forard a little more nor usual, and the bees seen a bare spot on his rump—bars has a bare spot on their rump generally, whar they wears the har off, sittin' down and turnin' round—and they went for it, for all there was in sight. This startled him like, and ​in tryin' to whirl around, so as to get a good grab at 'em, he fell off the log heels over head. He rolled over and over on the ground three or four times, and then jumped back on the log and went for the honey, uglier nor ever. I thought I had had fun enough watchin' on him up to that time, and I had better save him and the rest of the honey at the same time. So I jest drawed a bead on him with old Grim, and he rolled off that bee-gum deader nor he'd been struck by lightnin'. And would you believe it, ladies and gentlemen, that d—d bar never seen me at all, but thinks to this minnit that 'twas them ar bees that stung him to death!"
Up from the depths of the deep canon, over on the other side of the narrow valley, at the foot of the hill, comes a long-drawn bugle-call, and I turn drowsily over and gaze in that direction, half impressed with the idea that I shall see again the long-drawn lines and glancing arms of the Guard of Jalisco filing through the barrancas at the foot of the volcano of Colima. But there rises no smoke from the summit of yonder mountain—the volcanic fires died out ages and ages ago in the crater of St. Helena, and I look in vain down the winding valley for the green palanquin, with the grey-haired statesman and wanderer in many lands, borne by white-clad Aztecs, and the gallant Zomeli, the beau sabreur of Guadalajara, riding at the head of his squadrons of swarthy horsemen. I am not in the tropics after all, though dreaming of them; and it is the madrono, not the palm, whose green leaves rustle so gently in the sweet spring air above me. ​I wonder where Bill can be. I could stand the loss of the rest of the party, but he is-my friend indeed, or would be if I could see him. If I thought I could find a good dish of frijoles and tortillas in the camp of those Mexican or Chileno charcoal-burners over there in the cañon, from whence the bugle-call came, I would start on the instant, and let the rest of the party go; but the chances are ten to one that they have become demoralized, living among the Yankees and Pikes, and I should find only black coffee in the place of the delicious chocolate de Tabasco, fried bacon or frijoles, and saleratus or yeast-powder biscuit for the tortillas. This is a pretty good place after all, though I am getting very dry.
I believe I will take a smoke. Why did I not think of that before? The tobacco of Orizava is meat and drink and rest, all in one. Leonardo Sandoval, proprietor of "La Fabric a del Buen Gusto en Guadalajara," you are a noble fellow, though anti-tobacconists may say what they please; and you are my friend! You have the soul of a poet, too, in your bosom, else this would never have been printed in letters of gold upon the wrapper of the package of your cigarritos, which by unbounded good luck I find in my pocket:
Niña hermosa,
Ya que te dio' natura bondadosa
Dientes de perla, labios de coral;
La ambrosía Aspira solo de la esencia mia Y haré tu aliento puro, angelical.
The blue smoke curls gracefully upward, rising through the madroño branches in a slender column, so like a delicate, long-stemmed wine-glass in form, as to awaken a double recollection and association in my mind. I stand again on the Red Desert, hot, blistering sand beneath my feet, a brazen sky all aflame above, and bare, red mountains flickering in the reflected rays of the fierce, blazing sun of the south, around me, gazing on a scene so sad, that even I, bitter Indian-hater that I am and must be. witness with heartfelt pain. Let me see how it all came about.
It was in the autumn of 1863 when the mad rush across the Colorado Desert, to the newly found gold and copper mines beyond the Colorado, in Arizona, was at its height. The heat and dust, and consequent sufferings of the poorly outfitted participants in the rush, were terrible. What will not man suffer for the ​sake of gold, always provided that the gold is far enough off, and hard enough to get? Nearer at hand and easier won, it is not half so attractive.
