Forty-one Thieves: A Tale of California by Angelo Hall (best desktop ebook reader .txt) 📕

his stout horses and his even more intimate companionship with nature. To scare up a partridge, to scent the pines, to listen to the hermit thrush were meat and drink to him. That there was gold in these noble mountains moved him very little, though this fact provided him with a livelihood for which he was duly grateful. The school-teacher was fortunate to be brought up with a sharp turn so early in life, and to find so true a friend as Mat Bailey.

But this was only the beginning of the council at Moore's Flat. It was suggested that John Keeler, Cummins' old partner, be employed to scour the country in search of the assassins. There was no more trustworthy man in Eureka Township than Keeler. His affection for Cummins was well known. But his peculiarities might unfit him for the proposed mission. His Southern sense of chivalry unfitted him for detective work that might involve deceit and downright lying. He cared more for his honor than he did for money, and had been known to refuse very tempting offers. Finally, he was opposed to violence. He had refused to act as a watchman for a ditch company on the ground that he might be expected to shoot some one. It was a question whether Keeler could be induced to bring a man to the gallows.

Presently, Dr. Mason spoke up:

"You couldn't employ a better man than Keeler. He is the soul of honor, as you all admit. For several years he was Cummins' partner. As sheriff of Nevada County he would free it of thugs and murderers as he frees every claim that he works of rattlesnakes. He is death on rattlers. Killed more than a hundred of them last summer. But the lawless element of this county take mighty good care that Keeler is not elected sheriff. So much the better for us, for he is free to manage this business."

The doctor's speech made an impression. But these Californians had not yet learned the value of honor. They seemed to think that they could catch the murderers if they put up enough money. They themselves were too busy making money to hunt down the outlaws; but they assumed that money would do it; and they were willing to put up thousands of dollars. But numerous rewards for the apprehension of desperadoes were outstanding at that very hour; and the desperadoes were still at large. As a money-making proposition, mining with all its uncertainties was more attractive than professional detective work. Then again, these Californians could not trust a man actuated by motives higher than their own. Indeed, their chairman, Henry Francis himself, for some subtle reason which it would have been well for him to analyze, was opposed to employing honest John Keeler. It would have been well for Francis, before it was too late, to realize to what an extent money standards were replacing honor in his own life. It takes determination, loyalty, devotion, to accomplish a difficult task; and such qualities cannot be bought.

When Captain Jack and his Modocks held a council of war in their lava beds, they accomplished things which it was beyond the power of these fortune-hunters to accomplish. Captain Jack had no gold, but the skill, loyalty, and devotion of every Indian of his band were at his command. And yet Francis would have imagined himself the superior of Captain Jack.

As time was passing, with little accomplished, Francis suggested that they might first decide upon the amount to be offered as a reward for the apprehension of the murderers. It was voted to offer a reward of $10,000, or $5,000 for either of the two men.

"Now, gentlemen," said Francis, "I shall have to go over to Fillmore Hill to-morrow to see Mr. Palmer, who holds a note against Will Cummins. You know I am settling the estate. Keeler will be over there, they say, and I will talk with him. But on the way over, I shall look up a man worth two of John Keeler in a business like this."

"Who is that?" asked the doctor.

"Mr. William Brown."

No one seemed to know William Brown.

"He lives a mile up the cañon," continued Francis.

"Oh, you mean Bed-bug Brown," said Mat Bailey.

"Yes," replied Francis, "that's the name he commonly goes by."

"I know the man," said the doctor. "Says he came here in '54 and that he has had a picnic ever since. Though he couldn't have had much of a picnic that first winter, when he camped out by the big log; and only a few winters ago Palmer had to send him a quarter of beef."

"Well, Brown is a born detective," said Francis. "He worked up the Caffey case like a professional."

Ben Caffey's brother had been hanged in Wisconsin, in the region of the lead mines, ten years before. He was innocent of the crime charged, and Ben had vowed vengeance on the jury. All twelve of the jurors, though scattered over the country from New Orleans to the cañon of the Middle Yuba, had met violent deaths. The last man had been a neighbor of Brown's. Just before his death a stranger with a limp left arm had appeared at Moore's Flat; and Brown had proved to his own satisfaction that the same man with a limp arm had appeared at New Orleans just before the death of the eleventh juror in that city. The man with the limp arm was Ben Caffey. Such was Brown's story. People had not paid much attention to it, nor to the murdered man's lonely grave by the river. Henry Francis, evidently, gave Brown full credence, but others present regarded "Bed-bug Brown" as a joke. True, he was an intelligent little man. He had taught school at Graniteville several winters, and had succeeded better at this business than at placer mining on the bars of the Middle Yuba. But "Bed-bug Brown," perennial picnicker, was not a scientific sleuth.

So when the council of war broke up, a feeling of skepticism prevailed. Mat Bailey saw more possibilities in his own suggestion than in the $10,000 reward. Dr. Mason saw more possibilities, however slight, in the reward than in the proposed detective. And Henry Francis, though he had known Cummins from boyhood, and was even now settling up his estate, pretended to see more possibilities in a stranger than in honest John Keeler—or himself.

