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Show A WESTERN CHARACTER. 41 " But if the country was like heaven, the folks was like the other place, I reckon. Such sights such ( loins'! I'd never ' a believed men would carry on so. I went to minin' in the Amador, an' first they wasn't a woman in a hundred miles. And when one did come in one day on a wagon, the men all run to look at her as if she was a show. Better she'd a' stayed away, an' twenty more like her that come in when the diggins begun to pan out rich. I believe every woman was the cause o' fifty fights an' one or two deaths. It made me mad to see men fight about ' em, when they knowed jest what they was men that had mothers an' sisters back in the States, an' some on ' em sweethearts an' wives. They was mostly Mexican women, an' some Chilaynos an' South Spainers; an' somehow it was a sort o' com-fort to me that there was hardly ever an American woman among the lot. " Bimoby these diggins sort o' worked out, an' I went down on Tuolumne, an' then mined about Angells an' Murphy's Camp, an' finally to Sonora. Thjen all sorts o' new ways o' minin' come in, but they took capital, an' I let ' em alone. Men was all the time runnin' about from camp to camp so many new excitements no matter how rich the ground where we was, some feller would come in with a big story about a new gulch, an' away they'd go. I've seen a thousand men at work along one creek, an' a big excitement break out, an' before night they wouldn't be twenty left. Sometimes a man would get title to big ground, an' hold it at a thousand dollars, an' when the rush come you could buy him out with two mules an' a pair o' blankets. Many an' many a time I've seen a man go oif that way with a little money an' never be seen alive. Like enough his body was found away down the river, an' like enough it was never found. It got so they was men there that would cut a throat for ten dollars. It wasn't all one way, though. More'n once the robbers would tackle some gritty man that was handy with his ' barkers,' an' he'd get away with two or three of ' em. Every body carried the irons with him, ready to pop at a minute's notice, an' if a man traveled alone, he took his life in his hand. " It wa'nt long though till we got some kind o' government. Cali-forny was made a State the year after I got there, but that didn't sig-nify in the mountains; an' at Angell's Camp we chipped in together and hired regular guards to look after every suspicious man. The worst thing was to get down from the mines to Frisco; for if it was known that a man was a goin' to leave, it was ' sposed he'd made his pile, an' had it with him. At last I made a little raise that was in |