Uncle Billy Thompson and myself had taken a "short cut" across the desert from San Gorgonio Pass, eastward toward the Colorado, to avoid undesirable company; we lost the trail, and wandered on the red-hot desert sands, and in the sun-baked adobe mountains, without water, until our tongues parched in our mouths so that we dared not talk; and before our longing eyes the leafless palo verde shrubs turned to lofty palm trees, waving their green leaves in tropic breezes; and the mirage changed scattered volcanic rocks into great cities, whose long, level streets were lined with rows of palaces, such as the good Haroun Al Raschid raised in the city of the caliphs. By one of those freaks of fortune which some men call "miracles," others "special Providence," others "lucky chances"—and for which we thanked God in the silence of our hearts without stopping to call it anything—we had found a little deposit of pure water under a rock, left a day or two before by a cloud-burst, which had torn a channel like that of some great river, for twenty miles through the gravelly sands of the desert, and disappeared like a dream, leaving no other trace behind—had shared the life-giving element with our famishing horses, taken rest and new heart, and traveling on, passing the spot where others less fortunate had lain down in despair and died, had reached a hospitable camp, and been saved at last. We had journeyed thence in safety at last to the land of the accursed ​Apache, wandered into the red mountains of Arizona, made our "locations," and separated—he to toil in the mines and fight the treacherous, prowling Indians for years, I to return to home and civilization. Alone I had made the return trip from La Paz to Chucolwala, and thence to Tabasaca and Cañon Springs, where the faithful old buckskin steed Muchacho Juan, companion and friend in all my wanderings, had fallen down and died in terrible agony, after eating the poisonous weed of the desert known as "muerto en el campo" (death in the camp), leaving me to finish my journey of two hundred miles back to the settlements of California on foot and alone. Out of the jaws of death we had ridden exultantly into the camp at Dos Palmas a month before; into the gates of hell I walked with bleeding feet as I left Dos Palmas next, in the terrible silence of the desert night, on my weary tramp toward San Bernardino.
It was two a.m. when I wearily climbed the summit of the divide between Dos Palmas and the Palma Seca, and looked down into the great plain below. When the last man looks down on the wreck of the universe, and sees our world going back into chaos, without form and void, he will not behold a scene of more utter and savage desolation, or find himself wrapped in a silence more truly terrible. The full, round moon flooded the whole landscape with mellow light, but naught of life was to be seen; the ghastly pallor of death was upon and over everything. Southward to the horizon stretched a great plain of snowy salt—the grim and silent ghost of a dead sea of the ​past, which once covered all this accursed land, but being cut off by volcanic changes in the country below from the Gulf of California, dried up beneath the blazing sun of the south, and passed away forever. Across this vast white plain, as across the waters of a placid lake, the moon threw a track of shimmering light so bright as to almost dazzle the eyes of the beholder. Right in this glowing pathway of light, far out in the centre of this ghostly sea, where foot of man hath never trod, lay what appeared in the dim distance the wreck of a gallant ship, which may have gone down there centuries ago, when the bold Spanish Conquistadores, bearing the cross in one hand and the sword in the other, and serving God and Mammon, and the Most Catholic King of Spain and the Indias, with exemplary zeal, were pushing their way to the northwest, in search of souls to save for the love of Christ, and new kingdoms to plunder on shares. They sought then in vain for the fountain of youth, El Dorado, and the far-famed "Seven Cities of Civola." The fountain of youth lies ever just beyond the western horizon; we shall find it, and drink of it, and bathe in its waters bye-and-bye; the kingdom of Civola, from whence came the gems and treasure of Montezuma, lay even then in ruins in central Arizona, as we know to-day; and El Dorado they found, but knew it not, leaving it to us, who long years after came in and possessed the land, and made it to blossom as the rose, and to our children's children, to shout "Eureka!" over is abounding wealth. To the southwestward, beyond the western shore of the ancient sea, the Coyotero ​mountains broke the outline of the horizon. Farther northward, Mount San Jacinto lifted his rugged form in a black mass against the sky; and northward, still the desert, in pulseless waves of ashes, minute sea-shells and yellow sand, stretched away for a hundred miles, like a stagnant, tideless sea, to where Mount San Gorgonio and Mount San Bernardino towered aloft in awful majesty—twin giants, grim and grand—at the gateway of this strange, wild, weird, mysterious land. Upon their sides, far above the yellow sands of the desert, belts of dark-hued piñon forests stretched upward to their crowns of white, disintegrated granite, which gleamed like snow-fields in the clear moonlight, contrasting like frosted silver against the sapphire sky, and seeming to be cut off and detached from the earth below—floating like aerial icebergs through the starlit sea of the heavens. In vain I looked and listened; sight or sound of life, save my own, there was none; the eternal silence of the desert rested like a pall on the scene. This stillness is something awful, beyond the power of words to describe. In the absence of all other sounds, save that of my own hushed breathing, the ticking of the watch in my pocket was so distinctly audible as to become painful to hear. The world in ruins lay around me, and though in it, I seemed not of it. "Though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death," cried the Psalmist: lo, the Valley of the Shadow stretched out before my feet!
