starting, for there’s nothing a bully respects like a quiet man with good grit in him.”
And it is possible, though hardly probable, that if I had exactly adhered to the surveyor’s well-meant counsel, I might have avoided a crisis. As ill luck had it, I sought to improve upon the advice, to conciliate and mollify, where I should have been hard and calm.
Well! it was soon after I got into practice that I first saw my professional rival.
The rains came, and with the washing and digging began my work, for soon there were patients. My first patient was a young miner whose comrade had awkwardly driven a pickaxe through his foot—an interesting case, involving exfoliations of bone, while I feared at first lest lockjaw should result; but by great care and seclusion from the whiskey bottle, I brought the miner through. The next case was that of a fellow who had been shot through the body in one of those duels over a handkerchief, so common in California. This man, too, I had the gratification of saving, though I was obliged to nurse him in my own tent, or his friends, with their eternal cordials and prescriptions of aqua vitæ, would soon have sent him out of the world. These cures caused my name to be bruited about, and then “the Doctor,” as he was called, Dr. Hullings, made his appearance. He was nearly, but not quite, sober; a tall, bulky man, wearing a black coat, a Mexican sash round his waist, and velvet calzoneros of a bright green. He frowned on me for a minute or two without speaking, and at last addressed me in a hoarse voice that boded anything but goodwill:
“Halloa! stranger, do you know who I am?”
I was not alone; indeed one is seldom alone in California; there were three or four storekeepers in my surgery, chatting and smoking. I saw their eyes brighten as Hullings came in; they expected a row, but I was determined not to indulge them. I answered, civilly, “If, sir, you are, as I should imagine, Dr. Hullings, I am very glad to welcome to my tent a member of my own profession, and to have an opportunity of making your acquaintance.”
Hullings stared like a baffled bull. My Yankee visitors sniggered among themselves.
“Member of my profession!” at length Hullings exclaimed; “you are a cool one, I expect. How do I know you’re anything but some runaway loblolly boy or ’pothecary’s errand lad, come here to poison our citizens, eh?”
To this I replied, with studied urbanity, that I was perfectly ready to submit my diplomas and certificates, London and Edinburgh, to his inspection, in testimony of my being a regularly educated and duly qualified practitioner. Dr. Hullings cut me short very rudely, telling me to keep my rubbish to myself, that the testimonials were very likely forged ones, and myself a London rogue; and, lastly, that free-born Americans wanted neither to be hocussed by the physic, nor sickened by the fine manners of any d Britisher!
I only smiled in answer to this tirade, Hullings stamped his foot, and made some very unwarrantable comments on Great Britain, Queen Victoria, and my unworthy self, but still I kept my temper. At last, the Doctor, shaking his huge fist unpleasantly near my face, as I was busy with pestle and mortar, pill-compounding, bellowed out:—
“The long and the short of it’s just this—Placerville’s a location belongs to me. I am not the man, I can tell you, ye skunk, to allow tampering with my patients, or poaching on my grounds. You’ll have to make tracks out o’ this, young man, if you’d keep your skin whole.”
I politely assured him that I should not “make tracks” at any man’s bidding. I had no idea of meddling with his patients, or in any way deviating from the rules either of professional etiquette or of good neighbourship—but there he cut me short with—
“You’d best not be a neighbour of mine too long, I guess, ye dratted British interloper!”
So, favouring me with a parting scowl, he jammed down the Panama hat on his shaggy head, squirted a stream of amber extract of tobacco from his wide mouth into the mass of pills I was rolling out, and, with a laugh of contempt, swaggered away from my presence.
I could see by the faces of the lookers-on that I had fallen considerably in their esteem by my meek conduct. They attributed this to fear, and the imputation of pusillanimity is a hard one for a young man to endure. Still I put a good face on the matter, and my practice decidedly increased, less on account of my own merits, than the multiplication of cases. The yield of gold was very good after the rains: fresh diggers poured in; new arrivals from Europe, many of them, who soon sickened with the hard work in the burning sun by day, the heavy dews they slept among at night, the scanty shelter, and the over-abundant whiskey. There were plenty of men down with various complaints, besides accident cases and hurts in quarrels over cards or drink. I had much to do, and before long I was able to pay my way, though little more; for living is fearfully expensive in California, and I could not subsist and pay ground-rent for the few square feet of valuable earth my tent occupied for less than six dollars a-day. Then, too, I found that my golden dreams, before I came out, were as deceptive as many another man’s. I had imagined the miners to be careless, prodigal fellows, like so many sailors on a spree, rewarding the extraction of a tooth with a nugget as big as a hazel-nut, and recompensing my handfuls of quinine with handfuls of gold-dust. I found out my mistake, and that miners were just as resolute to have their dollar’s worth for their dollar as any other class. Indeed, in spite of their gambling, and other expensive vices, I should call them a thrifty set, unless under strong temptation.
Still, I began to make a little money, and was able to put by a small nest-egg towards that treasure I had in view, and which was to buy me one of the very best connections at the West End, and send me to pay my visits in a smart pair-horse brougham, the envy of all beholders. Not only I made some little money, but, what was better in that lawless, heartless place, I made a staunch friend in one Paul Clam, a tall, lithe young American, from Virginia, and one of the best natured fellows in Placerville.
