Gold

by Stewart Edward White

  CHAPTER XL

  THE RAINS

  No sooner had this radical clean-up of the body politic been consummatedthan the rains began. That means little to any but a Californian. To himit means everything. We were quite new to the climate and theconditions, so that the whole thing was a great surprise.

  For a month past it had been threatening. The clouds gathered and piledand blackened until they seemed fairly on the point of bursting. Onewould not have given two cents for his chances of a dry skin were he tostart on a journey across the street. Yet somehow nothing happened. Latein the afternoon, perhaps, the thunderous portents would thin. Thediffused light would become stronger. Far down in the west bars ofsunlight would strike. And by evening the stars shone brilliantly from asky swept clear. After a dozen repetitions of this phenomenon we ceasedto pay any attention to it. Somebody named it "high fog," which did wellenough to differentiate it from a genuine rain-bringing cloud. Exceptfor that peculiar gourd that looks exactly like a watermelon, these"high fogs" were the best imitation of a real thing I have ever seen.They came up like rain clouds, they looked precisely like rain clouds,they went through all the performances of rain clouds--except thatnever, never did they rain!

  But the day of the Vigilante execution the sky little by little turnedshimmering gray; so that the sun shining from it looked like silver; andthe shadows of objects were diffused and pale. A tepid wind blew gentlybut steadily from the southeast. No clouds were visible at first; butimperceptibly, around the peaks, filmy veils formed seemingly out of thegray substance of the very sky itself. How these thickened and spread Idid not see; but when I came out of the Bella Union, after a long andinteresting evening of discussion, I found no stars; and, as I stoodlooking upward, a large warm drop splashed against my face.

  Sometime during the night it began to rain in earnest. We were awakenedby its steady drumming on the canvas of our tent.

  "My Lord! but she sure is _raining_!" said Johnny across the roarof sound.

  "Don't tech the canvas!" warned Old. "If you do, she'll leak like aspout where you teched her!"

  "Thank heaven, that high fog scared us into ditching around the tent,"said Cal fervently.

  But our satisfaction was short-lived. We had ditched the tent, to besure, but we had badly underestimated the volume of a Californiadownpour.

  Before many minutes had passed Johnny gave a disgusted snort.

  "I'm lying in a marsh!" he cried.

  He struck a light, and we all saw the water trickling in a dozen littlestreams beneath the edge of the tent.

  "We're going to be ruined!" cried Johnny comically.

  He arose, and in doing so brushed his head violently against theslanting canvas roof. Almost immediately thereafter the rays of thelantern were reflected from tiny beads of water, like a sweat, appearingas though by magic at that spot. They swelled, gathered, hesitated, thenbegan to feel their way slowly down the dry canvas. The trickle became astream. A large drop fell straight down. Another followed.

  "Anybody need a drink?" inquired Cal.

  "I'm sorry!" said Johnny contritely.

  "You needn't be," I consoled him. "The whole thing is going to leak, ifthis keeps up."

  "What's the matter with going over to the Morena cabin?" queried Yank.

  We hesitated a little. The events of the day had affected us all moredeeply than we liked to acknowledge; and nobody but Yank much liked theidea of again entering that bloodstained abode.

  "We'd drown getting there," said Cal at last. "I move some of youfellows with two good arms rustle out and fix that ditch." He laughed."Nothing like having a hole in you to get out of work."

  We took his advice, and managed to turn the flood, though we got verywet in the process.

  Then we returned to the tent, changed our clothes, crept into ourblankets, and wrapped ourselves close. The spot brushed by Johnny's headdripped steadily. Otherwise our roof shed well. The rain roared straightdown with steady, deadly persistency.

  "She can't keep this up long, anyway; that's a comfort," muttered Johnnysleepily.

  Couldn't she? All next morning that flood came down without the let-upof even a single moment. It had all the volume and violence of a blackthunderstorm at its height; only the worst of the thunderstorm lasts buta few moments, while this showed no signs of ever intending to end. Ourstout canvas continued to turn the worst of it, but a fine spray wasdriven through, to our great discomfort. We did not even attempt tobuild a fire, but sat around wrapped in our damp blankets.

  Until about two of the afternoon the deluge continued. Our unique topicof conversation was the marvel of how it could keep it up! We could notimagine more water falling were every stream and lake in the mountainsto be lifted to the heavens and poured down again.

  "Where the devil does it all come from?" marvelled Old, again and again."Don't seem like no resevoy, let alone clouds, could hold so much!"

  "And where does it go to?" I supplemented.

  "I reckon some of those plains people could tell you," surmised Yankshrewdly.

  At two o'clock the downpour ceased as abruptly as though it had beenturned off at a spigot. Inside of twenty minutes the clouds had broken,to show beyond them a dazzling blue sky. Intermittent flashes and bandsof sunlight glittered on the wet trees and bushes or threw into reliefthe black bands of storm clouds near the horizon.

  Immensely cheered, we threw aside our soggy blankets and sallied forth.

  "Great Christmas!" cried Johnny, who was in the advance. "Talk aboutyour mud!"

  We did talk about it. It was the deepest, most tenacious, slipperiest,most adhesive mud any fiend ever imagined. We slid and floundered asthough we had on skates; we accumulated balls of it underfoot; and wesank disconcertingly half-leg deep at every third step. Our firstintention had been to go up to town; but we soon revised that, and wentdown to the Morena cabin instead, with the idea of looking after the twohorses. The beasts, very shaggy underneath and plastered above, stoodhumped up nose to tail. We looked into the cabin. The roof had leakedlike a sieve; and the interior was dripping in a thousand places.