CROSSING THE DESERT.
​into the thicket of rank, bitter-leaved arrowwood which surrounds the bitter and nauseous alkaline springs of the Palma Seca, drank of the slimy waters, filled my canteen afresh, and pushed on again down into the plain, with a walk of twenty-five miles through alkaline dust, in the hottest valley on the surface of the earth—seventy feet below the level of the sea at that—before me. About ten o'clock, a ranchero from San Bernardino, who had been out to the new old mines of Arizona with a drove of beef cattle, came up and joined me. His horse, a noble, fine-haired half-breed, far too good an animal to be brought out into this accursed desert to die of heat, thirst and starvation, was so weak that he could no longer bear the weight of his master, and jogged mechanically on, with his eyes closed and his ears hanging down, like two frost-bitten tobacco-leaves, as his late rider limped before him, packing his blankets on his shoulder, and pulling sadly at the halter. Noble—such was the name of my friend from San Bernardino—had been a jaunty-looking young fellow when I saw him starting out for the mines from home six weeks before. When I met him that day he was a fit subject for the pencil of Hogarth. His coat had dried up and vanished, piece by piece, in the thorny thickets beyond the Colorado, and his vest had followed suit; his hat was a wreck, his pants in ruins, and the uppers and soles of his boots having parted company, he had, in a fit of desperation, parted company with both. To replace his boots, he had split his lower nether garment in twain, and bound the sections around his ​swollen feet, thus in a measure protecting them from the blistering sun over the excoriating alkaline dust and ashes.
Opposite where we met that morning was a broad sheet of dried mud, broken from the bed of what in the moment of a cloud-burst had been a roaring torrent, capable of sweeping away a whole train in an instant, as one was swept away near there in 1866, when men were drowned and their bodies carried miles away into the desert, and set up on end like a grave-stone. Some passing miners on the back track had spent an hour or more in cutting an inscription on this monument, as follows:
"In memory of the Infernal Asses who left home, square meals, and the comforts of civilization behind them in San Francisco, and sought their eternal fortunes among the mines in the blessed regions beyond the Colorado, of which are we. This monument was raised at the joint expense of the merchants of Los Angeles and San Bernardino, who drove a thriving trade, and had a grand thing out of it while the excitement lasted. And of such is the kingdom of Heaven."
We looked at each other and at the monument by turns with mournful interest. The cork of Noble's canteen flew out with a pop, propelled by the force of the sulphur gas generated from the half-boiling, stinking water, as it was shaken about as he limped along. "Here, Fly-up-the-Creek—I've forgotten your other name—take a drink!" said he. "You are another, my beauty, and I cannot refuse!" I replied, and swallowed a mouthful of the nauseating fluid. ​There is nothing more picturesque than a caravan on the desert—when seen in a picture, when you sit comfortably at home in a civilized country. Believe me, beloved of my heart, 'tis indeed distance lends enchantment to the view. That expression is, I believe, not wholly original. I have a dim recollection of having-heard or read something similar once or twice before—but it is very neat and very appropriate, and I crib it accordingly.
