USA > California > A picture of pioneer times in California, illustrated with anecdotes and stores taken from real life > Part 38
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But, was it the power, grandeur and self-exaltation that gold is supposed to bring, that caused Minnie to so covet its posession ? No, no; far from it ; all her castles built for the future have noth- ing of that sort about them. Her favorite one was her parents' cottage, in which she was born ; refitted, beautified and hand- somely furnished, with a new piano and everything to suit ; a well selected library, easy chairs for her darling father and moth- er to sit in, while they read or she reads to them, and who were to struggle no more at hard work ; a well stocked hardware store for Walter, with a nice, gentle, sweet wife for him, who should be ever so fond of her. As to the part of the castle that related to herself, it was all undefined in its shape and make-up.
It is true that as she glanced her mind toward it, she caught glimpses of many little rosy walks and nooks, with now and then a little, beauteous turret peeping out in the misty distance, and somehow in this part of her day-dream, her brother's old school- mate, and now his fast friend, James De Forest, was always sure to make his appearance. One time he was bringing a rare flower for her garden; then she saw him bringing a new, interesting book for her father and mother to enjoy; then he was near her while she tried her new piano; then he was helping her to water her flowers. Oh, yes; perhaps it is a scene like this that has now stolen into her dream; for, as her mother looks again, a charming blush, with the sweetest smile, spreads over her face.
The mother's alarmed heart again grows calm, and, leaving the room, she exclaimed: "Oh, there is no danger! That smile in sleep betokens naught but innocence and purity, even if her dream is ambitious, and God will in his mercy guide her steps in every danger, for in Him her young heart trusts, I know."
Minnie slept uncommonly late the next morning, for, as we have seen, she was very tired; and her mother, knowing that she was so, did not give her the usual call. When she awoke, the sun was shining brightly in her little room, and the morn- ing looked far advanced. She leaped to the floor, and the first object that caught her eye was a beautiful bouquet of fresh- picked flowers on her dressing table.
" Oh!" said she, " who has been here ? But I know that is dear Walter's work. But why did he not call me ? Every hour I can talk with him now is most precious. It was too bad I slept, when, if up, I could have been with him, and
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then poor, dear mother has been getting the breakfast all alone."
Then Minnie raised the bouquet from the vase, thrust her little nose among the flowers to drink in their fragrance, say- ing: "What nice taste Walter has in the arrangement of a bouquet! How kind to think of me in this way."
Then she kissed the knot of blue ribbons with which the flow- ers were tied, and replaced them in the vase. When she soon afterwards emerged from her room, her mother and Walter were seated near the father's bed, waiting for her to sit at breakfast with them, which was all ready.
As she kissed them all good morning, they laughed at her for sleeping so late, and she chided them for not having called her. Then she gave another kiss to Walter for the flowers, and they all enjoyed an unusually happy and cheerful breakfast that morning, for, though there lay the sick father, and Walter's de- parture was so very near, yet hope now threw some of its bright, warm rays into that little cottage, which seemed to light up their future paths through life with many a charm and pleas- ure they never saw there before. Breakfast over, all was excite- ment to get Walter ready for his departure. That day Walter resigned his place in the hardware store; saw his friend James De Forest, and went with him to Sutten & Son, the agents of the ship on which James had taken his passage, and Walter paid his fare to San Francisco. The ship was to sail in just one week, but that gave Walter ample time to prepare himself and say " good-bye " to all his friends. Many little presents poured in on him. His old employers, with whom he was a favorite, gave him a handsome outfit of camp utensils for his new life in the mines of California; then came from lady friends of the family jars of preserves and sweatmeats of all sorts, which were most acceptable; then came a dozen or two of English ale, with the request that Walter would, after being a month in California, write fully to the donor; then a basket of champagne on the same arrangement. So far as James De Forest and Walter had seen their fellow passengers, they were most favorably impressed. To them they appeared far above the average in education and intelligence; and so, in fact, they were, as they afterwards proved. And this character could be claimed for nearly all the immigrants to California at that time. The good Wagner pa- rents did not wait until the parting hour to give words of advice
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to their beloved son. No; they knew they could not trust them- selves to do it then. So they had a long talk with Walter the day after his passage was taken. The mother got his solemn promise never to play cards, except in a social way, when ladies were present. This promise, which was faithfully kept, saved Walter in after life from many a temptation and danger. The mother gave him a handsomely bound copy of the Bible, though diminutive in size, with a prayer for his safety inscribed in the first pago. The father gave him that world-admired little book, " The Following of Christ," with a " God bless you, my boy," written in the first page.
