J -A/-.,;/
ROBERT ERNEST COWAN
A <v
THE LOST MINE OF
THE MONO
A Tale of the Sierra Nevada
BY
C. H. B. KLETTE
Cochrane Publishing Company
New York
1909
Copyright, 1908.
BY
C. H. B. KXETTE.
PS
PART I
The Mystery of the Mountain
CHAPTER I.
i ARRIVE AT THE; SHEEP RANCH.
WHAT frail, intangible threads sometimes serve in
this world to convey impressions over the tides of time !
As an instance, Sutcliff was down to-day, like a breath
from the hills, in an attempt to interest me once more
in the lost mine. But it was not his appearance wel
come as that always is, that has brought to mind this
beautiful October day all those half-remembered, half-
forgotten details of that story of the Mono, and our
incredible connection therewith, bridging as it were the
past and the present, the seen and the unseen. For
long hours before since the earliest morn in fact,
had my memory been occupied in the turning of its
pages, and brought about by what frail prompting do
you think? A subtle, immaterial something in the
mellow radiance of the sun in its play over our rifled
vineyards, and in the subdued intonation in the murmur
of the wind that springs so balmily from the north-west
the last of our trades, and stirs into a dreamy and
half-melancholy life the long collonades of russetting-
poplars that rise here and there upon the landscape,
white-stemmed, high into the glory of our skies. Noth
ing more.
5
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
Not that it was October in which the adventure con
necting us for all time with the tale took place. It was
much earlier in the year in fact, June, I think. But
in a general way October in the valley is but little dif
ferent from June in the high Sierra. There is in both
that same soft glamor to the sunshine, that same ca
ressing touch to the breeze. What is wanting to make
a similitude already striking even more so is a dash
of greater crispness to this October air, to make it more
suggestive of the nearness of the frost imps which
seem forever to hover about the mountain tops. For
away up there among the peaks summer s sojourn is
at best fleeting, lost in fact in the contending embraces
of the springtime and the autumn. Barely have the
snows disappeared from among the granite boulders
above the timber line, barely have the crisp grasses of
the glacial meadows, splashed with the lilac of the daisy
and the scarlet of the Indian pink, had time to flourish
and seed, when through a dark, crystal - clear, starlit
night comes the nip of frost to tell of the approach
again of winter and its encloaking down of snow.
This was years ago, in the middle eighties, to be
precise. Some years before Waring and myself had been
classmates at college, where we took an engineering
course together. A steady correspondence during the
subsequent years had ripened the acquaintance thus be
gun into a regard much warmer than is usual. It was
in response to an oft-reiterated invitation to visit him
at the ranch that I came, my desires a little quickened
perhaps in that the invitation held promise of a trip into
the back mountains ; and having come, and met Naomi,
to most keenly regret not having accepted his invitation
earlier in our acquaintance.
6
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
Shepherds Rest, as Waring s home was rather neatly
named, was situated on the banks of a broad, shallow
watercourse a short distance from where it debouched
from the hills to trail a sinuous course over the plain
far out into the mists of distance. Back of it arose the
hills, where at almost any season of the year the War
ing flocks were to be discerned in their slow trailings
across their face; hills that were brown and bare, yet
unspeakably beautiful in their silence and loneliness ;
their winding gorges touched with a deepening purple.
Before it spread the level pasture lands of the plains,
a lone butte or table alone breaking the monotony of
view, to where the wheat-fields of the middle valley
spoke of another phase of our civilization that each suc
ceeding year reached further into this voiceless haunt
of nature. The white ranch-house itself, and its attend
ant stables and bunkhouse, were snugly ensconced in
a clump of bluegums and peppertrees, a dark blur
upon the landscape visible for miles around; the low,
rambling, weatheirworn shearing-shedls, and the mal
odorous dipping-pens, beneath some cottonwoods on the
opposite bank, forming an effective picture in contrast.
Such in a few words was Roger s sheepranch, where
he had been born and raised, and had come to love
nature with a depth of feeling that but few understood.
I remember he was alone when I arrived, the exact
date of my coming, owing to business pressure, having
been more or less a matter of doubt. His reception of
me was cordial to a degree, and he seemed unable to
to do all that his heart would dictate for my comfort.
He placed me to an appetizing lunch in a low-ceilinged
room which opened on two of its sides upon a broad
veranda, where the cool dusk made by the clambering
7
The Mine of the Mono.
vines and the overarching trees, and the somnolent calm
of the noon of the summer day, were in pleasing con
trast to the glare and heat upon the visible plain beyond.
" It is too bad," was his oft-repeated deprecation,
"that mother and Naomi are not here to assist in re
ceiving you. They are on a call at the Ferral ranch,
you know. We must do the best we can under the
circumstances and console ourselves with the thought
that they will be back during the evening."
Later we withdrew into an adjoining room that was
half parlor, half library, where several cases lined the
walls, containing a number of books and many valuable
Indian relics, the gatherings evidently of years. A
number of unfinished sketches in oil were scattered
about, together with scores of photographs, for
Roger was not only an artist of no small calibre, but
a camera-fiend as well. The impressions were mostly
of the mountains, a particularly clever piece in oil be
ing a view of the Deerhorn Meadows in evening glow,
where the Butte in the background hung in a haze that
was realistic to a degree.
Singularly enough my attention from the first was
attracted to a piece of quartz profusely interlaced with
free gold. It was quite a large specimen, rich beyond
anything T had ever seen, very white and very pure, and
placed with a boy s eye for effect upon a cushion of
purple plush beneath a glass half-globe. Altogether it
was a very conspicuous object. Yet I remember so well
that it was none of these but an air of strange familiar
ity which drew me to it from the first. It was so like
a piece I had seen but a short time before at my cousin
Ida s home in a distant part of the state, whither I had
made a flying visit in the vain hope of meeting my
The Lost Mim of the Mono.
uncle on a business matter, that for a moment I won
dered whether it was not by some unexplained chance
one and the same.
" Where did you get this ? " I asked.
" That," he answered, " is from the famous lost mine
of the Mono."
" Indeed." For I had heard of it. " How came you
by it?"
" It was given my father years ago by an Indian
herder as a mark of his especial esteem."
Reading my interest he resumed a moment later :
" The poor old fellow is dead now, killed under
rather peculiar circumstances, I thought. I see you
would like to hear the story. I have not the least ob
jection I assure you. It is short and I will furthermore
go straight to the marrow."
I assented.
" It was while we were in the mountains a few sum
mers ago that he came one day to my father with the
plea that he be permitted to visit his rancheria. This is
by no means an unusual request from the Indian herds
men ; and as the distance was but a few miles, my father
gave a ready consent enough, possibly feeling that he
might as well do so with grace, as had the request been
denied the old fellow would have sulked, and the chances
are eventually gone anyway. A week passed, and no
Indian appearing another was sent out with instructions
to hunt him up. This fellow, with an Indian s idea of
despatch, showed up two days later with the story that
the chief had some days before gone on a hunt with a
white friend, a stranger who had appeared at the
rancheria a day before. That same evening Sutcliff
who, by-the-way, is one of several I have invited to ac-
9
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
company us on our trip, reported the finding of the
body of the old Indian among some rocks in a gorge in
the near vicinity of Spirit Mountain. He had been
stabbed to death."
Interested I maintained my silence.
" We notified the tribe on the Fork and there was
much wailing, for the old fellow was a chief or a high
something among them and much respected, not to say
revered. And I fear that with him has died the secret
of the location of this famous lost mine."
"Why so?"
" It seems the secret was never the common property
of the tribe. Only the reigning chief and the next of kin
to him knew of it. And I remember this one once told
my father, when he was being rather closely questioned,
that it had come to that pass that he alone of all his
people knew just where the lead lay. He had a very
great regard for my father, and I know he did not lie
to him."
" Could the old fellow not be made to divulge his
secret ? "
"You do not know the Indian nature, Paul, I see, and
least of all this old fellow s. Our races mingle, it is true,
but an impassable chasm lies between us just the same.
Only those who become one of them the squaw-man in
short, stands the least chance. You understand, of
course, that the ordinary inducements in the way of a
bribe do not obtain here."
" I can very well understand that. And who killed
him?"
Waring shrugged his shoulders.
" That riddle has never been solved to my satisfaction.
But if I may judge, not by one of his tribe. You see the
10
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
whites as a rule do not interfere where any disagreements
lie strictly among themselves, so that a show of dip
lomacy or secrecy is not necessary. In fact when one
of their number becomes so rampantly bad that he comes
to be generally feared, he is quite frequently hunted like
a beast of the forest by his own people, and on his death
the white man is told openly thereof. There is no at
tempt at secrecy. The only mourners are his nearest
relatives, and the mourning is short. In this case, how
ever, the mourning was protracted, and so affected the
entire tribe that it left little room for such a construction
here."
