The San Francisco call., 1895-11-03

Their pet story up in Eldorado County
is that concerning Heads Peters. He was
the Joke of ali the old mining country up
there for so long that now that he has
gone the tale of his adventures is told to
every stranger that enters one of the old
cabins. Sam Newton told it to me-Sam,
whose ca bin high up on the river hill is
almost the last mark of the high tide of
gold miners who made that country hum
forty or fifty years ago. Just beyond Sans
cabin the '4S trail dives over the bank and
gets down to the American River, and
everybody who goes into that country
stops at the shack upon the hill to inquire
his way. 1 stopped there.
After we had dined on bacon and hot
biscuit, and l had helped him clear up the
mess and put the cabin to rights and we
were sitting on the sawlog just outside the
door, Sam said suddenly:
'Yes, it's a great place for consumptives
and people with asthma. Good many of
them stop over to Auburn"
l told him there was nothing the mat
ter with my lungs, at which he seemed
distressed, as if 1 could not therefore profit
by the fine air and general salubrity of the
mountains.
1T minds me of Heads Peters," said
Newton, shamelessly.
l had reminded good many people up
in that country of Heads Peters, but per-
versely had never asked why. There was
whole evening before US, as we sat on the
sawlog, however, and so made the polite
inquiry. Old Sans face beamed with
pleasure when he found he had man who
had never heard the story of Heads Peters.
1t was about ten years ago, late one
night, when Sans dog reused him by
barking violently, and he was hailed by a
voice outside the cabin. He lit up and ad-
miJed the traveller.
'iIou never see such fellow" Newton
said. HE looked like a new doll in the
city that's fell off q delivery-wagon and
been run ever in the mud"
Sans visitor was young man with the
remains of the swellest kind of English
tourist clothes. He had soft blue jacket
very short, but the pockets were out of it
and there was a bad patch on the tail
where the owner had evidently sat on
hot ember from a campfire or something
of that sort. His trousers of light woolly
stuff, absolutely clean and perfectly
pressed, had frayed away at the bottom
until you could see the tops of what had
been pair of tan CATERS, but which were
now laced with bits of buckskin. His
clothes told who he was, and during the
years he remained in the neighborhood of
Sam Newton's shack he gave over and over
again the story of his adventures, which
were all misfortunes. He was one of the
Peterses of Lincolnshire. They don't
know much about the Peterses of Lin
colnshire up in Ell Dorado County,
but the way the young man told it and
the number of times he repeated it the
Peterses of Lincolnshire must be a great
race indeed. This particular Peters was
not great in body. He was small and his
lungs were weak. That was what brought
him to California. He came with a secre-
tary and a valet and $150,0OO. For a little
while he was a social lion around Los
Angeles and San Bernardino. But being a
lion wearied him somewhat. His secre-
tary left him down there and disappeared
for time. When he met him again the
secretary was the social lion. He had
taken his saVin gs and gone into the hills
There he went to work for a sheepman
who had a moderate flock that grazed on
the hills of Kern and Ventura counties
, and cost him nothing for pasturage. The
secretary did not get any salary because
the sheepman had no money, but prom
ised to pay as soon as he sold his flock A
bucking bronco and noble load of whisky
prevented this consummation by landing
the secretary's employer at the bottom of
a rocky gulch as dead as an abandoned
claim. So the secretary took the sheep in
payment of arrears of salary and became a
sheepman on his own account. Mutton
went up, the small flock became large
flock and within five years the secretary
was a mutton magnate. And he was
worth half a million dollars when Peters
saw him again,
Peters was of mathematical turn of
mind and easily figured that if his secre-
tary with a few pounds of capital could
become a semi-mIllionaire in five years, a.
gentleman with $150,O00 to invest ought to
become a multi-millionaire in the same
period. So Peters went into the
sheep business on large scale,
and when the five years were gone
he not only had smaller flock than
he began with, but his fortune had gone in
a hundred ways. The people around
where he pastured lived exclusively on
mutton and paid no price. His wool
bearers hung in a hundred markets, but
somebody else collected the price of the
carcasses. And presently Peters lost even
his sheep and disappeared from Los An
geles.
His lungs were still troubling him and
soon he was the star guest at the tourists
hotel in Auburn. He had world of good
clothes. He could still afford pony, and
his little pad-saddle and dainty spurs were
the wonder of the mountains. His uncle,
the head of the Lincolnshire Peterses, re-
membered his nephew to the extent of
couple OF hundred pounds year, and on
that Heads Peters shone in tourist and So
ciety circles in the foothill country. The
Engiishman was interested in natives. and
he used to sit on the veranda after the
iadies had retired and listen to the talk of
tbe miners and cowmen of the departed