As to Minnie, there was scarcely an article in his trunk that did not, in some way, bring her sweet presence to his imagina- tion whenever he opened it. The parting day came ; it was, as all such days are, very lonesome and sad ; yet hope threw such sunlight into it on this occasion, that all bore up bravely and well. Early that morning James De Forest had called to bid farewell to the Wagner family; Mr. and Mrs. Wagner, with tears, and blessings and prayers, bade him " Godspeed." Minnie ac- companied him to the door, and then to the garden gate. As he took her hand in his, at parting, he said, in the lowest whisper, and in a voice of emotion :
" Minnie, will you some.imes think of and pray for me ?"
" You will always be in my thoughts and prayers when I think of Walter," she said, looking earnestly, brightly and calmly into his face; "and I will glory in your success, and be as proud of it as if you were my brother."
In an instant he raised her hand to his lips, and, passionately kissing it, he said :
" Oh, thank you, Minnie; that is all I want you to say now, and all I want to make me feel like a real brave man in my bat- tle for fortune and position in California." Then, quickly turn- ing to a rosebush, he picked off a beautiful bud, and reaching it to her, he said :
" Will you take this, and keep it until I call for it ?"
Minnie now blushed scarlet ; then turned very pale, and with quivering lips, said, in a voice full of feeling, just above her breath : "I promise." In an instant James was out of sight, hurrying toward the ship that was to take him to far-off Califor- nia. He murmured as he went :
" Yes; she will keep that promise, for she never broke one in
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her life ; and if I live and am fortunate, I will come some day to claim this little flower."
As Minnie turned away from the gate, her eyes were fixed on the rosebud, and there was a queer, new feeling about her heart, as she seemed to register there the promise, and she murmured : " Yes; there can be no harm in that ; he is a good, noble fel- low, and so fond of Walter, too. Yes; I will keep this bud for him."
Then, walking into her own room, she opened a book to place it in press, and just as she was about to place it in position she quickly raised it to her lips, then hastily closed the book on it, while a quick glance around the room and a conscious blush be- trayed feelings she herself did not know lurked round her heart. Early the next day the ship sailed, bearing away Walter and his friend, and leaving poor Minnie with a lonesome heart and in a fit of weeping she, for some time, found it impossible to over- come. But Minnie was, as Walter said, a great little woman, and, as she said herself, she had her father and mother to com- fort; so, in a surprisingly short time, she was once more, with smiling face, performing her daily duties, and doing all she could to cheer up her parents.
After a reasonably short and pleasant voyage, Walter Wagner and James De Forest found themselves in San Francisco.
That we may understand better their future careers, let us say a word of the general character of each of them. James De Forest was just twenty-one years old; he was of middle height, well-built, good-looking, and prepossessing in his manners and general appearance; he had a good education, and was of steady, cautious business habits, and a good judge of character; ho was upright and honorable in all his dealings with every one. Walter Wagner was one year younger, but looked older; tall and well- built, and promised to be a powerful man when fully developed; his education was good; he was frank and off-hand in his ways, but was far too confiding, and, therefore, subject to be often the victim of designing men; he meant no wrong to any one himself, and he judged others by himself, and gave his confidence, with- out reserve, to any one who would make a pretence or show of friendship or good-will towards him ; he was not a good judge of character, mainly because he never stopped to examine it carefully; when deceived, he was furious on the discovery, and never thought of blaming himself, as he should have done. for
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the careless way in which he had laid himself open to the deception; when he formed an acquaintance that he liked he was impatient if any one said a word to throw a doubt or suspicion on the character of his new-found friend; this was a serious fault, and often lost Walter, in his new home, the friendship of good and true men, and exposed him to the influence and designs of the cunning and deceitful.