"And the white man ? "
" Disappeared as mysteriously as he had come, as far
at least as I am able to say. I remember once asking
one of our Indian packers whether suspicion did not in
some way rest upon him, but he only looked grave, and
gave a negative shake of his head in answer. No; he
stands above their suspicion, that is plain. There was
unquestionably a third and secret figure in the deal."
" On what do you base that belief? "
" Simply on the facts as I have given them. Sutcliff
and I did indeed in a spirit of investigation climb to the
ridge above, searching for whatever evidence we could
find. But it was mighty little we found, I must say;
only a few confusing foot-prints, then already half-ob
literated, and we gave up in despair."
I lit a cigar and, seated comfortably in a large wicker
chair on the north veranda, where the breeze from across
the stubble-field came to us tempered by a number of
spreading fig-trees, recounted what I knew of the history
of the other specimen.
" He too got it from an Indian," I said, explaining
II
The Lost Mine of the Mono,
my uncle s connection, " one whom in some way he
had favored once."
It was not a long story, yet from the beginning, 1
noticed, it held a special interest for him. As I pro
ceeded his face assumed a far-away expression as if in
thought he was threading the past; all the while, how
ever, as I soon found out, not losing a single detail,
small or large, of my narration.
" Tell me," he interrupted suddenly, with the air of
one who has arrived at a satisfactory explanation of
what had been a somewhat puzzling problem, " is he a
man of middle age, rather sturdily built, straight as a
mountain pine, yet with a face giving the impression
of premature ageing, hair and moustache almost white,
and eyes, dark and liquid, that seem to read your very
soul ? "
I half rose from my seat in surprise.
" You could not possibly have described him better,"
I returned, reseating myself and giving another puff
from my cigar, my interest in turn receiving additional
impetus.
Then I have met him," he continued simply.
That is not surprising since there is not a district
worth mentioning from Siskiyou to San Diego that he
does not seem to know like a book. The question is
only, where ? "
" In the Flats."
"And when?"
" I think it was two years ago, the year I left college
to recuperate in the mountains."
I remained silent, for I felt that he would resume
the thread of his narrative without mv aid.
12
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
"And the circumstances ? " I asked at last, grown im
patient.
" Were commonplace enough. Yet, I remember every
circumstance of that meeting as if it was only yester
day. Perhaps it is because it was in the spring, for that
is the season when I am most sensitive to impressions.
Eye, ear, nostril, every sense is most keenly alive, and
not a flash of light, dash of color, or trill of nature s
music escapes me. But whatever the cause, that meet
ing is, I feel, rather unduly impressed upon my mind."
CHAPTER II.
THE MEETING AT THE FLATS.
I REMEMBERED Waring as a good hand at telling a
story, given possibly just a trifle too much to the
picturesque and dramatic and as I listened now with
my eyes half-closed I came to release my imagination
from the leash of my will, to allow it to follow in the
train of the story free and unfettered; with the result
that I saw with an unwonted clearness every action and
surrounding of what was to me a rather interesting
episode.
" It was about this time of the year," he began. " I
was just down from the cool heights of the summits and
remember only too well the merciless nature of that
summer sun as it poured its light in a white, blinding
mist into the broad mountain valley and the one tor
tuous thoroughfare of the place. For nearly a week,
I was told, it had blazed with just such fervency, until
the chaparraled slopes of the ridge to the west, tufted
with an occasional clump of pines or a lone oak, had
browned visibly, and all the unnumbered little streams
which a fortnight before while on our way up had
given life to every gulch, had stilled their murmur;
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
chains of stagnating pools, about which the half-wild
cattle of the hills stood congregated, alone marking their
one-time courses.
" But the witchery of the hills, the glare of the sun,
nay, the growing heat itself,. seemed matters of small
importance to the inhabitants of the Flats that morning.
For while it was still spring it was also harvest time,
paradoxical as this may seem. You have never been
there, have you? Well, you should know that the place
is not altogether self-sustaining, and that since the late
autumn of the previous year, half-hid in the snows of
winter, it had hibernated, so to speak, and subsisted
upon what the accidents of the past season had brought
it. At the time which I am trying to describe for you
it sought like a well-regulated ant-hill, and while the
warm sun of circumstance shone, to granary as bounti
ful a harvest as came possible in the fresh era of prosper
ity which had just dawned with the birth of spring and
the reopening of the mills and mountain pastures.
" It was hot even for that early hour. The usual
breeze of the day had not yet risen with any certitude,
a tantalizing puff only breathing upon you now and
then, and in the wake of the fitful traffic the dust that
lay fetlock deep upon the road rose in stifling clouds,
to fall where it rose. The heavy lumber wagons of the
mountains passed up and down, powdered gray with the
dust of the hills if from below, or red with that of the
upper grades if from above. Indians of both sexes,
and of every age and condition, the bright tints of whose
garb gave color and a certain vivacity to the scene,
haunted the trails and the marts of trade ; while
before the busy blacksmiths, Westfall s, and Down-
ing s, the outfits of dogs and mules and packs of several
15
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
dallying sheep-men stood in confusing little groups. I
remember also seeing the stage and four with the
mountain mail and its daily quota of Yosemite tourists
swing down the red, dusty grade among the straight
bull-pines, the horses on the jump in obedience to the
sharp crack of the whip in the hands of the dustered
driver, and draw up with a jerk before the big, white
hotel for a fresh relay and an indifferent meal. It
looked as if it was the unalterable circumstance of the
distance which prescribed this last, few suspecting the
proprietor of the stage line and the owners of the turn
pike to be potent while silent factors in the management
of the hotel. But the meal once over, and philosophy
following on the heels of a sated appetite, it was gener
ally charged as one of the minor ills of life and soon
lost in the contemplation of a quiet afternoon s drive
through the deep-green forests that crowned as could
be seen from the broad, airy piazzas the sweeping
slopes to the east, the advance of the mountains proper,
immovable as the very foundations of the earth, and
eloquently silent in the tenuous, pearl-gray mists of
summer.
" I myself had ridden over early that morning by way
of Heron Valley with my train of mules, having passed
the night at Sharp s on the Fork, and these were now
hitched to the bars, or nosing about the watering
trough in front of the Laramore store. I had com
pleted my purchases and was tightening the cinches
of the animals preparatory to loading them when my
attention was called to the gentleman I speak of. He
had mounted his pack upon his burro in tolerably neat
order, but somehow now, in a moment of abstraction,
16
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
the mysteries of the diamond-hitch on the instant seemed
to perplex him."
Roger allowed himself a moment for reverie before he
resumed.
" I hesitated but a moment before I went to his as
sistance.
" Allow me.
" His was a face very strongly marked, bronzed as it
was by the sun, furrowed by time, and aged I can
find no term more expressive of the action by some
deep-seated mental or psychical struggle. His cheek
bones were flushed with the hectic of a disease which
after a prolonged aggressive war with the vitality of a
generous nature had obtained the master-hand, and was
now undermining with ever-increasing rapidity the
foundations of an iron constitution. The lips, thin and
dry, as if sapped by the heat of some inner fire, formed
the mouth of a man of untiring good-nature, and a
rather, I thought, vacillating disposition. Now, any one
of these characteristics alone would have proven suffi
cient to have drawn attention to him, and left an im
pression. But it was the eyes that left with me that
haunting sense, so intense in their placidity were they,
so measureless their calm ; a calm born of persistent
thought centred upon the inner man, and of the assur
ance succeeding a subsiding doubt. I question in fact
whether the first glance had not left with you, as it did
with me, doubts as to the sanity of their light. They
not only possessed the power of seeing that which ob
structed the view, but seemingly also the power to see
through and beyond. This placidity had become their
habitual expression; for while they lighted up with a
more comprehensible intelligence on being interrogated,
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
and seemed to be fully alive to all their surroundings,
this intelligence vanished the moment the source of in
terest was removed, and was replaced by the expression
I have sought to describe. Such in short was the ap
pearance of the man, an outer appearance sure to at
tract attention anywhere, let alone in so insignificant a
place as the Flats.
" I had but to re-arrange the blankets and the folded
square of canvas that sheltered the pack, and to lash
them as securely as the experience of years had taught
me, which seemed more than the little beast was ordinar
ily accustomed to, for he groaned dismally and switched
his tail as if to assuage certain sufferings, whether real
or feigned is not always to be determined with accuracy,
and my self-imposed task was completed.
" I see you are adept at the business, he said, his
eyes lighting up with that more comprehensible light.
I admire proficiency.
" Now, there was nothing in the words ; but in their
delivery and in the voice itself, there was a charm
strangely attractive to me. It has often been a matter of
wonder to me since, as I believe myself to be of too posi
tive a nature to be lightly influenced. The few attach
ments of my life are, as you know, the outgrowths of
years of intimacy. I can only attribute it to the sway of
some occult power, or at least to the presence of some
finer matter than usually surrounds us. Upon the
mountain-top, as you will find, we are much more sus
ceptible to heat and cold, and to every emotion of our
nature, than in the valley below. May not the aura of
a life etherealized by years of thought have been more
palpable to even my grosser nature than those of lives
less so?
