“You mean they’re slaves?” says I.
“Yes, slaves. The Indios are fit for nothing else.”
The way the racing crowd treated him on account of him being a Spaniard ain’t teached him no lesson like wearing Injun clothes teached me, and I figured rich people only learn the kind of lessons they want to. Esteban says he made the trip north out of curiousness to see what Americans look like. His Pap warn’t happy when Mexico sold California to America about a year and a half back, and when gold got found after the sale went through him and a heap of other Spaniards and Mexicans chewed the rug over their bad luck. Esteban come up for a looksee to find what kind of changes the new government and the gold rush is making, and he ain’t impressed. He’s already been north of Sacramento where most of the diggings is and he reckons the miners is generally lower than hogs. Peons is what he calls Americans, and I can see why after what happened in town, but it ain’t hardly fair to tar us all with the same brush and I told him so, but he just laughed.
“You are proud, Juan Hawken, but you will one day see your countrymen as I do. This will surely happen if you find much gold, for with riches comes a new way of seeing the world.”
“Well I ain’t about to let it change me. I got five hundred dollars today and I don’t feel no different than yesterday.”
That give them another laugh, and around that time we come to a gap in the trees off the road with the river nearby, and in the open space is a fancy coach with a little picture on the door of crossed swords and a cow’s head, only with real long horns. There’s twenty or so horses tethered to one side and maybe six or eight Spaniard men stood around and two women in bright red and green dresses. They all shouted and waved when we rode up and Esteban says:
“These are more of my traveling compadres. Now there will be fiesta.”
Which means a whole lot of food got hauled out of the coach and spread on blankets on the ground. Two men started playing fandango music on guitars and the two women stamped all around the place with their hands over their heads, squashing bugs I reckon so the picnic don’t get spoiled, but doing it to music so it don’t seem like hard work. They was all real friendly to me, but only Esteban speaks American so there warn’t much talking in my direction. After they et a heap of food the two women got up and started stamping bugs again. I bet no bugs ever get closer than a hundred yards to Casa Grande without women leaping out and squashing them. There was wine, which I never tasted before, cherry colored but not tasting nothing like it, but I drunk a bottle anyway out of politeness and et everything that got put in front of me. It’s hot Spaniard food that I ain’t familiar with nor partial to, but it never mattered so long as I drunk enough of that wine to cool my mouth.
“Pardon me, Don Esteban,” says I. “Are them two ladies your sisters?”
“They? No,” he says, and shouts something to the rest and they all laughed. The women come over and patted me on the head like a dog, real mortifying, and it took more wine to cool off my blushing. They was both pretty with dark eyes, and they showed a considerable amount of shoulder and chest and ankle to what I seen other women showing. The Widow Douglas would of called them loose women. Esteban seen me looking close at them and laughs and says:
“You must find your own women, Juan, or I will have to challenge you to a duel over these two. You devour them with your eyes.”
He reckoned it’s so funny he fell back laughing, which makes him a different person to when he’s arrogant and prideful. I liked him better like that, same as I liked everything that afternoon, all down to them wine bottles I figure. I must of been there hours, because all of a sudden I seen the sun is sliding down the sky and I ain’t even got supplies yet and Jim’s waiting for me. I got up in a rush and fell down again and got on my feet the second try, then walked all tanglefooted over to Jupiter. I got the last little pieces of Lydia’s jewels out of the saddlebag and give the two women a ring and pair of ear-rings apiece, which made them kiss me a time or three while everyone cheered, real grade-A mortification for yours truly, then I done my goodbyes and thank you’s to Esteban and he says:
“If you are ever to the south, young Juan, we will fight a duel, for you have made me jealous with your gifts.”
“Well, all right,” says I. “We’ll throw grapes at each other from fifty paces.”
He laughed and shook my hand real warm and friendly and says:
“Goodbye, my friend. Never gamble away your horse. He is one among many. Adios, and God go with you.”