On their arrival in San Francisco, neither of our young friends had money enough to pay their way to the mines, which was very expensive at that time, so they were forced to look for em- ployment in the city. James De Forest engaged himself for three months, at two hundred dollars a month, to a company of three or four men, who were about to put a steamer on the Co- lumbia River, in Oregon. Walter hired to White, McGlynn & Oliver, to drive team, at one hundred and seventy-five dollars a month. So the two friends had to separate, which they regret- ted, though well pleased at their first start as to money; for, my young readers, if you have never experienced what it is to step into a strange community without a dollar in your pocket, you can have no conception of the happy relief it is to suddenly find yourself well provided for. Walter's frank, off-hand, open ways soon won the good-will of MeGlynn, who drew from him the whole story of the way he got the necessary money to come to California, and of Minnie's part in it. Mack's generous heart was touched, and he at once got his firm to advance to Walter a hundred dollars of his wages. So Walter that night, the next day being " steamer day," wrote a long letter to the loved ones at home, in which he inclosed Allen, Wheeler & Co.'s receipt for the fifty dollars Minnie had got from Mr. Allen, and a draft on Allen & Roman for fifty more. In this letter he gave a full account of his voyage, and tried to give them a just and correct idea of the business prospects in California. In thus coming down to the real facts of the case, he had, of course, to dispel any hope they might have had of his finding gold by the half-bushelful at a time. That he had struck a glorious and prosperous land, the inclosures he was enabled to send them, in this, his first let- ter, ought to satisfy them. He concluded by asking them to give three cheers for California, and three more for the end of shirt- making. There was not a lazy bone in Walter's body, so he worked well and zealously with his team, and every day made friends; but this sort of employment did not suit him, and it ap-
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peared a slow way of making money, after all, in California. So at the end of two months he struck out for the southern mines, by which general designation all the placer regions watered by the San Joaquin and its tributaries were then designated. For the first six months in the mines he made money fast. His good habits, good humor and untiring hard work secured him a place in a company of industrious and intelligent workers. Un- fortunately, however, his company undertook, at great expense, to dam the waters of one of the main rivers, and, for a short distance, to turn its waters from the natural channel, hoping to find immense deposits of gold in its bed. They accomplished the great undertaking in two months, but found no gold worth talking of, and every dollar they had made previously was gone in the enterprise. Nothing daunted, Walter went to work again, and made money fast, as before. Sometimes his day's work brought him half an ounce, and sometimes two, and even three ounces of fine gold. Again he found himself the owner of over three thousand dollars, and again his ambition spurred him to go into a ditch enterprise that promised a prodigious return. This ditch was to bring water some five miles to a placer region, then unworked, though rich, for want of water to wash out the gold. The engineer who undertook to direct the operations of the company proved to be entirely ignorant of his business, the whole project was a failure, and Walter found himself once more without a dollar. Again he struggled and won success, and again lost nearly all by misplaced confidence in a sharper, who robbed him. It was now away in the last part of the Summer of 1850, and Walter was, in fact, little better off than when he commenced. But he was not down-hearted or discouraged. His young blood ran fast from heart to limb, and back to heart again, with free, healthy pulsations, bringing to his whole sys- tem energy and courage that would not tolerate him in looking back or indulging in useless regrets, but pushed him on in the wild routine of California's rushing business. It was no small satisfaction, either, to him to feel, as he contemplated the suc- cess and failures of the past year, that he had proved his power to make money, even if he had lost it again, and, besides that, he had regularly sent one hundred dollars home, each month, to those he loved so much. As he looked forward, with undimin- ished hope, he exclaimed:
" I would not take five thousand dollars for my experience. I
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will not try to go so fast in future; I will do as James De Forest is doing; I will go ' slow and sure.'"
