第18章 THE ACT OF SQUATTING(1)

THERE were four of us squatters - myself and my wife, the King and Queen of Silverado; Sam, the Crown Prince; and Chuchu, the Grand Duke.Chuchu, a setter crossed with spaniel, was the most unsuited for a rough life.He had been nurtured tenderly in the society of ladies; his heart was large and soft; he regarded the sofa-cushion as a bed-rook necessary of existence.Though about the size of a sheep, he loved to sit in ladies' laps; he never said a bad word in all his blameless days; and if he had seen a flute, I am sure he could have played upon it by nature.It may seem hard to say it of a dog, but Chuchu was a tame cat.

The king and queen, the grand duke, and a basket of cold provender for immediate use, set forth from Calistoga in a double buggy; the crown prince, on horseback, led the way like an outrider.Bags and boxes and a second-hand stove were to follow close upon our heels by Hanson's team.

It was a beautiful still day; the sky was one field of azure.

Not a leaf moved, not a speck appeared in heaven.Only from the summit of the mountain one little snowy wisp of cloud after another kept detaching itself, like smoke from a volcano, and blowing southward in some high stream of air:

Mount Saint Helena still at her interminable task, making the weather, like a Lapland witch.

By noon we had come in sight of the mill: a great brown building, half-way up the hill, big as a factory, two stories high, and with tanks and ladders along the roof; which, as a pendicle of Silverado mine, we held to be an outlying province of our own.Thither, then, we went, crossing the valley by a grassy trail; and there lunched out of the basket, sitting in a kind of portico, and wondering, while we ate, at this great bulk of useless building.Through a chink we could look far down into the interior, and see sunbeams floating in the dust and striking on tier after tier of silent, rusty machinery.It cost six thousand dollars, twelve hundred English sovereigns; and now, here it stands deserted, like the temple of a forgotten religion, the busy millers toiling somewhere else.All the time we were there, mill and mill town showed no sign of life; that part of the mountain-side, which is very open and green, was tenanted by no living creature but ourselves and the insects; and nothing stirred but the cloud manufactory upon the mountain summit.

It was odd to compare this with the former days, when the engine was in fall blast, the mill palpitating to its strokes, and the carts came rattling down from Silverado, charged with ore.

By two we had been landed at the mine, the buggy was gone again, and we were left to our own reflections and the basket of cold provender, until Hanson should arrive.Hot as it was by the sun, there was something chill in such a home-coming, in that world of wreck and rust, splinter and rolling gravel, where for so many years no fire had smoked.

Silverado platform filled the whole width of the canyon.

Above, as I have said, this was a wild, red, stony gully in the mountains; but below it was a wooded dingle.And through this, I was told, there had gone a path between the mine and the Toll House - our natural north-west passage to civilization.I found and followed it, clearing my way as Iwent through fallen branches and dead trees.It went straight down that steep canyon, till it brought you out abruptly over the roofs of the hotel.There was nowhere any break in the descent.It almost seemed as if, were you to drop a stone down the old iron chute at our platform, it would never rest until it hopped upon the Toll House shingles.Signs were not wanting of the ancient greatness of Silverado.The footpath was well marked, and had been well trodden in the old clays by thirsty miners.And far down, buried in foliage, deep out of sight of Silverado, I came on a last outpost of the mine - a mound of gravel, some wreck of wooden aqueduct, and the mouth of a tunnel, like a treasure grotto in a fairy story.A stream of water, fed by the invisible leakage from our shaft, and dyed red with cinnabar or iron, ran trippingly forth out of the bowels of the cave;and, looking far under the arch, I could see something like an iron lantern fastened on the rocky wall.It was a promising spot for the imagination.No boy could have left it unexplored.

The stream thenceforward stole along the bottom of the dingle, and made, for that dry land, a pleasant warbling in the leaves.Once, I suppose, it ran splashing down the whole length of the canyon, but now its head waters had been tapped by the shaft at Silverado, and for a great part of its course it wandered sunless among the joints of the mountain.No wonder that it should better its pace when it sees, far before it, daylight whitening in the arch, or that it should come trotting forth into the sunlight with a song.

The two stages had gone by when I got down, and the Toll House stood, dozing in sun and dust and silence, like a place enchanted.My mission was after hay for bedding, and that Iwas readily promised.But when I mentioned that we were waiting for Rufe, the people shook their heads.Rufe was not a regular man any way, it seemed; and if he got playing poker - Well, poker was too many for Rufe.I had not yet heard them bracketted together; but it seemed a natural conjunction, and commended itself swiftly to my fears; and as soon as I returned to Silverado and had told my story, we practically gave Hanson up, and set ourselves to do what we could find do-able in our desert-island state.

The lower room had been the assayer's office.The floor was thick with DEBRIS - part human, from the former occupants;part natural, sifted in by mountain winds.In a sea of red dust there swam or floated sticks, boards, hay, straw, stones, and paper; ancient newspapers, above all - for the newspaper, especially when torn, soon becomes an antiquity -and bills of the Silverado boarding-house, some dated Silverado, some Calistoga Mine.Here is one, verbatim; and if any one can calculate the scale of charges, he has my envious admiration.

Calistoga Mine, May 3rd, 1875.