Life Amongst the Modocs: Unwritten History/Chapter 5

by Cincinnatus Heine Miller

CHAPTER V.

IN A CALIFOKNIA MINING CAMP.

THINK I was ill. I remember some things but vaguely which took place this night, and the day and night that followed. I am certain that something was wrong all this time ; for, as a rule, when we first land from a voyage, or reach a journey s end, the mind is fresh and strong a blank ready to receive impressions and to retain them.

If you will observe or recall the fact, you will find that the first city you visited in China, or the first sea-port you touched at in Europe, is fixed in your mind more perfectly than any other. But my recollection of this time, usually clear and faultless, is shadowy and indistinct. I was surely ill.

This black man to me was a nightmare. I stood before him like a convict before his keeper. I felt that he was my master. Had he told me to do this or that I would have gone and done it, glad to get

from under his one and dreadful eye, that seemed to be burning a hole in my head.

The one-eyed black villain knew very well he wa& torturing me. He took a delight in it. Understand he had not said a word. I had not lifted my eyes.

At last he hoisted his black fat hand to his black thick head and turned away. I walked with an effort out into the street. This man had taken my strength he had absorbed me into his strong animal body.

Here is a subject that I do not understand at all. I will only state a fact. There are men that exhaust me. There are men that if they come into a room and talk to me, or even approach closely, take my strength from me more speedily, and as certainly, as if I spent my force climbing a hill. There are men that I cannot endure; their presence is to me an actual physical pain. I have tried to overcome this in vain. I have found myself dodging men in the street, hiding around the corner, or flying like a pick-pocket into a crowd to escape them. Good honest men are they some of them, no doubt, yet they use me up ; they absorb, exhaust me ; they would kill me dead in less than a week.

I stole away from the stable and reached the main street. A tide of people poured up and down, and across from other streets, as strong as in a town of the East. The white people on the side walks, the Chinese and mules in the main street. Not a woman in sight, not a child, not a boy. People turned to look at me as at something new and out of place.

I was very hungry, faint, miserable. The wind pitched down from the white-covered mountains, cold and keen, and whistled above the crowds along the streets. I got a biscuit for my half-dollar, walked on, ate it unobserved, and was stronger.

Brick houses on either hand, two and three stories high. A city of altogether, perhaps, five thousand souls. I was utterly overcome by the magnitude of the place and the multitude of people. There being but one main street, I kept along this till the further end was reached, then turned back, and thus was not lost or bewildered. I returned to the stable, stronger now, yet almost trembling with fear of meeting the black man with one eye.

As a rule, beware of one-eyed people, who have not a strong moral anchor ; also beware of cripples, unless they too have a good and patient nature. Fate has put them at a disadvantage with the world, and they can only battle and keep pace with their fellows by cunning. Nine times out of ten they instinctively take to treachery and tricks to over come this disadvantage. That is only natural.

On the same principle, woman, who is not so strong as man, resorts to strategy to match him. What she lacks in strength, she makes up in being more than his equal in craftiness. The strong grizzly goes boldly upon his prey, crushing through the chapparal like the march of an army ; the panther lies on a limb, waiting to take it to a disadvantage. A deaf and dumb person is usually a lovable person ;

so is one who is totally blind, for these live some what more within themselves and do not go out to battle with the world, or at least, do not attempt to match it in the daily struggle ; but you put a one- eyed man or a cripple in the fight, and unless he is very good, he is very bad indeed.

I went up to my pony, standing on three legs with his nose in the hay, put my arms around his neck, talked baby-talk to him, and felt as with an old friend. There was a little opening overhead, a place where they put hay down from the loft. I looked up. An idea struck me. I looked over my shoulder for the negro. No one was there. I climbed up like a cat ; found a hump of hay, crept into it, and was soon fast asleep.

It was not a pleasant bed. The wind whistled through the loft, and though I crept and cowered into the very heart of the hay-pile, the frost followed me up unmercifully. I descended with the dawn, lest the negro should be there, and was on the street even before the Chinamen, and long before the sun. A frost was on the ground, and a taste of winter in the air and wind.

To the west the pine hills were brown with the dead grass, then farther up, green with pine and fir, then white with frost and snow.

I walked up the single long street in that direc tion, the hills began to flash back the sun that glowed from Shasta s helmet, and my heart rose up with the sun. I said, " The world is before me.

Here is a new world being fashioned under my very feet. I will take part in the work, and a portion of it shall be mine."

All this city had been built, all this country opened up, in less than two years. Twenty months before, only the Indian inhabited here ; he was lord absolute of the land. But gold had been found on this spot by a party of roving mountaineers; the news had gone abroad, and people poured in and had taken possession in a day, without question and without ceremony.

And the Indians ? They were pushed aside. At first they were glad to make the strangers welcome ; but when they saw where it would all lead, they grew sullen arid concerned. Then trouble arose ; they retreated, and Ben Wright took the field and followed them, as we have seen.

