Forty-one Thieves | Page 2

mentioned
traffic was light, for people did not travel the twenty-eight miles
through heat and dust to Nevada City for pleasure. Too often it was a
case of running the gauntlet from the gold fields to the railroad
terminus and safety.
This very morning, Charley Chu, who had thrown up his job as mender
of ditches, was making a dash for San Francisco, with five hundred
dollars in dust and a pistol at his belt. The other passengers were Dr.
John Mason and Mamie Slocum, teacher. Mamie, rosy-cheeked,
dark-eyed, and pretty, was only seventeen, and ought to have been at
home with her mother. She was a romantic girl, however, with several
beaux in Eureka Township; and now that the summer session of school
was over, she was going home to Nevada City, where there were other
conquests to be made.
Dr. Mason, a tall, lean Scotchman, lived at North Bloomfield, only nine
miles distant, whence he had been summoned to attend a case of
delirium tremens. The sparkling water of the Sierras is pure and cold,
but the gold of the Sierras buys stronger drink. With a fee of two
double eagles in his pocket, the doctor could look with charity upon the
foibles of human nature. He thoroughly enjoyed the early morning ride
among the giant pines. In the open places manzanita ran riot, its waxy
green leaves contrasting with the dust-laden asters and coarse grasses
by the roadside. Across the cañon of the Middle Yuba the yellow earth
of old man Palmer's diggings shone like a trademark in the landscape,
proclaiming to the least initiated the leading industry of Sierra and
Nevada Counties, and marking for the geologist the height of the
ancient river beds, twenty-five hundred feet above the Middle Yuba
and nearly at right angles to it. Those ancient river beds were strewn
with gold. Looking in the other direction, one caught glimpses here and
there of the back-bone of the Sierras, jagged dolomites rising ten
thousand feet skyward. The morning air was stimulating, for at night

the thermometer drops to the forties even in midsummer. In a ditch by
the roadside, and swift as a mill-race, flowed a stream of clear cold
water, brought for miles from reservoirs up in the mountains.
Even Charley Chu, now that he was leaving the gold fields forever,
regarded the water-ditch with affection. It brought life--sparkling,
abundant life--to these arid hill-tops. Years ago, Charley Chu and
numerous other Chinamen had dug this very ditch. What would
California have been without Chinese labor? Industrious Chinamen
built the railroad over the Sierras to the East and civilization. Doctor,
girl and Chinaman were too much occupied with their own thoughts to
take much notice of the stage-driver, who, though he assumed an air of
carelessness, was, in reality, on the watch for spies and robbers. For the
bankers at Moore's Flat, a few miles further on, were planning to
smuggle several thousand dollars' worth of gold dust to Nevada City
that morning. Mat Bailey was a brave fellow, but he preferred the old
days of armed guards and hard fighting to these dubious days when
stage-drivers went unarmed to avoid the suspicion of carrying treasure.
Charley Chu with his pistol had the right idea; and yet that very pistol
might queer things to-day.
Over this road for twenty-five years treasure to the amount of many
millions of dollars had been carried out of the mountains; and Mat
could have told you many thrilling tales of highwaymen. A short
distance beyond Moore's Flat was Bloody Run, a rendezvous of
Mexican bandits, back in the fifties. Not many years since, in the cañon
of the South Yuba, Steve Venard, with his repeating rifle, had surprised
and killed three men who had robbed the Wells Fargo Express. Some
people hinted that when Steve hunted up the thieves and shot them in
one, two, three order, he simply betrayed his own confederates. But the
express company gave him a handsome rifle and a generous share of
the gold recovered; I prefer to believe that Steve was an honest man.
The stage arrived at Moore's Flat, and Mat Bailey hurriedly transferred
baggage and passengers to the gaily painted and picturesque
stage-coach which, drawn by four strong horses, was to continue the
journey. A pair of horses and a mountain wagon had handled the traffic

to that point; but at the present time, when Moore's Flat can boast but
eleven inhabitants, the transfer to the stage-coach is made at North
Bloomfield, several miles further on. But in 1879, Moore's Flat, Eureka
Township, was a thriving place, employing hundreds of miners. The
great sluices, blasted deep into solid rock, then ran with the wash from
high walls of dirt and gravel played upon by streams of water in the
process