18
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
Which way do you travel ? I asked suddenly, my
feelings for the moment getting the better of my
breeding.
"He pointed to the south-east, where in the distance
the dark form of Spirit Mountain loomed grandly with
its flank of snow, as he answered :
" By way of the Valley into the Basin.
" I regret it, said I, but my way takes me by the
lumber-mills, and over the divide into the Summit
Meadows, where I camp to-night. I could wish that our
paths lay more together as I would, I know, much enjoy
your company.
" He smiled as he answered me :
" You flatter me, my friend. Yet, I too, must express
regret. However, since fortune is so unkind to-day,
let us hope that at some future time she will be more
propitious.
" He had mounted into his saddle and now turned to
me with an outstretched hand.
" Goodby, Mr."
" ( Waring, Roger Waring.
" Good-by then, Mr. Waring. We shall meet again.
I sincerely hope so. Good morning.
" I watched him with interested eye ride down the
road, followed by the burro at a cross-footed pace and
with careening pack, ford the stream at the foot, and
disappear in the green of the forest beyond.
"This was in June of 1880 or 1881. The middle of
September had come, and with it the first fore-runners
of a beautiful autumn, before we withdrew from the
never-ending charm of the higher mountains. Of the
interim I had passed by far the greater part in the saddle,
riding for days at a time alone with my train of mules.
19
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
Nor did I confine myself to any one trail. I wanted di
version, and sought it in a trial of nearly all. While my
favorite one was the route by the Summit Meadows, on
several occasions I came down by the Scarlett Mill back
of Heron Valley. Once I came down by Wawona. I
even tried the intricacies of the lesser Shuteye. Finally,
on my last trip, I passed a night among the giants near
the Soquel Mills. But in all my devious rides through
the mountains that year I never again came upon my
friend, the old gentleman."
20
CHAPTER III.
THE START FOR THE MOUNTAINS. THE STORM.
THE day was hot, but with sundown there came a
breeze from the west and I passed the night in ideal re
pose. I had been led to a belief that I would be called
early and in this I was surely not disappointed, for with
the first peep of day, short as that June night was, I
heard. the male portion of the household up and around. In
the sleeping quiet I heard also an occasional crow and an
ever-increasing babel from the adjacent barnyard, and
from far away in the direction of the quaint Table
Mountain, the lugubrious hooting of a prairie owl. I
sprang from my bed, to leisurely dress. Having de
scended, I for some time stood out upon the porch below
where the soft light of the approaching day and that of
the sinking moon were in a gentle conflict for supremacy,
drinking in the beauty of the dawn, and with deep re
spirations enjoying the morning air. Then tempted forth
by the quiet, and the delicate tint to hill and hollow, I
took down the little " twenty-two" from its place in the
hall, and with Jack the collie already my fast friend
started out for a turn over the mint-strewn plain, prom
ising Roger to return at the first toll of the breakfast
bell.
21
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
It was not long in coming, and I at once retraced my
steps, to find Ling, the accommodating celestial, whose
dual function it was to herd the little band of bucks and
do the simpler cooking of the now much-diminished
household, pouring the coffee, and Waring already
seated at table.
I had barely taken place myself when a shout came
from without.
" That s SutclifF," explained Roger, rising and step-
ing to the door, where he waved a hand in greeting.
"Good for you, boy," I heard a boisterous but good-
natured voice exclaim a moment later ; " I see you are
standing in for an early start. Well, that s right. We
want to get through that suburb of Hades, Oro Fino, as
early in the day as we can find possible."
" I reckon yer friend s come," I heard another drawl
a voice peculiar in that there was no inflection, either
rising or falling, in what was said. " I beared someun
apepperin up the crick with the twenty-two."
I looked out curiously from my seat and saw a man,
clad in a suit of freshly laundered blue-jeans, six feet
two in height and of a corresponding thinness lean his
gun against the white palings where a few late jacque
minots filled the air with their fragrance, and then divest
himself of a variety of articles no mortal but himself
could possibly have found use for on a trip such as was
proposed.
" Yes, he s here."
" Glad to hear it," put in he who I felt assured was
SutclifF, and who I shortly discovered desired nothing
half so much as a good outing. " There is nothing now
to interfere with our having the time of our lives."
22
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
1 was introduced to Sutcliff, who extended a hand in
hearty amity.
" I want you two to be friends," said Roger simply.
" We are from this moment," Sutcliff exclaimed,
clasping my hand firmly, the lines of his mouth set
gravely, and his black, penetrating eyes upon mine.
Then turning in search of him of the blue jeans, he
continued :
Allow me to introduce my friend, the handiest man
in seven counties, Silas Stayton."
Silas, more an oddity than his friend, was less demon
strative in his hand-shake.
" Shoot anythin ? " he asked by way of greeting.
" I am sorry to say, no," 1 laughed. " I had a shot
at a coyote I found near the corral, and which I sus
pected of harboring designs against Ling s flock, but
that was all."
"I think it only fair to warn you against Si as a freak,"
Sutcliff continued a moment later. " My word for it,
you will have ample evidence of the truth of what I say
before you are many days older. Ten to one, Roger, our
friend returns to the wiles of the metropolis with one or
more of Silas s everlasting wooden spoon souvenirs.
Take me up ? "
" Gad, how long have you been running this sure-
thing proposition ? " asked another voice this from the
back porch, muffled in the folds of a towel which the
owner of the voice was applying with vigor to his visage
in completion of his morning s ablutions.
Sutcliff laughed. Even Silas was moved to smile
gravely at this hit at one of his foibles.
" This is Ballard, Paul," Roger explained as the third
party appeared in the room followed by a half-grown
23
The Lost Mitie of the Mono.
sheep-dog, "a friend recently from the city. And now
that you are all here and have broken the ice of first ac
quaintance, let us sit down and breakfast."
The buttress which supported the crest of Table
Mountain alone shone in the glory of sunrise as the
wagon and four bearing our equipment, and followed
by a couple of led mules, drew up before the open gate
amid the playful barkings of the dogs, and we clambered
in, with much bubbling good nature taking our seats.
Then, with a considerable show of life on the part of
our team in general, a decided intractability on the score
of the off-leader, and as pronounced an inclination on
the part of the mules in the rear to pull in an opposite
direction, we bade farewell to the ranch and its hospi
tality and plunged for the hills over the rolling lands be
tween. Upon a high point some distance on, where the
road crossed one of the further ridges, and where we
came to a halt to rehook a loosened tug, I turned for one
last look to the rear, to see against the dark background
of the clump of gums the white forms of the ladies with
handkerchiefs a-fluttering their adieus, and a little to
the right the form of old Ling, preceded by the collie,
Jack, in his slow wend across the stubble-field for the
corral on the low bank across the broad sandy creek-bed.
Then a turn in the road hid all from view.
Shortly after, we entered the hills with their scattered
oaks, where the senses found much to interest them.
Copse after copse was vocal with the twitter of many
linnets ; every dell, still tinged with the green of the
browning clover, rang with the song of the meadow
lark. Here and there a red-winged woodpecker would
fly past us with the certitude of an important errand, to
a moment later vary the discordance of its chattering
24
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
with the equally unmusical euphony of its tapping on
some hollow limb.
On reaching the underbrush of buckeye and chaparral
quail showed up plentifully, covey after covey crossing
our path in flight or uneasily sentinelling the rocks on
either side. Now and then, too, a cottontail bounded to
cover; or a hare whisked through the tarweeds and
rested not in its flight until the protection of an inter
vening ridge had been placed between it and the threat
ened danger.
Imagine, if you can, the ecstasy of that ride to me,
fresh from the prison of city life and all its dwarfing
conventions. Our vehicle had been selected with an eye
primarily to the comfort it afforded. Its seats were deep
and wide, and backed at an obliging angle, so that to sit
in them and enjoy the sensation of rolling over the
country was really a pleasure to be envied. As the sun
topped the trees and peered in upon us with a growing
ardor, the canvas curtains were let down and my cigar-
case passed around. Then, too, Sutcliff proved, as I
knew he would, a prime entertainer. Raised as he was
in those hills he had their history at his tongue s end.
Every ranch we passed; every mountain looming so
grandly blue before us ; nay, every mile of the road had
it seemed some experience connected with it, which that
morning we had copiously retailed out to us.
About ten o clock we began to descend into the Oro
Fino country. Here for the first time we felt the heat,
and I concluded that Sutcliff s expression of the early
morning, while picturesque, had more of fact than fancy
in it. The breeze had died away or, if not, the high
mountains on either side at whose common base we
traced the broad, sandy, alder-fringed bed of the creek,
25
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
most effectually stilled it. The dust of the narrow road
bed, whirled into the quivering air by the wheels of our
conveyance, enveloped us in a stifling cloud, where for
quite a period it kept an even pace with us, finally to sub
side in a long trail in our rear. Half-unconsciously all the
gay life of the morning had withdrawn to the shade, from
whence only at long intervals came the solitary chirp of
some bird disturbed in its cover by our approach. All
was dust, glare and heat.