I hurried on a mile or so to the foot-hills, and stood in the heart of the placer mines. Now the smoke from the low chimneys of the log cabins began to rise and curl through the cool, clear air on every hand, and the miners to come out at the low doors; great hairy, bearded, six foot giants, hatless, and half-dressed.

They stretched themselves in the sweet, frosty air, shouted to each other in a sort of savage banter, washed their hands and faces in the gold-pan that stood by the door, and then entered their cabins again, to partake of the eternal beans and bacon and coffee, and coffee and bacon and beans.

The whole face of the earth was perforated with holes ; shafts sunk and being sunk by these men in search of gold, down to the bed-rock. Windlasses stretched across these shafts where great buckets swung, in which men hoisted the earth to the light of the sun by sheer force of muscle.

The sun came softly down, and shone brightly on the hillside where I stood. I lifted my hands to Shasta, above the butte and town, for he looked like an old acquaintance, and I again was glad.

It is one of the chiefest delights of extreme youth, and I may add of extreme ignorance, to bridge over rivers with a rainbow. And one of the chief good things of youth and verdancy is buoyancy of spirits. You may be twice vanquished in a day, and if you are neither old nor wise you may still be twice glad.

A sea of human life began to sound and surge around me. Strong men shouldered their picks and shovels, took their gold pans under their arms, and went forth to their labour. They sang little snatches of songs familiar in other lands, and now and then they shouted back and forth, and their voices arose like trumpets in the mountain air.

I went down among these men full of hope. I asked for work. They looked at me and smiled, and went on with fcheir labour. Sometimes, as I went from one claim to another, they would ask me what I could do. One greasy, red-faced old fellow, with a green patch over his left eye, a check shirt, yellow with dirt, and one suspender, asked

" What in hell are you doing here anyhow?" ....

My spirit mercury fell to freezing point before night.

At dusk I again sought the rude half-open stable, put ray arms around my pony s neck, caressed him and talked to him as to a brother. I wanted, needed something to love and talk to, and this horse was all I had.

I trembled lest the negro should be near, and hastened to climb again into the loft and hide in my nest of hay.

It was late when I awoke. I had a headache and hardly knew where I was. When I had collected my mind and understood the situation, I listened for the negro s voice. I heard him in the far part of the stable, and, frightened half to death, hastened to descend.

When a young bear up a tree hears a human voice at the root it hastens down, though it be perfectly safe where it is, and will reach the ground only to fall into the very arms of the hunter.

My conduct was something like that of the young bear. I can account for the one about as clearly as for the other.

My hat was smashed in many shapes, my clothes were wrinkled, and there were fragments of hay and straw in my hair. My heart beat audibly, and my head ached till I was nearly blinded with pain as I hastened down.

There was no earthly reason why I s hould fear

this negro. Reason would have told me it was not in his power to harm me ; but I had not then grown to use my reason.

There are people who follow instinct and impulse, much as a horse or dog, all through rather eventful lives, and, in some things, make fewer mistakes than men who act only from reason.

A woman follows instinct more than man does, and hence is keener to detect the good or bad in a face than man, and makes fewer real mistakes.

When I had descended and turned hastily and half blinded to the door, there stood the one-eyed negro, glaring at me with his one eye ferociously.

" What the holy poker have you been a doin up there? Stealin my eggs, eh? Now look here, you better git. Do you hear?" And he came toward me, keeping between me and the door as I tried to pass. " I know you; do you hear? I know d you stole dat hoss, I did. Now you git."

Here he stepped aside, levelled his one eye at me like a single-barrelled shot-gun as I fled past him, half expecting he would take me on the wing.

What should I do? What did I do? I ran! A boy s legs, like a mule s heels, answer many argu ments. They are his last resort, and often his first. Deprive him of everything else, but leave him his legs, and he will get on.

I was not strong. I was not used to making my way through a crowd, and got on slowly. I ran against men coming down the street with picks

and pans, and they swore lustily. I ran against Chinamen, with great baskets on their bamboo poles, who took it in good part and said nothing. I ex pected every moment this black man would seize me in his black hands and lug me off to a prison. I was surely delirious.

At last, when near the hotel, I took time to look over my shoulder. I could see nothing of him; he perhaps had not left the stable.

As I passed the hotel the Prince came out.. He had slept and rested the day before, after his night and day of sport and travel, and looked fresh as the

morning.

" How-dy-do?" said the Prince, in his quiet, good- humoured way. " How-dy-do? Take a drink?" And he led me into the bar-room. I followed instinctively.

In most parts of America the morning salutation is, "How d ye do? How s the folks?" But on the Pacific it is, " How-dy-do? Take a drink?"

There was a red sign over the door of the hotel a miner with a pick, red shirt, and top boots. I lifted my face and looked at that sign to hide my ex pression of concern from the Prince.

u Hullo, my little chicken, what s up ? You look as pale as a ghost. Come, take a smash ! It will strengthen you up. Been on a bender last night; no?" cried an old sailor, glass in hand.

There was an enormous box-stove there in the middle of the room, with a drum lik e a steam boiler

above, and a great wood fire that cracked and roared like a furnace.

