The Cave of Gold<br />A Tale of California in '49, Everett McNeil [best books for students to read .txt] 📗

A couple of hours later the two boys overtook the slower-moving train of wagons; and were given a hearty welcome by the gaunt, roughly dressed and rougher-looking men, who, as they had surmised, were bound for the gold-mines.

Thure, as they joined the little company of prospective miners, turned and looked backward, just in time to see two horsemen appear on the brow of a distant hill, halt their horses and sit staring in their direction for a couple of minutes; and then, wheeling their horses about disappear down the other side of the hill.

"Queer!" thought Thure. "I should think they'd be only too glad to join us, unless," and his heart gave a jump at the thought, "unless they were Brokennose and Pockface following on our trail! I wonder—"

But here the men of the wagon-train, gathering excitedly about him and all eagerly asking questions, drove all further thoughts of the two solitary horsemen out of his head.

There were fifteen men, two women, and three children—a girl of fourteen and two boys thirteen years old—in the company; and all had come from the great wilderness to the north, whither they had gone from the States some three years before. They had been traveling for many days southward, through a wilderness inhabited only by wild beasts and Indians, without seeing a human being, except a few Indians, although they had passed a number of deserted ranchos on their way down the Sacramento Valley, until Thure and Bud rode into their midst. All the men were armed with long-barreled rifles, huge knives, and some of them, in addition, carried a pistol or a revolver. They were dressed for the most part in deerskins and their hair and beards had grown so long, that only their bright eyes and bronzed noses and gleaming white teeth, when they smiled or opened their mouths, were visible. All the other features of their faces were hidden behind matted locks of hair. The faces of the women and the children had been browned by the sun, until they were nearly of the color of Indians, and their clothing was soiled and worn; but all were clear-eyed and looked as if they did not know what a bodily ache or pain was.

Thure and Bud were too familiar with this type of wilderness manhood to be worried in the least over their rough looks and dress. They knew something of the real men that usually dwelt within these rough exteriors—the men who hewed the way for civilization through the wilderness, the men of the rifle, the trap, and the ax, strong and sturdy and as gnarled and knotted as the oaks of their own forests, yet as true to a friend or to the right as they saw it, as the balls in their rifles were to their sights—and neither boy hesitated an instant to accept their invitation to "jog along" with them to Sacramento City.

For a few minutes the whole company halted and crowded excitedly around Thure and Bud. They had heard no news of the world outside of their little company for many days; and they were especially anxious to hear the latest news from the diggings.

"Sure th' gold ain't petered out yit?" queried one of the men anxiously.

"No," answered Thure, smiling. "According to dad's last letter they were discovering new diggings almost every day and all the old diggings were still panning out well. Why, he wrote that the fellow who had the claim right next to his claim had found a pocket the day before, out of which he had taken in one day one thousand dollars' worth of gold nuggets!"

"Say, young man," and a great, huge-boned, lank man crowded eagerly up to Thure's side, "jest say them words over ag'in; an' say 'em loud, so that Sal can hear. She's bin callin' me a fool regular 'bout every hour since we started for th' diggings. Says she'll eat all th' gold I find an' won't have no stumick-ake neither. Now, listen, Sal," and he turned excitedly to one of the two women, who stood together on the outskirts of the little crowd of men around Thure and Bud. "Jest listen tew what this boy's own dad rit home," and again he turned his eager eyes on Thure's face.

Thure laughed and repeated, in a louder voice, the story of the miner's good luck.

"Did you hear that, Sal?" and again the big man turned excitedly to the woman. "One Thousand Dollars' wurth of gold nuggets picked right up out of a hole in th' ground in one day! Gosh, that's more gold than we ever seed in our lives! An' he found it all in one day! Good lord! in ten days he'd have Ten Thousand Dollars! An' in one hundred days he'd have One Hundred Thousand Dollars!" he almost shouted.

"Well, what if he did have one hundred thousand dollars! What good would that do you? That's what I'd like tew know, Tim Perkins? He'd have th' gold, not you, wouldn't he?" and the woman turned a thin care-worn face to her big husband.

"But," and the big fellow's eyes fairly shone with enthusiasm, "can't you see, Sal, that that proves that th' gold is thar; an', th' gold bein' thar, I stand as good a chance as anybody else of runnin' ontew a pocket like that. Good lord, a Thousand Dollars in One Day! Think of what that would mean tew us, Sal! Edication for th' boy an' gal, a comfortable home for us as long as we live! If we could only have sech luck! An' I've bin dreamin' of findin' gold almost every night since we hooked up an' started for th' diggin's!"

"An' your dreamin' always comes true!" replied Mrs. Perkins scornfully. "Well, I've only got this tew say, an', if I've sed it onct, I've sed it a hundred times, this is our last wild-goose chasin' trip. You'll settle down for keeps, th' next time you settle down, Tim Perkins, gold or no gold; or you'll do your chasin' alone," and she turned and climbed back into one of the wagons, not at all moved by her big husband's enthusiasm.