At the further end of the gulch a little before noon we
halted for dinner, and to feed, water and rest our animals.
We had covered some fifteen miles of the road since
starting, and had a good twelve more in prospect before
reaching the camp of the evening. The first few of
these we found were quite a drain upon the spirits of
our animals as they led up and up, and ever up, to the
backbone of the ridge dividing the waters of the Gulch
from those of the Fork. To in some degree ease their
burden, two or more of us usually followed or led afoot ;
which was agreeable enough as we were then reaching
an altitude where the oak forest grew denser and the air
was pleasantly cool.
About four o clock we rounded the point on the shed
from which is had the first glimpse of the dark, straight
bull-pines which tuft the broad tumbled canyon of the
Fork, in the softening effulgence of the afternoon cir
cling in sweeping lines down from the north. Here the
road turned sharply, to maintain as even an elevation as
the topography of the country permitted. In the fore
ground to the left a cone-shaped mountain, black with
its own shadow and a broken growth of arrowy conifer,
rose to the view ; while opposite the east was sealed to
the eye of man by a long ridge clothed likewise, and
26
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
broken only where the waters of the Black Laurel had
worked a tortuous passage to the Fork. Far back of this
gorge, miles in the distance, in hazy outlines arose our
goal, the Mountain of the Spirit as the Indians in gen
erations past had named it. Its broken crest just then
was lost in strata of silvery storm-clouds, through which
at times as they broke asunder the fields of snow upon
its shadowed slopes gleamed ghastly white and cold. It
was a scene notable for its magnitude of proportions and
magnificent distances, and its effect upon us became
apparent in the sudden silence that fell upon our party.
Silas was the first to break it.
"Reckon we re in for a sprinkle," he remarked,
gravely eyeing the gray masses of vapor which we were
fast approaching.
" I fear you re right, Si," Sutcliff returned, "or the
experience of years counts for naught. These storms are
an everyday occurrence at this time of the year."
"Around the mountain, yes ; but it s rare they reach
the Fork."
" Right again. I see you are a close observer. Cradled
upon the summits they are borne westward upon the
winds of the morning to be whirled capriciously about
the mountain through the day, and at even retire to the
places of their birth, the spires of the Minarets. Now
that s poetry. But seriously, the genius of the country
must be in a mood gloomier than usual to-day."
Ballard, to give his dog a run, here sprang to the
ground, followed by Stay ton with the guns, for the
quail were again showing in the chaparral. At this point
the road was paralleled on one side by a primitive
" brush-fence," forming the finest possible harboring-
place, which the two skirted, one on either side, to
27
The Lost Miiie of the Mono.
neatly drop the birds as they arose. The "pup," a gift
of Sutcliffs, was a bright little fellow enough, but
wholly without training. Nevertheless the instincts of
the race were there, and many a bird was retrieved
that afternoon only with its aid. With this instinct,
however, as quite frequently happens, ran a character
istic that stamped it as an opinionated canine, with a
firm belief apparently in a division of the spoils of the
chase, for at times it failed to appear with its quarry;
when it was amusing to the point of side-aching laugb/-
ter to follow Ballard scurrying in chase among the
brush, at the cost of much profanity, a considerable abra
sion of the cuticle, and a gaping rent or two in his
garments ; Stayton all the while with a stoic s indiffer
ence winging the birds as they arose.
This Stayton was what Marryatt would have de
signated as an "original." If common report was to
be believed, he had been born in the backwoods of
Michigan; but Si was a man of very few words and
left much to conjecture. Tall beyond the ordinary, he
stood without an ounce of superfluous flesh. Yet, when
it came to work, the trying kind of the mountains, he
could discount anything I have ever seen in human
form.
He gave character to our party. His long, pointed
beard, which he fingered, twisted, and pulled in his per
plexities, was his secret pride ; his hair was thin and
straight and showed a spot in the rear where the cut
icle shone as brown as his visage. This one ceased
to wonder at when once acquainted with his habit when
"beyond the pales of civilization of wandering in shade
and shine without head-covering of any kind, and, what
seemed stranger still, without the least injury to him-
28
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
self. Not but that he possessed headgear, a dusty ar
ticle usually, and much begrimed with perspiration, it
must be confessed; but this he generally hung away or
jammed into the depths of a packsack on first pitching
camp, there to remain until we were ready to start
for other fields. On this trip I remember it was
hung on a low, broken limb of an immense fir, where
over it later Sutcliff in a spirit of mischief fastened the
backstay of the tent, thus securing it against any pos
sibility of loss or misplacing. This was at the Cherry-
Creek Meadows. He was slow and measured in all he
did, but to offset this he was never idle ; so that at the
close of the day as a quite usual thing he had ac
complished as much, if not more, than the average
run of mortals.
" He s a born genius." Ballard had explained to me in
a sweeping assertion earlier in the day. " He can lay
it over anybody at most anything. He hauled Waring s
wool to the station this shearing, and to see him handle
the single-line was a caution. Then he s eccentric to
beat the devil. Why, here for a month past he s been
hoarding every blest old oyster-can, big and little, he
could lay his hands on, and a week ago lay off a day
to clean up and solder handles on the whole cheese."
" How odd," I interrupted, excusably possessed with
the idea that Ballard was drawing upon his imagina
tion for my edification ; whereas, as I found later, he
was confining himself strictly to the truth. " What on
earth did he do with them ? "
" Why, supplied the neighborhood with all the tin-
cups it could possibly need in the next ten years."
"And the profits?"
" Were as that," returned Ballard sententiously,
29
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
snapping his fingers, " for he never charged a red cent."
" How strange."
" Did you see any of his work at Shepherds Roost ?
his soap-stone paper-weights, or some of the spoons
Sutcliff gave him the dig about at breakfast?"
" I think not."
" Well, it don t matter ; your wants will be supplied
in this line in due course. He can no more withstand
the sight of a piece of wood or a bit of stone without
wishing to sock his knife into them than my sheep-dog
here can a plunge into a handy puddle. And he s a
dandy at basket-weaving, and but the devil, take him
all around he s a corker."
And Ballard, who was a smallish, dissipated-looking
man of forty, with a red moustache, weak eyes, and
sporty inclinations, gave a sigh of despair at his inabil
ity to do the inventive and imitative talent of his friend
justice.
Meanwhile, as we passed over the road which wound
among the tall, symmetrical pines well-planted in the
tansied, boulder-strewn gulches, Sutcliff dilated upon
the various points of interest as they appeared.
" Yonder lies Gray s," he observed, pointing with his
whip to a dun-colored clearing halfway up a bluish-
green ridge some miles to the north which appeared
in an opening among the tufted tops of the conifers.
" If nothing happens to interfere we shall pass there
by sunrise to-morrow. Then here, more to the right,
around that baldish ridge is where the Black Laurel
comes in. That canyon is one of the roughest in these
mountains. More to the south here, do you see that
rocky scar on the face of that slope? that s the Figure
7. You see the resemblance? Those slopes are dense
30
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
with scrub-oak and manzanita, and are quite a haunt
for bear. It was in there in fact, that the old Indian
I was telling you about this morning had his tussle
with the bear a year or so* ago, and which came so near
seeing his finish. Then that glint of silver way up on
the rim of the ridge in that depression on the right is
the Falls of the Slick Rock. Years ago, long before the
appearance of any whites here, that neighborhood held
a special significance for the Indians which it has lost
since. You see, the rush of waters where they leave the
brow for their wild leap and bounds down the gulch has
glazed a concave half-circle in the granite as smooth and
slippery as a mirror. It was a custom of the Indians to
bring their witches here for trial, male and female. The
ordeal consisted simply of the passage of the torrent. If
made in safety, the accused stood innocent of the charge ;
where on the other hand, if swept over the brink to de
struction he was as surely guilty. Thus, if you were
strong-limbed and cool of head your chance of life was
better than that of your weaker brother which is, and
has been since the days of Adam, the way of the world.
Might is right to-day much as it was then in spite of
many fictions to the contrary. There s a pretty stretch
of country back of those falls."
It was while rounding the base of the cone upon our
left that the skies became overcast. About the same
time the air grew deliciously cool and still as if the spirit
of the legend was abroad breathing in long and regular
pulsations through the forest. Where there was the
sound of dripping water among the gray, mossed boul
ders massed in the dusk of the ascending ravines, the
overarching foliage of the ash and buttonwoods stood
bright against the deeper green of the background of
31
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
mountain, where the outlines each moment grew less
and less distinct in the shadow of the brewing storm
and the fast-declining day. To the far north above
a low-lying, sun-showered ridge, a band of clear was
visible piled high here and there with dun-edged cloud,
whose fading radiance became the measure to us of the
sun s declination. From thence, also, a little later came
a murmur which I at first asserted was the softened
roar of the Fork, but which the rest of the party, better
schooled in the signs and sounds of the mountains, said
was the long-drawn soughing of the wind on its way
down the canyon ; and that they were right I was forced
to concede when shortly after distant mutterings of
thunder followed.