Higher and higher climbed the sun into the un-clouded, copper-hued sky, and hotter and hotter grew the motionless desert air, until the point where breathing would become an impossibility, and the whole apparatus must catch fire and burn up, seemed almost reached. The treeless mountains which shut in this desert basin on all sides, keep out at this season every breath of life-giving breeze, and the sun pouring into it, as into an old-fashioned tin bake-oven, makes everything fairly hiss with the all-consuming heat. Mile after mile I plodded on, leaving Noble and his exhausted horse far behind, the heat and thirst becoming more nearly intolerable at every step.
And now in the distance, along the western edge of the valley, arose great pillars of smoke—thin, and straight, and slender—to a vast height; then spreading outward into the semblance of wide-limbed trees, whose roots were firmly planted in the earth, whose giant trunks rose in the middle air, and whose branches filled all the heavens above. Toward these pillars of smoke I bent my weary steps; and at last, just as it seemed that my bleeding feet would bear me no further, ​and I must sink down exhausted, I came suddenly upon group of Coahuila Indians, gathered around a clump of mesquite trees, the branches of which were crackling in the flames. With parched lips and tongue, swollen from the fierce heat, I tottered, almost fainting, into the midst of the group, and held out my empty canteen. A young woman seized the canteen and ran into a thicket hard by, returning with it in a few minutes filled with delicious, cool, clear water, from some hidden well, known only to themselves. I sought for it many a time afterwards, but never found it. I drank of the cool, life-giving liquid—sweeter than champagne or nectar, it seemed to me then (it is but just to the manufacturers of the articles named to say that I had no chance of making a fair comparison at the moment), and then with my blankets on the dry sand under a spreading mesquite, slept the sleep of the just.
When I awoke the Indians were all gone, save the pitying woman who had brought me the water. She was sitting- at a little distance off watching me, and as she saw me awakening, she ran and brought me another canteen of the cool water. Her language was a sealed book to me, as mine to her, and our conversation was necessarily limited to a few words of Spanish which pass current everywhere on the southwestern border, and are understood in their conventional meaning by all. She was barefooted and bareheaded, and marked with the small-pox. Her raiment was of the scantiest, and it was painfully evident that the stock of soap and Cologne water in the parental ​wickiup was running very low, necessitating the putting of the family on short allowance. She was, in short, not a bit like the traditional "fair Alfaretto" in any respect; nevertheless I would have looked twice at an angel from heaven had one been offered in trade for her, unless the angel had come with a coach-and four, or on horseback, leading a spare horse, at the very least.
There is a little river, called the Aqua Blancho, issuing out of the San Bernardino Mountain, at the San Gorgonio Pass, at the upper end of the valley, and sinking in the sands of the desert soon after reaching the plain. Its waters are pure and cool, but no tree nor blade of grass grows on its desolate banks. From its source in the barren rock-ribbed mountain to its sink in the desert sands, through all its course, it is an accursed river, flowing ever in silence through a land accursed. But after it sinks and is permanently lost to sight, it contributes something to the comfort of mankind. It supplies the poor Coahuilas' wells fifty and a hundred miles to the southward, and nourishes a growth of the mezquite trees along the western side of the valley. In these mezquite groves the Indians have what is left of their villages since the small-pox has decimated them; and from the trees they gather the long, yellow, sugary beans, which, pounded into a paste and baked as bread, form with the piñions, or mountain pine nuts, almost their only diet the year round. The small-pox was a terrible infliction upon them, but a more terrible one followed close upon it. When the Indians of the ​valley of the Mississippi saw the honey-bee coming among them, they said, "Lo, the messenger of the white man! He is at hand; it is time for us to go!" Following the small-pox came the mistletoe into this desert land, and, fastening upon the mezquite trees, soon loaded them down so heavily with its parasitic growth, that they ceased to produce beans, and the Indians saw starvation before them. "Lo, the curse of the white man is upon us!" they cried, and sat down in despair. An old chief told them to burn each season the trees worst afflicted with the mistletoe, and perhaps the new ones which would spring up in their places might be free from the curse. This is what they were doing on that day when I stumbled among them; and a feeling of pity, deep and heartfelt, came over me, as I saw them standing around the burning trees, which had represented to them life, and hope, and abundance, and gazing with saddened, downcast, hopeless faces upon the consuming flames.
