The Diary of a Forty-Niner was one of the first titles published by Turtle Point Press. For several years it has been an On Demand title, but continues to be one of our best sellers, and is available on order from independent booksellers and from Amazon.
CHAPTER IX.
WOMEN ARRIVING IN THE COUNTRY— OUR HERO WRESTLES WITH THE FRENCH LANGUAGE—A WAITER WHO COULD NOT UNDERSTAND HIS NATIVE TONGUE—THE RIVAL FOURTH OF JULY CELEBRATION AT SELBY FLAT—CLOSE TO A LYNCHING BEE—PARD GETS A SURPRISE—FORMING A RIVER MINING COMPANY—THE SANDHILL SPECULATION PROSPERS—ANDERSON’S REVELATION.
CHAPTER IX.
JUNE 29, 1851.—They are going to have a Fourth of July celebration and barbecue at Selby Flat in opposition to Nevada. Half a dozen more families have settled there in the last month. Both of the Missouri girls are married; women can’t stay single long in this country. Anderson has been asked to deliver the oration and although he bucked at first he finally accepted. It’s astonishing how everybody looks up to Pard: he seems to be a born leader. I hear the Saleratus crowd are going to have a burlesque entertainment in the evening. Pard asked me to spend the day in Nevada, as if I would consent to stay away and he making a speech. He is afraid I will have trouble with Odell. Delos Calkins was over here last week and said the fellow was only a big bully and that the ranch would stay with me. I told him I would look out for No. One and did not need any backers, although, of course, I was pleased that they sided with me.
Another letter from Marie. Pard read it for me, although I have been studying French with his aid, an Ollendorf grammar and French dictionary. If any one should hear us around the cabin he would think we had both gone crazy. Of all the fool questions and answers that grammar takes the prize. Pard asks me in French if “I have the tree of my Uncle’s garden?” and I say “No, Jai ne pas; but I have the rosebush of my cousin,” and we keep up this lingo for an hour. I don’t believe I will ever learn to speak it. I thought I was getting along fine and a couple of Sundays ago I went into the Hotel de Paris at Nevada. I told the French waiter what I wanted for dinner and in his own language. I repeated it to him twice and then he shrugged his shoulders and said: “I talk ze French and ze Italian and speak of ze English a leetle, but ze Dutch I do not understand.” I was so hot that I walked out without my dinner. I told Pard and he said he must have been an homme de la campagne and did not catch on to my Parisian accent. I think Pard was joshing me, but he kept a sober face and maybe that was the reason.
Marie says she bought a chateau—that’s a house —just outside of Paris, but that she is coming back on a visit to California this winter. It makes my heart jump when I think of seeing her again.
JULY 6, 1851.—I have had an exciting time this week. Everybody in the neighborhood went over to Selby Flat for the Fourth. Kellogg read the Declaration of Independence and Pard made one of the best speeches I ever listened to. The crowd went wild over it and I was mighty proud of him. There was at least a thousand people on hand. Along toward evening the barbecue came off, an ox roasted whole and a half a dozen sheep. The Saleratus Ranchers and their friends organized a company called the “Rag, Tag and Bobtail Rangers,” dressed up and paraded in the most ridiculous costumes they could invent and marched around the flat, singing, yelling and shouting until they were so hoarse they could not whisper. I was looking on peaceably, not interfering with anybody, when I heard a shot and felt a sting in my shoulder. I whirled around and saw Pard wrestling with Odell. He wrenched a pistol away from him and beat him over the head until he was insensible. Then he ran to me and said: “Boy, are you hurt?” but I wasn’t—just a little graze on my collarbone. I never saw anybody quite as excited as Pard until he found out that there was no harm done. The fellow came to by this time and the crowd wanted to hang him, but Pard interfered, saying it would be a disgrace to the camp, so they agreed to banish him, giving him twenty-four hours to pack up and leave with penalty of hanging if he ever came back. That was enough Fourth of July for Pard and me and we went back to the creek and I got lectured all the way home about getting into scrapes. I didn’t kick back for I knew he was making believe so I wouldn’t think he cared much and was trying to hide his real feelings. When we got to the cabin we let Jack out and sat under the tree, the moon shining, the wind sighing through the pine boughs, the dog at our feet, and we got as sentimental as two old maids. He told me what a lonely man he had been until we began cabining together and how luck had turned and fortune had favored him in many ways since then. He looks on me as a sort of younger brother and I am sure I could not like an own brother any better. Jack wagged his tail as if he understood it all, and I enjoyed the evening better than the celebration; but Selby Flats knocked the spots off of Nevada all the same.
JULY 13, 1851.—It was Pard who got a surprise this week. We had a special invitation to come over to Selby Flat Wednesday night and, although Pard did not want to go, a delegation came over for us and we could not very well refuse. We did not know what was up and they would not let on, but when we got there we found a crowd of about a hundred miners gathered at the hotel. Of course, it was drinks all around; you can’t do anything in this country without setting ’em up first, and then Henry Shively made a talk. Said that the miners of Brush and Rock Creeks and the residents of Selby Flats were proud of the fact that they had a man among them who, as an orator, laid over anything that the town of Nevada could produce as was demonstrated by his Fourth of July speech and that the Nevada City lawyers were not to be mentioned in the same class as Anderson. Then he produced a big gold watch that weighed about a pound and presented it to Pard as a token of the boys’ appreciation. Pard was so taken back that for a while he couldn’t speak, but he finally caught on and gave them a nice talk. Then he set up the drinks again and we left for the cabin. When we got there we looked over the watch by candle light; it certainly was a stunner and must have cost three or four hundred dollars. There was an inscription:
“Presented to L. T. Anderson, July Fourth,
1851, by his admiring friends and miners
of Brush and Rock Creeks. He made the
eagle scream.”