Hearing of extensive new discoveries of placer diggings in the vicinity of Downieville, in the northern mines, he struck out for them, spent his last dollar in buying into a claim, and was once more lucky. His partner in the claim, Isaac Hilton, proved to be a first-class man; prudent, shrewd and wise. He was some ten years older than Walter, and had a most salutary in- fluence over him. When their claim was worked out, they found themselves with a cash capital of five thousand dollars. With this they opened a little trading-post, or store, a few miles from Downieville, high up in a mountain canyon, where a host of miners were at work. The site on which stood their little mer- cantile shanty was picturesque and beautiful. Now, once more, fortune seemed about to deal out her choicest favors to Walter. He felt proud and happy, and wrote to Minnie in glowing terms of his prospects, and excited her imagination to the highest, by the poetic, romantic description he gave her of his house in the mountains, expressing the most earnest wish that she and his mother could be with him, for he had just had the sad news of his father's death. When poor Walter wrote this letter, little did he dream that the great struggle of his life, the turning point on which all was to depend, was yet before him. The men into whose employment James De Forest had entered were successful in their enterprise beyond their expectations, and soon took James into partnership. He had not grown rich fast, but every month improved the prospects of his company, and he was slowly and surely becoming one of the most prominent and wealthy men connected with the navigation of the coast and in- land waters of Oregon. Walter and he had never met since their separation in San Francisco, but they were in constant correspondence, and every circumstance connected with Walter's family was always of the first interest to young De Forest.
CHAPTER II.
SIR JOHN CAMERON-AGNES AND LUSK.
Now let me draw attention, in this chapter, to far-off England. The spot I will take the reader to is the beautiful residence of Sir John Cameron Ward, not many miles from the city of Lon- don; a proud old Baron, who is not half so proud of his title or his riches as he is of the untarnished honor of his whole race in the past. He is good-hearted, unsuspicious and generous, almost to a fault; he is a devoted husband and an indulgent father; he has an amiable, good wife and two beautiful daughters, aged, respectively, seventeen and nineteen. The education of Mar- garet, the elder, is just completed. She is beautiful and ambi- tious. Agnes, the younger, is yet under instruction, and she seems to have no developed aim in life, except it is to please every one. The father loves them both devotedly, and never de- nies them anything in his power to procure for them. To watch his intercourse with his two children, you could not help think- ing that his love for the younger is more marked and, perhaps, of a more tender character than that for the elder.
The young ladies are very fond of riding on horseback, and they each have a beautiful riding animal at their command. The old coachman has lately died, and his place is taken by a man who was recommended to Sir John by a nobleman, a particular friend of the family. This new coachman's name is Thomas Lusk. He is tall, fine-looking, and not over twenty-five years old, and, for his position, he is remarkably genteel in his manners and deportment, and, in fact, far above his position. He has a thorough knowledge of horses, and is a careful and excellent driver. In the presence of Sir John and his lady, his manner is remarkably subservient, almost abject; but when alone with the young ladies it is sometimes free, bordering on impudence. On one of these occasions, the elder daughter gave him a severe reproof; so, with her, he was afterwards more careful. When the young ladies rode out without their father or other gentle-
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man escort, it was Lusk's place to follow at a respectful distance, and be within call, should they need his assistance. It was on one of these rides that Margaret reproved him so severely. Unasked, he had ridden up and intruded himself into the sisters' conversation, and Margaret at once ordered him back to his place. Agnes was mortified at her sister's severity, and after- wards took an opportunity to tell Lusk that she was sorry her sister had acted so inconsiderately. Lusk was, in fact, a low, designing villain, who was recommended to Sir John only be- cause the nobleman who did so was also deceived by a man high in official position, to whom it was said Lusk was in some way disreputably related. This apology from Agnes gave Lusk an insight into her character that he resolved to turn to his own account. He exerted himself in every way to please her. To her he always assumed a sad, down-cast demeanor. He put himself in her way in every possible manner, and on one occa- sion, when the family were out, he made a pretence of showing her something about her riding-horse, and, while leading the horse and walking with her, he poured into her car a made-up history of his family, in which he had been the victim of the