“Thank you for the hospitality,” says I, after trying a couple of times to get it out correct, then I got aboard Jupiter. They all give me a wave and the women blowed kisses. I turned Jupiter and we set off up the road back to Sacramento with just a stop or two along the way to drain the wine out of me.
It was dark when I got there but all the stores was still open so I done some buying. Apart from food and such I got two gold-washing pans, and when the storekeeper added up the cost he tells me:
“Ninety-three dollars and fifty cents.”
I figured I must still be drunk from the wine and went outside and put my head in a horse trough, then come back into the store.
“How much was that again?”
It’s still the same, and I say:
“It can’t be.…”
“You go to any store in town and you’ll find the same prices,” he says. “This stuff come around the Horn and upriver from Frisco, and all that transportation means you have to pay more.”
So I had to hand over my gold dust and he weighed out a portion and give me back the rest, then I loaded up Jupiter and had to walk him all the way out to our camp, the saddle is so crowded with supplies. Jim warn’t happy when I got there on account of not having no food all day, so I fried him up eggs and bacon and bread and opened a can of preserves to get him friendly again and told all about what happened to me. By the time I finished he warn’t so snippy, and he says:
“You ask which way de diggin’s be, Huck?”
“I clean disremembered, but we’ll find out first thing tomorrow.”
28
A Familiar Face—To the Goldfields—Hard Work for No Profit—Unfriendly Neighbors—First Strike—A Mean Trick
I figured the way to do it is just mingle in with men from the tent city outside town and wait for a bunch to head for where the gold is. Sacramento is right handy as a jumping-off place for them that’s come overland like Jim and me and for them that’s come upriver from San Francisco too. Everyone gathered hereabouts before they headed for the gold. It’s all hustle and bustle and confusement when we come along early next morning, with men packing up their tents and supplies and loading everything in wagons or on horses or their own backs, and I ask a dozen different ones which way they’re going and got as many different answers. A heap was aiming for the creeks along the American River that runs into the Sacramento River just north of town, and others was headed further north up to the Feather River and the Yuba. We never knowed which one to pick, they was all brimming over with gold so the stories go, but finally we figured we may as well try the American seeing as it’s closest. We was just about to join in with a band headed that way when I heard a voice holler:
“You! Jeff Wilson!”
I turned around and there’s Frank charging through the crowd with a big smile creasing his face and a bottle in his fist and two more poking out his pockets. He come up and fell right by Jupiter’s hoofs then picked himself up again and says:
“My dear young friend! How gratifying to feast my eyes upon your face again as before. Why did you abandon me without word of goodbye or farewell? My puzzlement was boundless and immeasurable when I learned of your leavetaking.”
The bottles should of warned me it ain’t Frank at all, it’s Obadiah, drunk as a skunk for the first time since way back along the Humboldt. He’s covered in dust and dirt but happy as a hog in mud and real excited to see us, grinning away with them yeller teeth.
“What joy!” he says. �
�What merciful happenstance to come upon you this way by sheerest coincidence without warning! How long have you been in this locality?”
“Only a day or two, and we’re leaving right now.”
“Leaving? In the manner of departure? But where?”
“We ain’t exactly sure, but them ahead reckon they know a place so we’ll just follow on.”
“Ahh, yes, I behold mining utensils among your baggage. I will accompany you.”
“But you ain’t got no supplies or nothing, Obadiah.”
“This statement is without error. I have spent my last dime on whiskey, of which I have a plentiful supply about my person. When that has been drunk to emptitude I am at the mercy of Fate. May I not find companionableness with you until that awful hour which fast approacheth?”
I never wanted him along. Jim and me got problems enough without no lunatic drunk to watch out for, but leaving him behind ain’t charitable on account of he’ll wind up in the gutter like a sick dog, which is a situation I’d prefer not to have the responsibleness of. I looked at Jim and he give a shrug, so I say:
“All right then, but when you run out of liquor I ain’t answerable for it.”