For some reason Pard did not seem to be very chirrupy and when I asked him what ailed him he said: “Alf, I’ve been playing it pretty low down on you boys. My name ain’t Anderson and I never can wear this watch where I am known.”
I nearly fell off the bench, but he kept on talking: “There is nothing wrong, Alf; I am as straight as a shoe string. There were reasons that when I came here made me change my name, but matters are coming out different than I expected and it won’t be long before I will be the man I was before I left Syracuse. When the right time comes I will tell you the whole story and you will not be ashamed of your pard.”
Then, as usual, when he got to feeling off, he whistled to the dog and they went out into the dark. You could have knocked me down with a feather, but I had sense enough not to follow. It’s a puzzle, but I’ll bet my pile there is nothing wrong about Pard.
JULY 20, 1851.—We formed our river company; eight of us, and we let a contract to a couple of Maine men to whipsaw out twenty thousand feet of lumber at one hundred dollars per thousand. Pard is engineering the scheme and says that about the last of August it will be low water and then we will do some lively work wingdamming the stream. He is sure that the bed of the river will pay big if we can get at it and stay in it long enough to clean up a good sized strip of it. I don’t know a thing about it except that it does seem reasonable that with gold all along the banks and in every creek and gulch that runs into it the gold ought to find its way into the trough of the river. That’s the way it is along Deer Creek, and we were told by some miners who came down from the North Yuba, which seems to be a branch of our river, that in the fall of ’50 they managed to get into it in a half-dozen
places and that two of three of the companies cleaned up fortunes. One thing sure, all our old theories about gold don’t amount to much. Instead of the deposits petering out, the miners are striking it richer in every direction and in places where we did not think of looking for it a year ago. On Selby Hill there is a deep channel running into the mountain and there is more gold in it than there was on Brush Creek. On the other side of Sugar Loaf, way up on the hill, there is another big streak that seems to run in the same direction as Deer Creek, only it is five hundred feet higher up. Then down at Grass Valley they are taking out chunks of gold from quartz. Since this discovery the miners have got it into their heads that these rocks are the most likely source of the gold and some parties have built a crushing machine which pounds up the rock and leaves the gold free to catch in sluices.
JULY 27, 1851.—Our claim is pretty nearly played out. There may be a month’s more work, but the bed-rock raises up on each side of the flat along the hill and there is no gravel in that direction. Pard thinks we had better work together for a couple of weeks and then he will go down on the river to get things ready, leaving me to clean up. If we take out three thousand dollars more I will have made altogether twelve thousand dollars, counting what I have sent home and invested with Pard at the Bay. He got a letter from John Perry, his agent who is looking after the lots, and he tells him he can double his money if he wants to sell, but Pard says: “Let’s hold on and make a big stake or nothing.” One night last week after supper, we were sitting out under the old tree, when he spoke up suddenly and said: “Alf, there is no reason why I should not tell you part of my story and my real name. I am not ashamed of it and there is no reason why I should conceal it.” Then he went on to say that his true name was—————– ——————and that he was born at Syracuse, went through college, studied law and practiced in his own town until he came here. He did not build up much of a business and while he was as poor as Job’s off ox he married a girl who had considerable money in her own right. He loved her dearly, but she was extravagant, fond of society and luxury, which he could not afford from his own income, and she would not settle down until he could make his way. Then they began quarreling and she nagged him about her money and her family until he could not stand it any longer and, the gold fever breaking out, he left for California. He made up his mind never to go back until he had as much money as his wife, and, if he failed, why then he would disappear for good. She thought he was in San Francisco, wrote to him there and the letters were forwarded by a friend to Nevada. For some
(note.—While Jackson’s frank revelations concerning himself, his experiences, loves and adventures can with safety be given to the world, as he and his kin have vanished into the unknown, the name that he reveals as the rightful one of his partner is another matter. It is that of one who stood among the foremost at the San Francisco Bar and high in the councils of the State; famous and successful as a pleader in many of the noted cases before the courts, an orator of persuasive eloquence and, withal, a man of fortune. He has been dead many years, but his immediate descendants are living in California, enjoying the fruits of his wealth and the benefits of his honorable name. While there is nothing disgraceful in the episode, still it is a chapter in his domestic affairs in which the hero must remain unidentified.) time past she has been coaxing him to return or let her come here, and he had promised to go to the States next spring. That is all there was to the story. He did not say much about what she was writing, but I knew from the change in him that things were different from what they were when I first met him, and he was pretty happy over it. Of course, he would have to keep the name of Anderson until he left Nevada, as he could not explain the situation to anyone but me. I can see now why he used to be so sarcastic about the troubles women could make. I hope it will come out all right.)
—
ISBN: 978-0962798-73-3