Lying here to-day in the fragrant shade of the blooming madroño, on the green-clad heights of the mountains of Napa, watching the smoke curling upward from my fragrant cigarrito, something—what it is I cannot tell—recalls all this to mind and memory; going backward through the years, reproduces the picture once again in all its startling, painful vividness. H-a-l-l-o-o-o-a there! Thank Heaven, an answering call comes back at last, and I see the Doctor, with his rifle on his shoulder, coming slowly up the mountain—and Bill is with him. Bill is my friend. Sun-burned American, never shall any man call you black ​again in my presence! You are a free and enlighened American citizen; smoked a trifle, I admit; but what is ham until it is smoked? Who objects to smoke? Another widow! First, the Widow of Garcia; then the Widow Cliquot! Respect for the widows is one of the most striking characteristics of the true gentleman, and I am overflowing with it. Here's to them all!
Not much luck to-day, Doctor? Well, the exercise will do you good, and that is a consolation at any rate. You certainly needed it. People in San Francisco eat too much and drink too much, take too much sleep and too little pedestrian exercise. They don't perspire from one year's end to the next. There is all the difference in the world between this climate and that of San Francisco; and, if I am not mistaken, there is still more between this and what you were used to the season you hibernated up there in the Sierra Nevada?
Yes, there is some difference, and no mistake. Many a night I have curled myself up under three pairs of California eight-pound blankets and shivered all night long. While you are in motion you do not feel the cold so much, but when once you lie down and attempt to sleep, it would take a pile of blankets like Mount St. Helena over there to keep you from freezing to death, unless you had a roaring fire going all the time on one of those stormy nights. And a physician has almost a dead certainty of being called out on the darkest and wildest nights for his longest rides to attend on patients who cannot wait a moment under ​any circumstances. One night's ride which I had in the Sierra I shall certainly never forget.
It was in the winter of 1868-69, when I had just been placed in charge of a division near the summit of the Sierra Nevada, on the then half-finished Central Pacific Railroad. After a long day's ride, I came back to the boarding-house at ten o'clock in the evening, and was told that a messenger had been there from Camp No. 10, with a request that I would lose no time in hurrying over there to attend upon John Smith, who was in a very critical condition. The messenger had been very urgent, and it was evidently a case of life and death—nothing less. I took a few minutes to consider. I was tired out, and wanted sleep badly, but could, on a pinch, go a little farther without breaking down entirely. The moon would be up at eleven o'clock, and the night was still and clear, though the snow had only just ceased falling, and was from five to eight feet deep on the level, if you can use the expression properly where there is nothing like a level to be found, and the roads—or trails, rather—are obliterated by the drifts. I inquired about the location of Camp No. 10. It was twelve miles away, and directly over a ridge, or spur, of the mountains. My own horse could not stand the trip, but a big lubber of a cart-horse, that they said was a good saddle-horse, was offered me. I got supper, put on dry socks and an extra pair of fur-lined overboots, and, just before midnight, was in the saddle and off.