  "Reckon even the tent was better after all," acknowledged Yank, lookingwith disfavour on the muddy floor.

  We returned to the tent and made shift to get a fire going. Aftercooking some hot food, we felt better, and set about drying ourblankets. In the canon we could hear the river roaring away hollowly.

  "I'll bet she's on the rampage!" said Old.

  "I'll bet she's got my cradle and all of my tools!" I cried, struck witha sudden thought.

  And then, about as we commenced to feel cheerful and contented again,the scattered black clouds began to close ranks. One by one the patchesof blue sky narrowed and disappeared.

  "Why!" cried Cal in astonishment, "I believe it's getting ready to rainagain!"

  "Shucks!" replied Old, "It can't. There ain't no more rain."

  Nevertheless there was, and plenty of it. We spent that second nightshifting as little as possible so as not to touch a new cold place inour sodden blankets, while the waters roared down in almost a solidsheet.

  This lasted the incredible period of four days! Nobody then knewanything about measuring rainfall; but, judging by later experience, Ishould say we must have had close to seven inches. There was not much wecould do, except to get wetter and wetter, although we made shift todouble up at night, and to use the extra blankets thus released to makea sort of double roof. This helped some.

  The morning of the fifth day broke dazzlingly clear. The sky lookedburnished as a blue jewel; the sunlight glittered like shimmering metal;distant objects stood out plain-cut, without atmosphere. For the firsttime we felt encouraged to dare that awful mud, and so slopped over totown.

  We found the place fairly drowned out. No one, in his first year,thought of building for the weather. Barnes's hotel, the Empire and theBella Union had come through without shipping a drop, for they had beenerected by men with experience in the California climate; but almosteverybody else had been leake
d upon a-plenty. And the deep dust of thetravel-worn overland road had turned into a morass beyond belief ordescription.

  Our first intimation of a definite seasonal change came from our oldfriend Danny Randall, who hailed us at once when he saw us picking ourway gingerly along the edge of the street. In answer to his summons weentered the Bella Union.

  "I hope you boys weren't quite drowned out," he greeted us. "You don'tlook particularly careworn."

  We exchanged the appropriate comments; then Danny came at once tobusiness.

  "Now I'm going to pay off you three boys," he told the expressmessengers, "and I want to know what you want. I can give you the dust,or I can give you an order on a San Francisco firm, just as you choose."

  "Express business busted?" asked Johnny.

  "It's quit for the season," Danny Randall told him, "like everythingelse. In two weeks at most there won't be a score of men left in ItalianBar." He observed our astonished incredulity, smiled, and continued:"You boys came from the East, where it rains and gets over it. But outhere it doesn't get over it. Have you been down to look at the river?No? Well, you'd better take a look. There'll be no more bar mining donethere for a while. And what's a mining camp without mining? Go talk tothe men of '48. They'll tell you. The season is over, boys, until nextspring; and you may just as well make up your minds to hike out now aslater. What are you laughing at?" he asked Johnny.

  "I was just thinking of our big Vigilante organization," he chuckled.

  "I suppose it's true that mighty few of the same lot will ever get backto Italian Bar," agreed Danny, "but it's a good thing for whatevercommunity they may hit next year."

  Johnny and Old elected to take their wages in dust; Cal decided on theorder against the San Francisco firm. Then we wandered down to where wecould overlook the bar itself.

  The entire bed of the river was filled from rim to rim with a rollingbrown flood. The bars, sand-spits, gravel-banks had all disappeared.Whole trees bobbed and sank and raised skeleton arms or tangled roots asthey were swept along by the current or caught back by the eddies; andunderneath the roar of the waters we heard the dull rumbling andcrunching of boulders rolled beneath the flood. A crowd of men waswatching in idle curiosity. We learned that all the cradles and most ofthe tools had been lost; and heard rumours of cabins or camps locatedtoo low having been swept away.

  That evening we held a very serious discussion of our prospects andplans. Yank announced himself as fit to travel, and ready to do so,provided he could have a horse; the express messengers were out of ajob; I had lost all my tools, and was heartily tired of gold washing,even had conditions permitted me to continue. Beside which, we were allfeeling quite rich and prosperous. We had not made enormous fortunes aswe had confidently anticipated when we left New York, but we were allpossessed of good sums of money. Yank had the least, owing to the factthat he had been robbed of his Porcupine River product, and had beencompelled for nearly three months to lie idle; but even he could counton a thousand dollars or so sent out from Hangman's Gulch. I had themost, for my digging had paid me better than had Johnny's expressriding. But much of my share belonged of right to Talbot Ward.

  Having once made up our minds to leave, we could not go too soon. Arevulsion seized us. In two days the high winds that immediately sprangup from the west had dried the surface moisture. We said good-bye to allour friends--Danny Randall, Dr. Rankin, Barnes, and the few miners withwhom we had become intimate. Danny was even then himself preparing toreturn to Sonoma as soon as the road should be open to wagons. Dr.Rankin intended to accompany him, ostensibly because he saw a fineprofessional opening at Sonoma, in reality because in his shy, hiddenfashion he loved Danny.

  Nobody objecting, we commandeered the two horses that had belonged tothe Morenas. One of them we packed with our few effects, and turned theother over to Yank. Thus, trudging afoot, Johnny and I saw our last ofItalian Bar. Thirty years later I rode up there out of sheer curiosity.Most of the old cabins had fallen in. The Bella Union was a drear anddraughty wreck. The Empire was used as a stable. Barnes's place andMorton's next door had burned down. Only three of the many houses wereinhabited. In two of them dwelt old men, tending small gardens andorchards. I do not doubt they too were Forty-niners; but I did not stop.The place was full of too many ghosts.