In less than fifteen minutes the storm broke upon us
in all its fury, preceded by a cloud of dust and pollen,
and twisted and tortured the bowing forest until it
moaned in very protest. Cones and branches splintered
and crashed among the trees, and travel beneath them
assumed a fresh feature that of actual danger. Dur
ing the half-hour of the duration of this preliminary
gale we made but little headway. Then followed a
dead calm, through which we a moment later heard
the patter of the approaching shower, accompanied by
a louder, intermittent roll of thunder, in the wake of
a zig-zag of lightning. Ballard and Stayton hastily
clambered under cover as the great raindrops began to
fall about us. snipping up little cloudlets of dust, and
beating to earth in a pungent odor the mist of powd
ered balsam which had hung among the pines since the
last cleansing rain.
In my life, short, and only half-run as lives go, yet
crowded with experiences much above the ordinary, I
32
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
have been through many storms. But for true sub
limity I have never met with one to equal this. Dark
ness overtook us while yet a mile from our destination,
a darkness that was opaque in its intensity. Here the
first of Silas s little fore-thoughts came into play in the
shape of a candle-lantern. Its gleam in the depths of
that vast forest was faint and insignificant indeed; just
as, I often feel, the individual life we all cherish so
highly, must appear to God as he gazes out from his
height into the depths of this world of his creating;
but it served as a beacon to be followed slowly and care
fully.
But it was the spectacular play of the lightning fol
lowing the first downpour, and which lit up as with the
light of day, and with a suddenness and recurrence that
was blinding, the lofty aisles and the blended outlines
of the surrounding heights, which enabled us to cross
in safety the intervening gullies over the uncertain
plank bridging, and to find and follow the blind road
which led to the descending grade from which we had
our first view of the swirling torrent of the Fork, the
crumbling bridge that spanned it, and, in the dusk be
yond, where the old squaw who was the guardian of
the place had her abode, the flicker of a candle and the
warm glow of a hearth* through the open doorway of
a cabin.
Fifteen minutes and all thoughts of the storm and
its discomforts were almost completely banished from
our minds. Our animals in the meantime had been
comfortably stabled, and our wagon safely backed under
the cover of an outhouse two circumstances that added
greatly to our enjoyment of the evening. In the vast
fireplace of the old, deserted cook-house a roaring fire
33
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
had been kindled, and by it Sutcliff and Ballard pre
pared a hasty supper. Later the quail shot that day
were prepared and set to stewing for the next day s
meals; and our blankets brought out and spread upon
the floor preparatory to our retiring.
" I fear you will find your bed rather a hard one,"
deprecated Sutcliff, as squatted upon his own he drew
off his boots in the dusk of the subsiding fire. " But
to-morrow you shall have one worthy the envy of the
President himself."
Before retiring I went to the door for a last look
out. The storm had spent itself, and the moon peering
over the eastern ridge poured its mellow light upon a
scene that for calm and beauty I have never seen sur
passed. A few light clouds still hung above, while
below, in the uncertain shift of light, against the broken
background of forest shone the bleached and ruined
roofs of the old mill and its attendant outhouses. The
skeleton-work of the bridge too, stood stark and ghost
like in the light. To the south the rear-guard of the
storm was retiring back to the summits with a diminish
ing pyrotechnical display and muttering of heaven s ar
tillery. All nature was assuming its ordinary aspect of
peace and quiet. I glanced toward the cabin of the old
squaw. There, too, all was silent. Its lights were out.
34
CHAPTER IV.
AT THE SHAKE-MAKERS CLEARING. THE HALF-BREED.
THE next morning our course led up the eastern
bank of the Fork a little short of half a mile, where it
struck up the mountain for Gray s over one of the
most fatiguing trails in the Sierra. Knowing the ar
duous nature of the climb ahead, Sutcliff had arranged
to make it in the early morning while our party was
fresh from a night s repose, and while the mountain
side lay in shadow.
The stars were still discernible here and there as
after a hasty breakfast we packed our animals we had
reached the limit of wagon-roads and took up this trail.
It was a broad and open one, a little-used sled-road,
climbing, at angles that made one hesitate, up and over
ridges, and along slopes clothed in manzanita and black-
oak, and a tangled mat of a brown, resinous tansy, over
which old Gray occasionally hauled shakes from the Lip.
As we arose the scene below gradually unfolded; first
the dark, cone-shaped mountain opposite, its apex aglow
with the fire of day ; then the still dusky canyon between,
and as yet uncertain of outline, half shrouded in shreds
of filmy mist ; and lastly the far, faint levels of the plains
bathed in the blending glories of sunrise. The deep
35
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
diapason of the Fork too, which throughout the night
had filled the throbbing air with its roar, became more
and more defined, until as gradually it was lost in the
distance and the absorbent music of the day.
We had barely gotten well upon our way when Si,
who was in the lead, came to a stand to critically study
the ground at his feet.
" Hey, there ; what s the trouble now ? " shouted Sut-
cliff from the rear, where with rifle across his shoulder
he was prodding a dilatory pack-mule with a fallen
bramble.
" Thar s someun on the trail ahead," returned Si,
pointing to a foot-print in the softened soil.
" By gum, but he s an early bird," remarked Sutcliff
admiringly.
" He s a she, " corrected Si.
" No. Then is the circumstance only the more remark
able. Who can the nymph be ? "
But Silas was again silently pushing on up the trail.
At the expiration of a little more than an hour we
came to the bars of the lower pasture-gate, where we
rested for a few moments to allow our animals to re
gain their wind. It was upon this bench of the
mountain, sloping gently from above us to the point
where we stood, where it pitched abruptly, as we have
seen, to the Fork, that Gray s was situated, only more
to the left in the heart of the clearing. A very few
minutes now sufficed to bring us in full view.
The first golden beams of the rising sun slanted upon
the scene, .the rough, weather-beaten log-house out
upon the open point where it overlooked Heron Valley
far below ; the steep-roofed barn, teeming with pigeon
life, its massive, lichened eaves near-touching the
36
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
ground; the railed upper-field, green with rippling tim
othy, where the points of the pines, walling its eastern
bounds, fell in long, grey-blue shadows upon it. Seen
from our point of view in the shadow of the forest, where
the brown mold exhaled an inspiration at every step,
and the cream-bloom of the deer-brush hung heavy with
the weight of shimmering raindrops, it was as charming
a picture of peace and beauty as my eyes had rested
upon in years.
At the yard-gate, a rude contrivance hinged to a mam
moth stump upon one side, we came to a halt. A thin
column of smoke ascended leisurely from the throat of
a capacious chimney, to mingle with the crystal-clear
air of the mountains ; while a square in neutral tint upon
the shadowed front of the cabin told of an open door
way, still further proof that the family was up and
around.
In response to a shout from Sutcliff a savage dog
charged us, bounding back and forth on the inner side
of the enclosure and evidently eager to tear us limb from
limb. We quite properly, I thought, hesitated, and Sut
cliff even loosened his revolver in its holster. The brute s
spiteful snarls apparently jarred unpleasantly also upon
the nervous system of a thin, ridgy sow, which until
then had lain at easy length in the warm sunshine
beset by a half-score of pigs of conflicting ages, but
which now arose with disquieted grunts and swung
around the fence into the brush of the canyon, the litter
at her heels following with high-pitched squeals of
protest at the untimely interruption.
There came to us the murmur of voices in consulta
tion, and the grating of stools upon the house-floor.
Then through the rear door-opening the head of a man
37
2t\-% O
oJLUJLy
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
verging on four-score years protruded in reconnaissance.
At the sight of us a small, driedup body followed; to
gether taking up a position on the doorstep in the light
of the sun.
Now right back of the house, or rather what was one
side of it, a little stream of water, led in a miniature
flume from the fir-dusk of the canyon back of the tim
othy-field, spread over the ground, moistening a rod of
wild, pannicled grasses interspersed with shoulder-high,
blue-spiked lupins, and a scattering of flame-hued pop
pies. It was against this picturesque background, and a
further one of wooded ridge, that the weazened figure
of the old man stood, clothed in a greasy suit of brown
jeans, his bare feet encased in slippers down at the heels,
the snow-white of his beard and hair markedly contrast
ing a visage indescribably furrowed by a long life of
hardship, and set with dim, bleared eyes, now turned
upon us in a stare that was half-imbecile, I thought.
"How do ye do, sir?" accosted Ballard in the tones
of ordinary speech.
Sutcliff laughed.
" You ll have to limber up, Craig," he explained. " The
old fellow s grown as deaf as the logs of his hut with
in the year."
Ballard essayed again.
" Hello, there, old man," he now shouted in tones
that made the clearing ring, " how are you ? "
" Back there, you rascal," the old man returned with
a startling irrelevancy, and paying, as was expected,
no heed to our words. " Back, I tell you."
He stepped down among the unheeding fowls of the
yard, seized a convenient fence-picket and started in a
feeble pursuit of the brute ; which hied him under the
38
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
house in fear, later appearing on the other side to main
tain a desultory show of hostility.