“Indeed no, young Jeff. You need have no fear for my safety.”
I judged we was landed with just that, but there ain’t no going back now. He walked alongside us for a mile or three at the tail end of the line, but after awhile the liquor took his legs away and he fell down in the road, so we hoisted him onto Jupiter and Jim and me took turns walking.
The road we’re on run east from Sacramento along the American, and a few miles out I seen a big building close by with thick clay walls like a fort.
“What’s that place?” says I to a man driving a wagon.
“Sutter’s Fort,” he says. “Colonel Sutter’s a mighty big man hereabouts. He’s the one that owns the sawmill where the gold first got seen in forty-eight. It’s up the road a piece yet. You headed for the upper field or the lower?”
“I don’t rightly know which is which,” says I.
“The lower diggings is where the river forks, maybe twenty-five mile from here, and the upper’s along the south fork another twenty-five mile or so. You take my advice and keep going to the furthest one. The lower field’s staked out from here to Sunday with claims already. I got a store there I run with a partner, so I know. All this here in the wagon is supplies. I done some mining but seen right off the fastest way to make money is selling goods to miners, easier too. You take my advice and be a storekeeper.”
“I ain’t got the temperament for it, I reckon.”
“Looks to me like you ain’t got the muscle for a miner neither. It’s cruel hard work, boy. Don’t let no one tell you different.”
We seen the sawmill awhile later but there ain’t nobody working it, and the storekeeper says:
“Poor old Sutter. Opens a sawmill and gold gets found in the millrace. Now he can’t get a single man to work here. Everyone and his brother wants to be a miner and get rich fast. They’ll learn. I learned and so’ll they, you take my word.”
We reached the lower diggings next day. Half the men stayed there and the rest marched on along the south fork of the river, Jim and me and Obadiah included. Most drunks generally got no appetite for nothing that don’t come out of a bottle, but Obadiah warn’t that kind and et his fill out of our supplies like he’s been starved for food a year or so. There ain’t no use complaining on it. I reckon the food is all that’s keeping him off Death’s doorstep, with Death peeking through the keyhole and tapping his foot impatient-like. When he warn’t babbling nonsense he stayed silent as the grave, just sucking on his bottles till they run out. Sometimes he sung songs with a voice like a rusty file rubbing on a tin can. Them times was the worst, and the men along with us made it clear they ain’t happy about Obadiah. Says one:
“If you don’t keep that mush-head quiet I’ll ram a sock down his throat.”
“Make it a pair, and follow up with a couple of shirts too,” says another.
By the time we got to the upper field we was mighty unpopular and split off from the rest soon as we could. There was hundreds of men here already, maybe thousands, all of them panning gravel without no let-up, eager for a streak of color in their pans. They warn’t just along the American neither, but down every little creek that run into it, and we got to wondering if there’s a place left that ain’t been claimed yet. There’s a kind of town there with six or eight big tents all close together and a couple of log cabins and some that’s partly both, with wood walls and canvas roofs, but the biggest one is the store. We went on up the river another half mile then turned down along a shallow creek where the miners ain’t exactly rubbing shoulders together, and a quarter mile along there’s a spot where no one staked a claim yet, with a gravelly bank either side of the water and wooded hills roundabout, real pretty.
“Jim,” says I, “I reckon this here’s as good a place to start as any.”
So we done it, and offloaded the supplies and Obadiah, snoring drunk. He got propped against a tree to sleep it off and I started panning for gold straight off. Jim figured he better build us a shelter to make it clear this stretch of creek is our claim and set to work on it. I panned and panned for an hour but never seen no gold, so I figured I must be doing it wrong and went down the creek a little ways and watched how some others done it. I seen I had way too much gravel and sand in my pan; you got to take it a smidgen at a time and slosh the water round and around with the pan tilted over so the water slops over the rim and takes the sand with it and the gold and gravel get left behind on account of being heavier. I went back and started over, doing it the way I seen, but there still warn’t no shiny specks in the pan and I got disgusted as well as stiff with backache from stooping and squatting all that time, and my fingers was froze too from the water. It was real discouraging, but I figured we’ll maybe have to tolerate no luck for a day or two till we strike it rich. But I ain’t so excited about it now.
