Tales from the Promised Land: Western short stories from the California gold rush by Putnam John Rose

Author:Putnam, John Rose [Putnam, John Rose]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: John Rose Putnam
Published: 2013-12-29T05:00:00+00:00

For the next two days Stoddard pushed us relentlessly, leaving me little doubt that he thought Raush was indeed following us, but I’d heard no mention of it among the other members of our party. I’d also talked with Anderson about wanting to go back to Nevada City. He pointed out that if I did I would run smack dab into Raush on the way. So I continued on, much like I had the first day, sharing time leading our mules or bringing up the rear of the column and keeping a watchful eye to our back trail.

We’d crossed the Middle Yuba late Tuesday and camped up the ridge on Kanaka Creek, named for the Sandwich Islanders from Honolulu who were mining there. And like so many others we had passed, the place had all the indications of gold, but Anderson urged that we press on, assuring me that Stoddard’s mythical lake would, in the end, bring us a bounty we could find nowhere else. But I wasn’t the only one who saw missed opportunity. The four men of the Natchez Mining Company had begun to openly carp over passing by so many prime locations to mine such easily available placer gold.

The next day saw more of the same. We were in the saddle before sunup, crossed a stony Oregon Creek at midday, then another high ridge beyond and by sunset were descending into the valley of the North Yuba River alongside a small brook that tumbled from rocky pool to rocky pool under a thick canopy of fir trees. After skirting a large boulder I led our four mules into a small clearing where I saw a stranger dressed like a miner talking with the men from Natchez.

It was clear right off that Ike and the rest of the Southerners were grilling the man about the amount and location of gold strikes along the North Yuba. News of gold in the California mines traveled by mouth faster here than it could on the newfangled telegraph wires back east. Practically everybody had heard how a Scotsman named Downie and the handful of colored men partnered with him had spent last winter at the forks of the North Yuba, and how they got snowed in and almost starved to death. Even the two Goodyear brothers, who’d worked a gravel bar downstream from the forks since last summer, had stayed the winter. Nobody would tolerate cold Sierra snows without a reason. Miners were pouring into this area now. That likely meant a lot of rich finds around here.

But if you cornered a miner working a good paying claim and asked him straight up, face to face, if there was much gold around, he’d hem and haw worse than an old mule bedeviled by a swarm of horse flies in the middle of August. And as soon as I got within earshot I heard the fellow rambling on about all the rich finds on Rock Creek and the South Yuba, or Kanaka Creek

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