"Sal's some downhearted," the big fellow explained to Thure, "'cause things ain't turned out for us like we expected since comin' tew Oregon. But," and his face lighted up again, "jest wait till I make my strike in th' diggings an' nuthin' 'll be tew good for her an' th' yunks."

"Do you reckon we can make Sacramento City tew-night?" here broke in one of the men anxiously. "We was a calculatin' that we might."

"Yes," answered Thure, "if you are willing to travel late; but you'll have to hustle to do it."

"Then we'll hustle," declared the man, who appeared to be the captain of the little company. "Everybody who wants tew git to Sacramento City tew-night git a-goin'," he shouted. "Th' gold stories'll keep till we git thar," and he hurried away to his own wagon, which was in the van; and soon, with much loud shouting and the cracking of the long lashes of whips, the little train of wagons was again in motion.

Thure and Bud fell in at once by the side of the leader, who, learning that they were familiar with the trail to Sacramento City, had asked them to act as guides.

All the wagons were drawn by big raw-boned and long-legged mules; and the two boys soon found that they had to use their whips freely on their sturdy little pack-horses in order to hold their places in the train.

All day long they pressed steadily forward, as fast as mule legs could drag the heavy wagons; and, a little before night, they struck the northern trail from San Francisco to Sacramento City, now a well-traveled road. Here, for the first time, Thure and Bud began to get something of an idea of what the rush to the gold-mines was like. There were some twenty-five wagons, a hundred or more horsemen, and many men on foot in sight of their eyes, when their wagons swung around a small hill and on to the trail, now hardened into a road by the thousands of wheels and hoofs that had recently passed over it; and all were hurrying forward, as if they were fearful they would be too late to reap any of the golden harvest.

"Great buffaloes!" and Tim Perkins turned anxiously to Thure, by whose side he was riding, "dew you reckon all them folks are bound for the diggin's?"

"Yes," answered Thure. "Can't you see that everyone is armed with a pick and shovel and gold-pan? Why, even the men on foot are lugging picks and shovels and gold-pans on their backs!"

"An'," continued Tim, the anxious look on his face deepening, "dew you reckon they've bin a-tearin' over th' trail tew th' diggin's like this for long; or is this jest a stampede we have struck?"

"A ship has probably landed at San Francisco lately," Thure replied; "and these are some of the gold-seekers who came in it. But I don't think from what I have heard that what we are seeing is an unusual sight along this trail. They've been rushing to the mines like a herd of stampeding cattle for months."

"Gosh! I'm afeard they'll find all th' gold afore we git thar! If 'twon't for Sal an' th yunks I'd hurry on ahead. Dang it, if I was only thar right now I might be discoverin' a pocket full of gold, like that miner aside your dad did, at this identical moment! Hi, thar, Jud," and he turned his eyes glowing with excitement to the face of the train-captain, "let's see if we can't git ahead of some of this tarnel crowd; or they'll be a-landin' on all the good spots afore we git thar."

"Now, jest keep a tight rein on your hosses, Perkins," grinned Jud Smith, the leader of the little company of Oregon gold-seekers; "an' rekerleck th' old sayin' 'th' more haste th' less speed,' But," and an uneasy look came into his own eyes, "it sure does look like all creation had started for th' diggin's. See, they're still a-comin' as far back as th' eyes can reach! I reckon we had better try an' hit up a leetle livelier gait. G'lang, thar, you long-eared repteels!" and the long lash of his whip hissed through the air and cracked, like the report of a pistol, over the heads of his leading mules.

Indeed, it seemed to be impossible for even the sanest of men to mingle long with a crowd of hurrying gold-seekers and think of what they were hurrying for, and not catch the fever of unreasoning haste. The thought that they might be too late, that each moment they might be missing a golden opportunity by not being on the spot, seemed to obsess all minds; and the nearer they got to the gold-fields the greater became this excitement and hurry, until it degenerated into little more than a wild stampede of gold-mad men.

And no wonder! for the nearer they got to the mines the bigger the stories seemed to grow of the wonderful gold finds that were being made. Nay, more than this! They now sometimes actually saw the gold and actually met the men who had found it, as they were returning to the comforts and pleasures of civilization, actually burdened down with the weight of the precious metal they were carrying! And, what if all this gold should all be dug up before they got to the mines! The thought was enough to put the fever of haste into the blood of any man.

The knowledge of having the skin map and the thought of the Cave of Gold to which it pointed the way, did not keep Thure and Bud from feeling this excitement, this wild desire to hurry, as their little company swung into line on the trail and rushed madly on with the rest. True the skin map and the gold nugget, still in the miner's buckskin bag, hung, safely hidden, under the armpit of Thure's left shoulder; but the old miner himself had found the Cave of Gold, and, if he had found it, why might not some other man find it? That was the disturbing thought that had troubled the two boys all along; and now, when they began to realize how great was the flood of gold-seekers constantly pouring into the mining regions and how their keen eyes would be searching everywhere, their anxiety to get to their fathers as quickly as possible grew apace, until they were almost as eager to reach the mines as was Tim Perkins himself; and, by a constant urging of their pack-horses, managed to keep their places with Jud Smith and his company.

However, in spite of all their hurrying, it was after