The walls were low, of painted plank, and were hung around with cheap prints in gay colours of race horses, prize-fighters, and bull-dogs. One end of the room was devoted to a local picturing, on a plank half the size of a barn door, which was called a Mexican Bull. This name was prudently written at the bottom, perhaps to prevent mistakes. The great picture of the place, however, was that of a grizzly bear and hunter, which hung at the back of the man who dealt out the tumblers behind the bar. This picture was done by the hunter himself. He was represented clasped in the bear s embrace, and heroically driving an enormous knife to his heart. The knife was big and broad as a hand-saw, red and running with blood. The bear s fore legs were enor mous, and nearly twice as long and large as his hind ones. It may be a good stroke of genius to throw all the strength and power in the points to which the attention will most likely be directed. At least that seemed to be the policy adopted by this artist of the West.

An Indian scalp or two hung from a corner of this painting. The long matted hair hung streaming down over the ears of the bear and his red open mouth. A few sheaves of arrows in quivers were hung against the wall, with here and there a tomahawk, a scalping-knife, boomerang and war-club, at the back of the "bar -keep."

Little shelves of bottles, glasses, and other requi sites of a well-regulated bar, sprang up on either side of the erect grizzly bear; and on the little shelf where the picture rested lay a brace of pistols, capped and cocked, within hand s reach of the cin namon-haired bar-keeper. This man was short, thick set, and of enormous strength, strength that had not remained untrained. He had short red hair, which stuck straight out from the scalp; one tooth out in front, and a long white scar across his narrow red forehead. He wore a red shirt, open at the throat, with the sleeves rolled up his brawny arms to the elbows.

All this seems to be before me now. I believe I could count and tell with a tolerable accuracy the number of glasses and bottles there were behind the bar.

Here is something strange. Everything that passed, everything that touched my mind through any source whatever, every form that my eyes rested upon, in those last two or three minutes before I broke down, remained as fixed and substantial in the memory, as shafts of stone.

Is it not because they were the last ? because the mind, in the long blank that followed, had nothing else to do but fix those last things firmly in their place ; something as the last scene on the land or the last words of friends are remembered when we go down on a long journey across the sea.

I have a dim and uncertain recollection of trying

(34 IN A CALIFORNIA

hard to hold on to the bar, of looking up to the Prince for help in a helpless way ; the house seemed to rock and reel, and then one side of the room is lifted up so high I cannot keep my feet cannot see distinctly, cannot hear at all, and then all seemed to recede ; and all the senses refused to struggle longer against the black and the blank sea that came over me, and all things around me.

The Prince, I think, put out his strong arms and took me up, but I do not know. All this is painful to recall. I never asked anything about it when I got up again, because I tried to forget it. That is impossible. I see that bar, bar-keeper, and grizzly- bear so distinctly this moment, that if I were a painter I could put every face, every tumbler, every thing there, on canvas as truthfully as they could be taken by a photograph.

I remember the room they took me to up-stairs. They spoke kindly, but I do not think I could answer. Every now and then, through it all and in all things, I could see the one-eyed negro. I lay looking at the double-barrelled shot-gun against the wall by the bed, and the bowie-knife that lay beside a brace of pistols on the table ; some decanters on a stand, and a long white pole, perhaps a sort of pick- handle, in the corner, are all that I remember. And yet all this fixed on the mind in an instant ; for soon my remaining senses went away, and returned no more for many, many weeks.

There was a little Chinaman, tawny, moon-eyed,

and silent, sitting by the bed ; but when he saw me lift my hands and look consciously around, his homely features beamed with delight. He sprung up from my side, spun around the room a time or two in his paper slippers, hitched up his blue, loose trousers, and seemed as glad as a country child when a parent comes home from town. Then he took up my hand, moved my head, fixed the pillow, and again spun around the room, grinning and showing his white teeth.

This little, moon-eyed heathen belonged to that race we send so many tracts and missionaries to across the seas ; and was one of those little wretches that the dear children in the cities of the Pacific pelt and pound on Sabbath days with cobble stones, rotten apples, hymn-books, bibles, and whatever comes convenient, as they return home from church and Sunday school.

At last, this diminutive Chinaman seemed to come to his senses, and shot out of the door and down the stairs as if flying for a wager, and I slept then and dreamed sweet and beautiful dreams.

When I awoke the little heathen had returned. The Prince, more earnest and thoughtful, it seemed to me, than before, was at my side, and with him a sallow, sickly-looking physician in green glasses, and a ruffled shirt. Miners were corning in and going out on tip-toe, holding their slouch hats stiffly in both hands, and making long measured steps as they moved around the bed.

F

UIM7ERSIT7

I looked for the shot-gun on the wall but it was gone ; a fancy-picture too had disappeared, or possibly, I had only dreamed that such a picture hung on the wall across by the window. The pistols had been taken away, too, from the stand, and the bowie- knife was gone. There was only a book on the stand a brown, old, leather-bound book. The decanters had been taken away, and a short junk- bottle stood there, doing service for a vase, with a bunch of wild autumn blossoms, and a green fir-twig or two to relieve the yellow of the blooms.