A good saddle-horse! The brute belonged to the nightmare family, and his mother must have taken ​special pride in him. Great heavens, what a gait! He had traveled so long in the cart that the steady jolt had communicated itself to his spine, and become chronic. At every step he jerked his back up, as if expecting to feel the girth-strap strike him underneath, and neither curses nor blows—and I labored conscientiously to earn a reputation for liberality with both that night—would induce him for a moment to recognize the fact that he was out of the shafts, and abandon his eternal hippytyhop. When I started out, there were hard lumps in the saddle, as large as chestnuts; before the twelve miles were half completed, the lumps had grown to the size of paving-stones, and awfully sharp-edged and rasping. The snow which had just fallen filled the trail, but the old snow underneath being hard-packed, and the trees along the route well blazed, I had no difficulty in keeping in the right track most of the time. But when about three miles from my place of destination, as nearly as I could guess, clouds obscured the moon for a time, and I lost the road. I kept on as well as I knew how, guessing at the location of Camp No. 10; and, after rolling down the steep side of a ravine, and working half an hour to get old Jerky back upon the ridge, filling my overshoes with snow, and fairly exhausting myself in floundering through the drifts, I was rewarded with the sight of lights in some cabins half a mile away. Not doubting that this was Camp No. 10, I rounded a small cañon, worked my way over a point of rocks, Jerky stumbling and falling repeatedly, and reached the cabins at half past twelve o'clock. ​The lights had disappeared. "Halloo the house, there!" No answer. "Halloo the house!" louder and longer than before. A panel in the side of the nearest cabin opened slowly and cautiously, and after time enough had elapsed to allow of a critical examination of the party outside, a voice demanded: "Who you, John? What you wantee catchee here?" It was a Chinese wood-cutters' camp, and there was not a white man about the place.
The Johns told me that there was a camp of white men on the other side of the ravine I had just crossed, and perhaps half a mile farther up the mountain; they thought it might be "Camp Numble 10." Half an hour's floundering through the snow brought me back to the point whence I had sighted the lights, and soon after one a. m. I was at the white men's camp. I roused the inmates more easily here, as they were indulging in a little friendly game of "pitch," or "draw"—that being Saturday night—and had not retired to their virtuous bunks. No, that was not Camp No. 10, my informer told me; and, what was worse, Camp No. 10 was right over the summit of the mountain, a mile and a half away. I could go around by the trail three miles, or ride up to the railroad-track, tie my horse, and walk through the snow-sheds, a little more than a mile—it was contrary to the rules to take an animal inside the sheds.
I started up toward the track, and reached it at two a. m. The night was now clear and still; not the slightest noise could be heard, and the silence was something awful and oppressive. The last man and ​the last horse on earth will not feel more completely alone than Jerky and I did at that moment. As I was about to dismount and tie him to a tree, a thought struck me. I knew every regular train on the road, and there was none due for hours from either direction. I had a time-table in my pocket, and I took it out and examined it carefully by the moonlight. The track was clear; why might I not venture to save my strength and that of my horse, and, by saving time, perhaps save a valuable human life as well? Why not, indeed? The more I thought of it, the more satisfied I became that it was a safe thing to do.
The moon, now unobscured, was high in the heavens as I entered the snow-shed, and it was not very difficult to keep the way, as the light came scintillating through a thousand cracks and crevices in the rough timber structure. Three or four culverts, to allow the passage of mountain streams when the snow is melting, checked my progress for a brief time, but there was a plank across one or two, for the convenience of "foot-passengers," and as the water was hard frozen, I got old Jerky around the others in safety.