" Gentlemen," he said deprecatingly, " this dog
which meets you with snarls and bites is none of mine.
He is my son s. I have nothing but will meet you,
like myself, with the heartiest good-fellowship. This is
as it behooves a man to be who is at peace with all the
world and its Creator. But, gentlemen, you are early.
I was told to expect you, but you are early."
He held the gate open for us, scrutinizing each of us
closely as we filed in.
" We ll trouble you for a drink of water, old man,"
said Sutcliff, accompanying his words with a gesture
expressive of carrying a cup to his lips, a sign the old
man seemed to understand, for he entered the cabin to a
moment later reappear with a long-handled dipper.
Sutcliff laid a hand in gentle protest upon the breast
of the old shake-maker as he insisted upon showing us
the way to the spring.
"No, no; we know the way."
Nevertheless he followed.
At the spring he turned to me.
" You are early, my boy ; and yet I fear you are too
late," he whined in the high-keyed voice of old age,
gazing into my face with a light in his eyes of such
intense concentration that I stood transfixed for a mo
ment, while a shiver of dread passed up and down my
spine.
I glanced around, and noted Sutcliff touch his head
significantly with his fingers.
None of us were athirst, Sutcliff s plea being a sub
terfuge only to afford us an opportunity of meeting the
old man of the mountain, and so allay a growing curios-
39
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
ity on the part of several of us. Nevertheless we made
a pretense of assuaging one at the spring, where the
water was not as undenled as it might be ; a host of
water-spiders skimming its surface in their reckless,
haphazard way, and the sedge upon its bank literally
swarming with small, green-coated frogs just emerged
from the short-clothes of the tadpole.
As we returned to the cabin, old Gray disappeared
into the dusk of the interior, in whose uncertain light a
middle-aged squaw in red stood gazing out upon us over
the shoulder of a man of perhaps thirty years of age,
whose lighter complexion spoke of an admixture of
white blood.
Ballard was the first to note them.
" Hey, there s old Jule," he cried, " and by gum,
Si, it was her you ve been following the blessed morn
ing, you sly old fox. And that half-breed son of the
old guy too. Hello, Joe."
Half-reluctantly the half-breed stepped to the door to
return our greeting, rather surlily I thought.
Ballard approached for the purpose of surrendering
the drinking-cup, and incidentally, as I surmised from
his air of feigned indifference and his manner of whist
ling lowly to himself, of obtaining a closer view of
the interior and its contents.
Now, I remember the circumstance with a smile al
ways, in the shelter of the doorway a large, tawny
house-cat lay sunning herself, comfortably crouched,
and with her eyes closed in feline meditation. Dis
turbed suddenly from behind by a movement on the
part of the squaw and seeing a stranger, followed by a
half-grown and inquisitive sheep-dog, within an arm s
length at the moment of such interruption, she arose
40
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
with the agility of a lynx, swept the floor for a moment
with her tail, and gave other tokens of her unfriend
liness. But Ballard was too preoccupied to note, and my
cry of warning came too late. The animal sprang upon
him with outstretched claws. Utterly astounded by the
suddenness of the attack, Ballard staggered back with
an imprecation and a howl of pain. The squaw tittered
audibly, and the ill-favored visage of the half-breed
broadened with a grin. Even, as the truth must be told,
among ourselves we found it quite impossible to re
strain a smile. In an instant the spitting feline had
sprung to cover, followed closely by a billet of wood
hurled by the now thoroughly exasperated Ballard. Then
followed an amusing rain of expletives as he gently
rubbed the afflicted part, to the like of which it has never
been my lot to listen. It rose and it fell ; it ceased and it
was resumed; until just as Sutcliff s convulsive peals
ended in one irrepressible yell of delight he came to a
pause with the same abruptness and cadence he might
have displayed had he just rounded a prayer with a fer
vent amen. He then picked up the dipper and handed it
to the now thoroughly sobered squaw.
" If the old fellow spoke the truth, " he remarked, limp
ing toward us, " this devil too must be the son s. "
"Are you out hunting? " queried the half-breed a mo
ment later, stepping out into the open, and in better
humor evidently at the sight of our friend s discomfiture.
" Well, that s hard saying," returned Sutcliff , to whom
the remark had been more particularly addressed. " Out
for a good time at any rate. Any game about ? "
The half-breed shook his head.
" At least not about here, " he added.
"Where then?"
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
" About the Jackass and the Squaw s Teat, they say. "
"They? Who?"
" Old Chipo for one, who is down after a load of
stock salt. He says Carpenter s men killed several deer
on the way up. "
" That s news. "
" But you know the law . "
" Oh, we ve not a word to say against the law, Joe, "
returned Sutcliff easily.
The Indian grinned.
" But tell me, " said Sutcliff suddenly, as if with the
turn the conversation had taken the idea had just come
to him, "how comes it in a region like this, abounding
as it does with such ideal cover, that the game is so
sparse ? "
The other paused for just a moment before shrugging
his shoulders in what seemed to me a feigned indiffer
ence as he returned :
"Why do you ask me?"
" Would you care to hear what I think ? "
The Indian again shrugged his shoulders, with the air
of one bored by the turn the conversation was taking.
" That the game is simply hunted out of the country. "
" By whom ? " was asked.
"The Indians, of course. Who else should?"
" For what purpose then ? "
" To lessen the chance of discovery of the lost mine of
the Mono which is said to lie about here somewhere. "
The half-breed sobered instantly, and his gaze hung
long upon our features with an earnestness not to be mis
taken.
" So you too, " he remarked a moment later resuming
42
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
his affected indifference, so you too are being misled
by this nonsense. "
" What nonsense ? "
" Why all this child s talk about a lost mine. "
Sutcliff chuckled in a cynical way as he answered :
" We have some solid basis on which we pin our faith. "
The half-breed echoed the words.
I nodded in the affirmative.
" We have some of the rock, you see, " I explained.
He now eyed me intently and in silence, as if with the
words I had assumed a new interest to him.
" For all that, " he said at last, turning away as if to
close the conversation, " you are wrong. How about the
herders and vaqueros ? " he continued, suddenly turning
about again with a renewed interest.
" Why should they be molested, " returned Sutcliff,
"when their presence relieves you of half of your
work?"
" You are sharp," interrupted the other in high dis
dain.
" That in the first place," continued Sutcliff, ignoring
the remark. " In the second the herder as a usual thing
has eyes for nothing but his flock, and the buckero is nar
rowed down to the powers of his mount. But the hunter
is to be feared. Lovers of nature they are almost with
out exception, and drink in all there is of beauty about
them. He can tell you the particular species of a tree
as far as his eye can reach; he knows every curve of
ridge and ravine. He hears every forest sound, from
the chirp of bird and squirrel to the deep boom of stream
and fall. To him the fragrance of fir and flower are de
lights too little known to the world. He is the man to be
43
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
feared at every step. Hey, there, Ballard, how does this
peroration strike you ? "
The half-breed turned and spoke a few hasty words
in their native tongue to the scarlet-gowned female, she
the while looking out upon us with a stolid interest. At
the same moment old Gray re-appeared, to invite us in to
breakfast, an invitation we declined with mixed feelings
as can very well be imagined. It took some little effort
to impress him with the fact that we had already broken
our fast, how frugally we omitted to mention, and that
we intended to lunch as soon as we reached the Deerhorn
Meadows. Seeing us inflexible he desisted ; but it was
with such a look of disappointment that we half repented
of our decision.
While we were re-adjusting the packs preparatory to
again taking the trail the old man grew garrulous and
plied us with questions, relative and otherwise. In the
short time of our visit he showed himself, beneath an ex
terior deceptive in the extreme, a man of very remarkable
parts. He took an inordinate interest in our replies it
struck me, and had the squaw bring out an old, cracked
slate with a pencil attached by a string that he might the
"better understand them, our verbal ones proving an in
sufficient means.
As for the half-breed, he was an interested actor in the
scene throughout. He said not a word but hung about
like a bird of ill omen, and with an air of restlessness he
could not hide, devouring every syllable that passed from
one to the other of the group. Nothing escaped him.
And when on the other hand we put a question or two
relative to the lost mine, more out of an idle curiosity
than in the hope of learning something of a definite or
tangible nature, his unrest, I thought, assumed positive
44
The Lost Mine of the Mono,
anxiety. He paced back and forth like a tiger caged
and sought by every surreptitious means at his command
to hasten our departure. I noted that his strange be
havior had drawn upon him the observant eye of Sutcliff
also.