dishonesty of an uncle, and was now forced to take this humili- ating position, under a false name, as he told her, to save a dar- ling mother and sister from want and starvation. While relat- ing this story, he played his part to perfection, often having to stop, overcome by emotion, caused by the sad recollections he was forcing himself to recall. Poor Agnes was in tears, and, as she was leaving, he put in her hands two letters-one purport- ing to be from his almost broken-hearted mother, thanking and blessing him for accepting his present subordinate position for her and his dear sister's sake; the other letter purported to be from his sister, and was to the same effect. He then cautioned Agnes to tell no one, or he would be disgraced and utterly lost, and, above all things, to let no one see the letters, but to return them as soon as possible. Agnes, now that she found that Lusk was, as she supposed, a gentleman by birth, became immensely interested in him, and whenever she met him alone afterwards treated him as an equal. This soon led to the confession from him that he loved her to distraction. She listened with bated breath, hesitated, and was lost. The villain now planned an elopement and private marriage. Thus the terrible blow fell on a house on whose escutcheon no tarnished spot ever appeared
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before. Sir John shut himself up for weeks and months, and for long years never allowed poor Agnes' name to be spoken in his presence. The poor girl soon realized not only the terrible blight she had brought on her home, but also the true character of the man Lusk. The day after the marriage, he coolly told her the whole truth, acknowledging the deceit he had practiced on her, and that he himself was nothing but an outcast. When she fainted away at the revelation, he shook her brutally, call- ing her a fool, and, when restored to full consciousness, he told her to recollect that he was now her master by the laws of Eng- land; that he wanted no child's play, and that she must write at once to her father for money. Finding that she was physically, as well as mentally, unable to obey him, he flew to the trunk containing her personal effects, which she had contrived to bring away with her from her father's house, and, ransacking it all through, took every article of jewelry she owned. They were all her Christmas and birthday presents, from her child- hood until this unfortunate day, and were of considerable value. With these he left the house, and returned towards night half- drunk, with plenty of money in his pockets. He now assumed a kinder manner, and asked Agnes to forgive him for the part he had played, pretending that it was his love for her that had led him to it. He adopted this course as the best way of oper- ating on her parents, and kept it up for nearly a year; but, not finding it successful, he again gave way to his real instincts, and became fearful in his brutality towards the unfortunate girl. A child was born to them. He had it christened with all the pub- licity he could, and named it John Cameron Ward Lusk. But all this brought no aid or notice of any sort from the family. Lusk grew desperate, and joined a regular band of house rob- bers. He was soon elected their Captain, on account of his superior skill and daring. Now passed years of misery and horror for Agnes. Beaten, kicked and cuffed, and often half- starved, she remained the robber's wife and abject slave. The child grew large and strong, in spite of his father's brutality to him. When beaten or kicked by the father, he flew to the mother, whose screams would sometimes protect him. On these occasions he would not cry, but look towards his father, and his mother would tremble at the terrible, dark look in his eyes as they fell full on his father's face.
" Oh," his father would sometimes exclaim, as he met the
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dark look, " that boy has a devil inside of him, instead of a soul. Well, he will do to take my place some day, for I see he is surely a chip of the old block."
At length, the bandit resolved to rob Sir John's house. The expedition was all well planned, and Lusk's familiarity with the premises made it an easy " job," the robbers thought. When all was arranged, that night Lusk returned home as usual, half- drunk. Throwing himself into a chair, he gave out a mocking sort of a laugh, saying:
"I am thinking how nicely I will be even with that old dotard, your father. Oh, yes; I will be even with the old vil- lain that has left us to starve."
Agnes trembled and grew sick with fear, for she knew what Lusk's words must mean. She controlled herself, however, as she was most anxious to discover his plans, and she knew silence was her best way to effect that. She arose, laid his supper on the table for him, and again took her seat, without uttering a word. He commenced to eat, without further re- mark. Just as he had finished eating, a man whom Agnes had often seen before with her husband came in, and, without invi- tation, threw himself into a vacant chair. Without saying a word to the man, Lusk turned to Agnes, and said, bluntly:
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