The worst was over, and I was already beginning to chuckle over the adventure, and pride myself on my forethought and pluck in making the venture. I had, undoubtedly, saved at least an hour of hard work wading through the snow, and possibly—not improbably, in fact, saved a life. Just then I heard a low, tremulous, humming noise running along the frost-laden rails, and instinctively checked my horse to listen. It had subsided for the moment, and I went on in silence. ​Suddenly it commenced again, and seemed louder and clearer than before. I halted again. God have mercy upon me! I exclaimed involuntarily. It was the rumble of the wheels of a coming train, beyond a question. I sprang to the ground and placed my ear to the rail. The train was coming from the west; it must be a "construction train," laden with materials for the road, and possibly with laborers as well. The track occupied the full width of the shed, allowing only for the overhang of the cars. A man might escape by lying down; but a horse was almost sure of death, and if the train struck him, it must go off the track almost inevitably. I was upon old Jerky's back before I was even aware of what I was doing, and started down the grade, to the eastward, as fast as his stiff and clumsy legs, urged by whip and spur, and the attraction of gravitation, could move him. Clearer and clearer came the humming noise; and I heard, at length, a short, sharp whistle, as the rushing train entered a tunnel, turned a sharp curve, or passed out of a tunnel. It could not be more than two miles, or three at most, away. Jerky skated over the ice-patches, and floundered through the small snow-drifts which had filtered in through the crevices in the shed-work, but reckless of danger to limbs alone in presence of the greater danger to myself, and perhaps hundreds of my fellow-men, I whipped and spurred unceasingly, and drove him on at the height of his speed. Nearer and nearer came the train. I could already hear the chough, chough, chough of the locomotive behind me. At last I saw an opening in ​the side of the shed not many rods distant, and, with with a triumphant yell, I urged my steed to put forth his utmost effort. Sixty seconds more and I would be saved, and the danger to the train avoided. The seconds seemed hours in the feverish excitement of the moment, but they were over at last, and I sprang off my horse on the instant that he reached the opening, and rushed, with the rein in my hand, through the aperture. Old Jerky snorted and sprang backward, throwing me down, and pulling the rein from my hand. I saw the trouble at a glance. The opening was not of sufficient height to admit of a horse going through it erect, and a heavy timber to which the planks were nailed, ran across the top. I sprang inside and took a survey of the situation in an instant. The beam would have borne ten times the strain that I could have brought to bear upon it, as it was a foot thick, sound, and firmly placed. I threw all my strength and weight against the planking a little beyond the beam, and fell back upon the icy ground; the planks were imbedded in the frozen ground at their lower ends, and I could not start them in the slightest degree. I sprang up and ran to the other side of the shed, to try if the planking on that side was less firmly secured. Through the crevices I saw a precipice running hundreds of feet, sheer down from the side of the shed. I could not escape that way, and if the train went off there, no person on it would survive to tell the tale.
I fell on my knees to pray, but, before I had uttered a word, the thought passed through my brain that I might throw the horse down, and pull him through ​the opening by main strength. I had the rope from the saddle in my hands in an instant, and throwing it around his fore-legs, I sprang to one side, and with my whole strength attempted to trip him. The brute jumped backward and refused to fall, while the rope ran through my hands, tearing the skin, and searing the flesh as if I had grasped a red-hot iron. I remembered at that moment having seen a Mexican vaquero showing off his skill in horsemanship, at San Jose, amid an admiring throng, and making the sneering remark to a friend, "And he is nothing but a bull-driver, after all." In that time of supreme agony, I would have sacrificed every advantage of birth, education, talent, and professional skill, and changed places with that uneducated, despised, bull-driving Greaser, merely to have received in turn the gift of the ability to perform the trick of throwing down a horse. My foot struck a stick of wood, such as is used for burning on the locomotives, which was lying on the ground, and I instantly stooped to get it, determined to beat the brains out of the brute with it, or at least stun him into insensibility, and then pull him into the opening. It was frozen fast in the ice, and I could not tear it loose, though I put forth strength which seemed herculean, in the frenzy of my excitement. It occurred to me that I had a pocket-knife, and I might cut his throat; but the train was almost upon me, and there was no time for him to bleed to death; this reflection did not consume a second and a half. In my despair, I gave one long-drawn yell—"Help!" No answer came.