But the mind of the old man was too much a wreck, if
in truth he ever had anything not purely the creation of
his fantasy to offer. Not a grain was there of practical
information for us to gather. In the medley of his talk
there appeared only one ever-recurrent thought, which
shaped itself into the oft-repeated " too late, too late. "
There came a simple smile upon his features as we
finally bade him good-by. With me he seemed to be
particularly reluctant to part. He took my hand again
and again with one of his, patting me in a fatherly way
upon the shoulder with the other. With an effort I
broke away to follow my companions who had already
started, pursued, I felt rather than saw, by a look of the
most intense longing, and the piping words which
haunted me for months after, " too late, too late. "
Turning some little distance up on the trail for one
last view of the homestead resting so quietly below in
the yellow sunlight, I saw him about to enter the cabin,
the son in excited expostulation behind, and the squaw,
but a speck of red, still observing us.
" There s a character for you, " said Sutcliff paren
thetically, as he opened the upper pasture-gate in the
green dusk of the conifer woods.
" Do you figure the old guy knows anything of the
lost mine ? " asked Ballard, resting upon his rifle on the
upper embankment and guiding the animals into the
narrowing grade, which here took a sudden turn.
" Not unless old Wolupa saw fit to confide in him,
45
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
which, knowing the Indian nature as I do, I very much
doubt. "
" And yet it may be so, " Roger remarked. " That
half-breed to me has the air of one hanging about in the
hope of hearing something to put him on the right scent. "
" Or of putting you off, " added Sutcliff thoughtfully.
CHAPTER V.
THE; DEERHORN MEADOWS THE SIGNAL FROM THE BUTTE.
We were now in the heart of those immense forests
which are the pride of the Sierra, a labyrinth of lofty,
pillared aisles, silent as those of a vast cathedral, and
heavy with the breath of the firs and the subtler incense
of a thousand flowers. The beauty of it all as we passed
beneath, the magnificent proportions everywhere pre
vailing, whether in rock, tree or mountain; the infinite
variety of coloring; the hushed, memory-waking music
of the streams ; and above all the peace and harmony
pervading every feature, stirred me deeply, and some
how I gradually came to a more comprehensible and de
finite conception of the idea of an omnipresent God. It
is only in the silent places of the world you will find
that this becomes possible.
One point upon that trail will always hold a special in
terest for me, the point to the right of the winding, och-
rous road where I had my first view of a Lambert pine,
one of a particularly fine group rising straight to heaven,
a mighty shaft, purple-scarred, in support of the tasselled
canopy overhead. I stood, a pigmy, in silent veneration
beneath it for many moments, my eye scaling its great
height foot by foot, until it marked the penciled branches
47
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
against the blue of the sunny sky, flecked here and there
with a light cumulus born of the storm of the evening
before. I was only recalled to earth by a shout from Bal-
lard, followed by the request to come on by the members
generally of our party. The road was here much more
gradual in ascent, and we reached the Lip with no
further serious inroads upon our stock of breath. Here
we had our first view of the Basin proper.
It is a saucer-shaped depression on the broad northern
flank of Spirit Mountain, and a spot replete with natural
charm. A finer stretch of conifer forest than here rears
itself in a beauty bordering on the divine, is certainly no
where to be found. From its central depths it extends in
every direction in dark unbroken sweeps to the Lip, which
circles with a charming uniformity to the right, where
through a narrow gorge the Black Laurel drains the re
gion of its waters.
One feature of this ideal spot is sure to strike one. At
a casual glance it will seem as if all the known world is
comprised in its deep-green woods and the immensity of
sky overhead. Only from one point, well up on the south
ern slope, do we have a glimpse of something more, a
vision far to the east, framed in the low depression of the
Gap, of misty peaks washed in in the faintest of ochres
and siennas, checkered with passing shadows of pale
violet-grays. The ridge, however, which all around
sweeps with such a charming regularity arises abruptly
in the south in the crags of Spirit Mountain, and on
the east in a striking Butte, both timbered to their sum
mits, yet presenting bold, scarred fronts to the north and
west which were then still white here and there with
the enamel of winter snows.
Upon the borders of the Deerhorn Meadows we came
48
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
upon the camp of the Ferrals, who were pasturing a band
of a couple of thousand sheep in the Basin. We found
it tenantless. Its fire had burnt down to a thin spiral
of blue smoke, and set somewhat at random about the
sodden ashes we found their various camp conveniences.
Sutcliff went straight and lifted the lid alternately of
the dutch-oven and the bean-pot, to gaze approvingly
upon the healthy dough just reaching the point of bak
ing, in the one, and the simmering, savory contents of
the other.
" Those Ferrals are boys after my own heart, " he re
marked complacently, replacing the lid of the latter, and
standing his rifle against the trunk of a tree, " for they
profit by experience. They have not repeatedly climbed
that trail without having learnt its lesson."
" And that is ? " I laughed.
" That you can not do it without working up an abnor
mal appetite. They are expecting us and have guarded
against surprise. "
While we assisted in unpacking the animals, Sutcliff
replenished the fire with an armful of wood of the proper
size for immediate coaling, and made such other pre
parations as the baking of the loaf dictated. The wood
was damp and smoked stubbornly, but by dint of an in
dustrious use of his broad-brim he brought it to life and
shortly to burn merrily. Then he foraged the camp for a
plate, which he heaped with the steaming beans, and ate
with such evident relish standing by the fire that we felt
the pangs of hunger within us increase a hundredfold
within a moment of time.
In fact the strife between duty and inclination as re
garded Ballard was short-lived. He at once dropped the
work he was completing to unearth the only other clean
49
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
plate the camp contained at the moment, and was soon
assisting Sutcliff at the feast, on the opposite side of the
fire. I, less accustomed to the ways of the mountains,
wavered longer between my sense of propriety and the
cravings of nature. But the humor of the situation was
irresistible. Seizing a skillet, the only available utensil,
which stood handy, I ladled a generous share of the com
pound of bacon, onions and beans into it, and with it be
tween my knees, seated upon a log which I first kicked to
the fire, I, too, became a happy factor in the scene.
Roger proved himself more self-denying and persisted
in helping Silas with the packs. There was no earthly
reason for supposing that Stayton, was less hungry than
the rest of us. But in the short day of our acquaintance
I had already seen enough to have me conclude that many
of his actions were deliberately calculated as schoolings to
the flesh ; that in fact much of his deliberation was due to
no other cause. With an exasperating attention to the
smallest detail he completed the unpacking. Unsaddling,
he first solicitously rubbed down the perspiring back of
each animal with a saddle-blanket before turning it out in
to the freedom of the meadow. The last, our leader, and
a mare of independent nature, he staked out just beyond
the entangling reach of a growth of willows. He was
halfway back to camp when on a sudden he returned to
reset the stake-pin, having decided that the spot was too
boggy, and the grass too watery, to afford anything like
the measure of comfort to the beast he was looking for.
With the same deliberation of manner he left for
the creek a moment later, a tin cup in one hand and our
sooty coffee-pot in the other, his intention being to fill
the latter at the stream, and incidentally to rid himself of
the dust which so plentifully begrimed his visage and
50
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
clung to his beard. It must have been, as Ballard ex
plained laughingly, a " dry-wash," or something near
kin to one, as the only noticeable change in his appear
ance on his return, as he placed the coffee-pot upon the
coals spread for the purpose, was a slightly clearer mark
ing to the lines about his ears and the corrugations of his
neck, showing the limit of encroachment of the elusive
element. Giving his long, sandy beard one last twist with
his fingers to wring the moisture from it in a scattering
shower, he ran his hands through his hair, as much I
thought to dry them as to bring his thin, straggling
wisps into some semblance of order.
We did not pitch our tent as we were as yet unde
cided as to a site for a permanent camp. Nevertheless
things generally were unpacked and readjusted and put
in as near shipshape as was possible in the face of this
indecision. An ovenful of biscuits was set to baking
by Sutcliff ; and a potful of beans to boiling by Silas,
who desired a mess, he said, in which his individual
right stood less in dispute than it did to the one he had
just helped dispose of; whereat Ballard expressed sur
prise and desired to be informed of a claim that could
possibly prove more valid than that he then enjoyed, in
asmuch as possession was nine out of any hypothetical
ten points of the law, and he had unquestionably passed
the property beyond human intervention. Lastly a
spoonful of " sour-dough " was pilfered from the Ferral
stock for the " rising " of our own.
It was in the midst of these various preparations that
the younger Ferral came into camp.
" Hello, there, Sut, " he shouted effusively," hello,
Roger, hey, there, Craigie, and, as I live, Stay ton
too, well, who d have thought of meeting such a bunch !
5 1
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
how are you all ? And this," espying me, " is our
expected friend. Glad to know you, and hope you will
have a jolly good time. How are all the folks, boys?
I ve been trying for an hour or more," he explained,
rinsing his hands in an inch of soapy water in a basin
which stood in a levelled spot between two encircling
roots, first having stood his gun against a tree, " to
get away, but the sheep are uneasy this morning and
won t bunch worth a damn. Faggerty won t have a dog
about, you know, which does not improve matters any. "
" Where is Faggerty ? " queried Sutcliff.
" Out with the band. He ll be in shortly."
"AndLen?"