Jim got the shelter fixed up and got busy with the other pan after I showed him how, and we panned and panned all day with the birds singing and Obadiah snoring and every now and then the sound of other miners down the creek brung to us on the breeze. It was companionable work with Jim next to me, and I took new heart, but it never made no gold show up. When sundown come we went over to the shelter all crookedy-backed, so it never mattered if the roof ain’t high.
“Huck,” says Jim, “dis here pannin’ de hardes’ work I ever done, worse’n choppin’ a whole mountainer wood. I cain’t straighten up nohow.”
“It’s the price you got to pay for being a miner, Jim. Mostly they wind up humpbacked permanent.”
“I hopes you joshin’ me ’bout dat, Huck. A man cain’t do hardly nothin’ wid a humpback.”
“It ain’t so bad as you might reckon, Jim. There was an English king that was humpbacked, and from gold too.”
“How dat be?”
“It was the crown that done it. He was kind of spindly and the crown was solid gold, so heavy it bowed him over and he stayed that way. He could of took it off and stood up normal if he had a mind to, but he kept that crown on his head to let folks know he’s the king out of pure cussedness. It stooped him lower and lower till he could of shoveled up dust with his chin, but he kept on wearing that gold crown anyhow, which is what’s called the burden of state.”
Obadiah woke up in time for supper but his appetite was gone along with the last of his whiskey, the exact turnaround of a normal drunk that will eat like a horse when the drinking stops, but then Obadiah ain’t no normal drunk so you can’t expect him to act like it. Only it means come morning when he’s sobered up enough to use his tongue he won’t be Obadiah no more, he’ll be Frank again, which ain’t good news. Jim and me talked it over after he snoozed off again and decided if Frank gets too snotnosed to be tolerable we’ll just get him some whiskey and bring Obadiah back. Whichever way we’re bound to get a fair amount of trouble and pain from the situat
ion, but Samaritans is supposed to handle that stuff easy, and we asked for it bringing Obadiah along like we done so there ain’t no use in complaining.
Before we turned in I checked the horses was picketed safe then walked along the creek to the river to get my back unhumped, and once I got that far it seemed like a good idea to walk on to where the store is, so I done it. The store was still open but not doing half the business the tent next door done. It’s a saloon, with miners crammed in there singing and hollering and spilling out the door flap to puke and piss. There’s a man on his knees and when he seen me watching he says:
“Drinkther on me, young ’un! Come on inthide an’ thwaller thummer that forty-rod juith.”
He never had no teeth in front, proberly wore away on bottle necks, and his face was red and whiskery in the lamplight with his eyes all bugged out like marbles. He says:
“Drinkther on me, yeth thir. I thweated an’ panned like a nigger fifty-theven dayth without no lucky thtreak, an’ today I thtruck it rich. Jutht dug me a hole to thit in an’ there it wath, the biggeth nugget thith thonovabith ever theen. Weighed her in at thirty-thikth ounceth. How’th that for luckineth, hey?”
“That’s real nice for you, mister,” says I, feeling sore it warn’t me that done it.
“Well have a thnorter whithkey inthide. I’m payin’.”
He stood up and tried to go back in the tent, only he got all snaggle-footed and fell against the canvas walls. It never stopped him getting in though; he just out with his knife and slit a new door in the canvas and crawled inside laughing and coughing, never even thinking how he might of stabbed someone on the other side using his knife that way.
“Drink up, boyth!” he hollers, and everyone roared and the tent walls shook and heaved. Someone come tumbling out the new door and lay there where he fell, dead drunk. He had long hair and I wondered if it’s Pap, but when I got up close I see it ain’t, which is reliefsome.
The Further Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Page 43
