Part 3 (1/2)

No one seemed to know William Brown.

”He lives a mile up the canon,” 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 canon 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 c.u.mmins 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 canons 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 hards.h.i.+p 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 G.o.ddess, 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 was.h.i.+ng 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 quant.i.ties 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 t.i.tles 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, was.h.i.+ng 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 gra.s.s roots on the hillside some lucky fellows cleaned up $10,000 in a few days. For several years John Keeler and Will c.u.mmins 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 c.u.mmins 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 canon, 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 poker, and threatened to shoot him, as they might have done with impunity in that lonesome place. Still he was firm, so they set him on the hot stove and tortured him in that way. One of the party, more humane than the rest, protested against more extreme measures; so that, after searching the cabin, they gave up their enterprise, baffled by that indomitable man. Before leaving him one of the men asked:

”Mr. Palmer, do you know us?”