NO TIME TO LOSE.
​ning speed, upon the down grade, and the light of the locomotive head- lamp already fell upon me. Ten seconds more, and there would be a terrific crash, and a pile of broken cars ; and crushed, bleeding and dying men would burst through the side of the shed, and go rolling down the mountain side. Deadly faint, and convinced that all was nearly over, I staggered against the side of the shed, closed my eyes, and sank half down to the ground. I heard Jerky give a sudden snort of terror, and opened my eyes. He had discovered the danger at last, and comprehended it all in an instant. The train could not have been more than thirty feet from him, when he made one tremendous jump, and went through the opening. The beam caught the high Mexican saddle, tore it into fragments, and frightfully lacerated his back, but his weight, and the strength which mortal terror gave him, carried him through, and he fell in the snow outside. I sprang after him, just as the locomotive came abreast of me, and fell, trembling, exhausted and fainting beside him.
I don't think the engineer saw us at all. I did not see him, so far as I could remember afterward. It was half an hour before I could gather strength enough to regain my feet. When I did so, I got my exhausted and bleeding horse upon his legs, and replaced the wreck of the saddle upon his lacerated back, securing it, as well as I could, with some thongs cut from the edge of the rein, and my pocket-handkerchief, torn into strips, and prepared to resume my journey. In a canon, filled with the black shadow of the mountain, I saw what appeared to be the dim ​outlines of several cabins. That must be Camp No. 10. Pulling my limping steed after me by the bridle, I made my way slowly and painfully down to the nearest cabin, and knocked at the door. "Git!" was the response which came to the third or fourth knock. I repeated the knocking. "Git! you drunken son of a gun! You have been yelling around here long enough! Leave—or I'll put a bullet through you!" came in decided and most emphatic tones from within. I called out that I was the doctor from Camp—, not the man they mistook me for, and wanted to know if that was Camp No. 10, and if John Smith was there—John Smith, who was dying, and wanted the doctor so bad. There was a moment's debate in whispers, between two or more persons inside; then I heard the scratching of matches and the shuffling of heavy slippers over the floor, and at last the door was opened, "Be you the doctor? Well, you are a powerful weak-looking young chicken for a doctor!" said John Smith—for it proved to be he—after he had held the candle to my face, and deliberately scrutinized my person for some seconds.
"You sent for me, I think, Mr. Smith?"
"Well, yes, I did send for you; but I'm kinder sorry now that I did, for I have concluded to go over thar to-morrow on business, anyhow."
"But the messenger said you were dying, or the next thing to it—almost dead, I think he said."
"Well, yes, I was pretty considerable scared at the time. You see I had a eruption come out right bad on my leg, and I was afraid it might be pleurisy, or ​new-amonia, or erysifilus, or suthin o' that sort, and if I come over in the snow and catched cold in it, I might 'a gone in."
He sat down on the side of his bunk, and pulled up the drawers from his right shin: there was a patch of ringworm there, about the size of a silver dollar—and that was all. I made use of some strong expressions. I don't often swear, but I felt aggravated, under all the circumstances, and considered myself justified. I still so consider. Mr. Smith heard me through. Then he arose majestically to his feet, and thus relieved himself:
"Young man! I jest put you up for a derned fool, on first sight—an' I wan't sold much! Ef you hain't got no more sense nor to git mad 'bout trifles, you'll have many a long day ter wait 'fore you'll be called on again to visit this camp—an' it's goin' to be a right lively camp in the spring, you bet! I did perpose to ask yer ter take a drink, bein' as how it's late, an' you must a' had a purty good ride over the mounting; but now, I'd jest see yer blessed first. Thar's the door; git! you derned, ornary, wizened, contemptible little scrub, an' don't come foolin' around here no more, ef yer don't want ter git hurt! Git!"
I took his advice, and "got," without another word, just as the gray dawn began to streak the sky over beyond the Washoe mountains.