CHAPTER V Old Man Palmer

Robert Palmer, tall, thin, bent with toil, had lived in California thirty years. In May, 1849, when the snow drifts were still deep in the cañons of the Sierras, he had crossed the mountains, past Donner Lake and the graves of the Donner party, through Emigrant's Gap, to the valley of the Sacramento. He was thirty-two years old at that time,—no mere youth, seeking treasure at the end of a rainbow. He was already a man of experience and settled habits, inured to hardship and adverse fortune. As a youth he had left his native hills of Connecticut, to sell clocks, first in the South and then in the lumber camps of Michigan. There, the business of Yankee pedlar having failed, he found himself stranded. His father was a prosperous farmer; but a stepmother ruled the household. So young Palmer hired out to a Michigan farmer, for he was one of those hardy New Englanders who ask no favors of fortune. Imagining a pretty frontier girl to be a sylvan goddess, with a Puritan's devotion he made love to her, only to be scorned for his modesty. But failure and disappointment served but to strengthen him, and he struck out for California.

He nearly perished on the way there, while crossing the deserts of Nevada. In Wyoming he had fallen into the hands of that brave true man, John Enos, then in his prime, who had guided Bonneville, Fremont and the Mormon pilgrims, and who,—living to the age of a hundred and four years,—saw the wilderness he had loved and explored for eighty years transformed to a proud empire. Enos had guided Fremont through Wyoming. It is rather too bad that Palmer could not have accompanied Fremont and Kit Carson when, in February, 1844, they crossed the snowy summit of the Sierras and descended through the deep drifts to Sutter's Fort and safety. That was four years before the discovery of gold in El Dorado County.

Palmer was not crazy for gold. Arrived in the Sacramento Valley, he spent three or four years at farming. Perhaps his Yankee shrewdness saw larger profits in hay and cattle than in washing gravel. But certainly his New England integrity and soberness of character were more in keeping with the spirit of the pioneer than with the spirit of the adventurer.

While reckless young men were swarming up the valleys of South, Middle and North Yuba, finding fabulous quantities of gold and squandering the same upon the Chinese harlots of Downieville, Robert Palmer was making hay while the sun shone, which was every day in the Sacramento Valley. But land titles were so uncertain that in 1853 he turned to mining,—at Jefferson, on the South Yuba. He prospered to such an extent that by 1859 he had sent $8,000 back to Connecticut to pay his debts; and he had laid by as much more. Frozen out of his claim by a water company—for without water a miner can do nothing—he sold out to the company in 1860, and went over to the Middle Yuba, where he bought a claim on Fillmore Hill, with a water ditch of its own.

Here Palmer lived and toiled for twenty years, washing the dirt and gravel of an ancient river-bed high up on the hill-top between Wolf Creek and the Middle Yuba. He rented water from his ditch, sometimes at the rate of two hundred and fifty dollars a month, to other miners. From the grass roots on the hillside some lucky fellows cleaned up $10,000 in a few days. For several years John Keeler and Will Cummins rented water from Palmer and helped the "old man" keep his ditch in repair.

The old man lived alone, industrious, and so economical as to excite the mirth or the pity of his rough neighbors. Some who heard that he had loaned $60,000 to a water company at 12 per cent. interest, regarded him contemptuously as a miser. How else explain his shabby clothes, his old rubber boots, that were out at the toes, his life of toil and self-denial? Palmer never gambled, nor caroused, nor spent money on women. He attended strictly to business, bringing to the bank at Moore's Flat from time to time gold dust of high grade, worth from $19 to $20 an ounce. And those who bought his gold marked how rough and torn were the old man's fingers, the nails broken and blackened and forced away from the flesh.

But Keeler and Cummins had seen through the rough exterior. They knew something of his charities. They had tasted his good cheer; for he kept a well-stocked larder. They had seen with amusement his family of pet cats seated at table with him, and each receiving its rations in due order, like so many children. Keeler told with glee about the old man's horse and mule, idly eating their heads off on the hillside. They had come to Palmer in payment of a debt, and although he had had a fair offer for the mule he had refused to sell, on the ground that without the mule the horse would be lonesome.

Robert Palmer knew what it was to be lonesome. True, he employed a hired man or two occasionally, and when he cleaned up his sluices he employed several—and, let it be said, he paid good wages. There were neighbors, but with most of them he had little in common. The Woolsey boys, at the ranch in the bottom of the cañon, whose widowed mother had come from St. Louis to marry old Sherwood, had grown up under his kindly eye. In early boyhood their active limbs had scaled the forbidding ledges of Fillmore Hill, and Robert Palmer had granted them permission to hunt on his claim.

One night in his cabin on the mountain top, when the gold dust from the last clean-up had not yet been disposed of, he was startled by a noise outside. He blew out the light and hid his little bag of treasure in the ashes of his forge. None too soon, for there was a summons at the door, and when he opened it he was confronted by three masked men. With drawn pistols they demanded his money. He said he had none. It was useless to resist, so he let them bind him hand and foot. Again they demanded his money. Again he said he had none. They knew better, and they threatened to burn him alive in his cabin. But Palmer was firm. Then they burnt his legs with a hot