" Oh, he ll be in shortly, too. He took his rifle early
this morning for a run to the Gap to see how the feed
stood, " Ferral continued, drying himself upon a towel
much in need of a laundering. " But say, Si, how were
the beans ? "
Stayton complained dryly, and I fear not without
some justice, that not enough had fallen to his share to
base an opinion on that would stand.
Ferral laughed.
"Oh, I guess they were all right," with a glance at the
empty kettle. " We killed last night in spite of the
storm," referring to a carcass shrouded in a wool-sack
swinging from a cross-arm between two trees. "And
it was not a toothless old ewe either," he kept on,
laughing. That was the proper thing under the ad
ministration of Carpenter & Co., under the shadow of
the Pin-Cushion," with a meaning wink at Roger and
Sutcliff, " but under the reign of Ferral & Ferral it is
different. What a gay old time we had that summer
though. Faggerty tells me their camp alone used up
52
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
over thirty mutton in the few months they were in the
mountains. But Faggerty does not always confine him
self to the truth. Either that or he and Stamford fed all
the old squaws upon the Fork that summer.
Rattling on at this gait he uncovered the juicy wether,
and with the heavy hunting-knife which he took from his
belt severed a quarter from the body; hewing with the
weapon where a bone interfered as efficaciously as if it
had been a cleaver made for the purpose.
It must have been about eleven o clock that we first
noticed the fire. I remember I had wandered from camp
with my sketch-book in hand, and seated at the foot of
an immense cedar across the meadow was sketching in
the forest-opening and the sun checkered arcades beyond :
and beyond these, the over-topping Butte, still some miles
in the distance yet overwhelmingly impressive in its
softened grandeur. When I first looked up and saw
that something of interest was taking the general atten
tion, Len Ferral was standing by my side, rifle upon
shoulder and a brace of gray-squirrels in his hand.
Roger was making his way from camp, followed at a
little distance by Sutcliff. Further back stood Ballard,
and in camp the younger Ferral and Silas. All eyes
were turned in one direction. Following that direction
with my eye I saw upon the apparently inaccessible crest
of the Butte a column of smoke arise at the moment, and
slowly spread in a dense, white cloud toward the shim
mering summits of Spirit Mountain.
Sutcliff was startled I could plainly see, but it was for
a moment only. A life of years in the mountains had
accustomed him to surprises of every kind, and it took
him but a moment to regain his wonted control of him
self.
53
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
" After all what is there so remarkable in a fire in the
mountains ? " he asked.
" Nothing, " Roger returned, " but its location, and
that is startling. "
" I wonder who could have lit it, " mused Len Ferral
quietly.
" That is hard saying. Perhaps a sheepman, or some
herder, " said Roger.
But Len shook his head.
" I think not, " he said in his composed way.
"And why not?"
Sutcliff turned his face as if in expectation of the an
swer.
" Because I have just returned from around the foot
of the mountain. There is not the sign of a trail there
made later than last fall. "
" Well, that settles it as concerns the herder," con
ceded Sutcliff, resuming his survey. " But how about
the sheepman ? "
" Do not understand me to say that a sheepman did not
start it, " returned Len, a little piqued at the other s brus-
queness. " What I mean is that the ordinary indications
do not point that way. At least he did not climb from
this side. After last night s rain I would surely have
come upon his trail. As it is, the only sign of life I
came upon was the hoof-print of a burro, which seems
to have wandered in through the Gap. "
Sutcliff was plainly puzzled.
"It must be a party of Indians signalling to others in
the hills," he at last ventured to say.
But it was now Waring s turn to shake his head.
" Sutcliff," he began, with such unusual seriousness
in his voice that Sutcliff eyed him from top to toe, to
54
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
laugh straight in his face, " it means something more. A
peculiar sensation I have at my heart tells me so. "
"Your heart be d d. It s your liver. A touch of
dyspepsia, nothing more. Or else but no, you do not
indulge. Now, had it been Ballard here I should have
had no trouble in explaining it away as the effect of that
jug of forty rod he brought away with him yesterday
from Oro Fino. "
"But seriously . "
" What do you think ? " Sutcliff asked, turning abruptly
to me, still seated at the root of the tree.
Now, strange to say, wholly unfamiliar as I was with
the life of the mountains, I too had a vague feeling pos
sess me that the true interpretation of the scene before
us lay not in any of the several explanations advanced. It
was nothing I could hope to prove to the objective sense;
it was more the conviction of a subtle subconsciousness.
" At the risk of being rated a dyspeptic also, " I re
turned with a smile, " I must stake my opinion with that
of Roger. It does mean something more I am sure. "
Something in the quiet yet positive nature of my
reply seemed to carry weight. Sutcliff fixed his eyes
upon me for a moment in a profound contemplation of
my visage, then turned away with a puzzled shake of
the head.
" Come ; there is but one way of solving this mystery, "
he said a moment later, returning to where we stood,
" and that is by a climb of the mountain. Do you feel
yourself able, " he continued, addressing himself particu
larly to me, and with a vague shadow of doubt in his
voice, " to undertake the climb to that point to-morrow ? "
" Why, sure ; I am in perfect health. "
Then turning to Waring :
55
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
" We have figured on an ascent of Spirit Mountain all
along, " he said, with a wave of his hand toward the rug
ged peak. " Let s include a climb of the Butte ; or even,
as the scheme finds favor with Carrington, wholly drop
our original plan ? "
" There is no deprecation necessary, " returned War
ing ; " the idea pleases me quite. "
" Then I make the further suggestion that from here
we move this afternoon to the Cherry-Creek Meadows.
They are nearer the mountain, higher, and in the morning
will give us a better start."
To this Waring also acquiesced.
But Len demurred. He had, he said, looked forward
to an evening spent in camp with us, and he would not
now be disappointed. We should not go.
Sutcliff hesitated. But the advantage of the two miles
in the morning which the contemplated move would bring
us was not to be lightly lost. He was quick at sugges
tions.
" Why not let Faggerty run his band up there this af
ternoon? and you spend the night with us? How did
you find the feed at the Gap ? "
Ferral shook his head.
" Short. It should have at least another week s
start. "
" Then let it be as I suggest. Otherwise I should
have advised packing up and moving with us. "
It was so arranged and the two returned to camp a
few moments later, leaving me to work out my sketch,
with Waring to bear me company.
When we, too, an hour later returned in response to the
younger Ferral s halloo and announcement that dinner
was ready, we found that Faggerty had put in an appear-
56
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
ance, and was at the moment crouching over the coals
puffing assiduously at his briar-root, which he had just
lit with a fire-brand, still held in indecision awaiting the
outcome of his efforts at a smoke. We found also that
extensive preparations had been made for an after-dinner
target-shoot. Such an array of ammunition, of calibre
large and small, I had never seen short of a dealer s em
porium.
" What do you think of a man, " asked the younger
Ferral, squatted at his meal, a daintily-browned chop be
tween his fingers, in answer to a comment of mine
prompted by the display, " who comes up here for a ten-
day s hunt with only four cartridges to his name ? "
" Who of this crowd can possibly be guilty of such
shortsightedness ? " I laughed as I took my place at the
board.
" Why, Si. He brought his everlasting old Sharp all
right, but, just think, only four cartridges. "
" That is not surprising, coming from Si, " remarked
Waring. " From any other source we might have had
grounds for anxiety."
About three of the afternoon, just as Faggerty left to
intercept his band as it broke from its uncertain nooning,
we resaddled, packed our animals, and started for the
meadow which lay a mile and a half further up in the
direction of the low saddle between the two mountains.
It was a favorite pasture-ground of the sheepmen as the
surrounding ridges abounded in extensive thickets of
cherry-brush, interspersed with vetches, peavines and
thimble-berry. Owing to its high altitude and the con
sequent earliness of the season there, we found it in all
its vernal beauty. Not a hoof had been there that year
previous to our coming.
57
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
Upon our arrival there the time passed agreeably
enough in preparations for the morrow, more particu
larly in the cleaning of our arms, which had grown dusty
upon the hill-roads ; in reloading emptied cartridge-shells ;
and by Ballard, Sutcliff and myself in stripping a copse
of young fir of its tender, fan-like boughs, and spreading
them with method, and a knack born only of experience
I found out, beneath our blankets ; the same when com
pleted forming a bed, the virtues of which are not to be
too highly lauded. Then after an early supper an hour
was spent in curious inquiry about the forest. The sun,
low in the heavens, shone with that softened glory which
is peculiarly our own upon the brushclad slopes and their
sentinel pines as we returned. The broad, green meadow
with its boulder-strewn confines was losing outline in the
falling shadows of evening. The breeze which through
out the day had vibrated the woods into paeans of soul-
stirring song had sometime before faded away in a long-
sustained morendo. One by one the songs of the birds too
became hushed, and the mountain day was done.
CHAPTER VI.
OUR UNWELCOME VISITOR. A STRANGE DISCUSSION.
THE SEANCE AND ITS OUTCOME.
The crowning event of that evening I will not soon
forget.
A shade of ennui had become apparent in the manner
of our leisurely lounging about camp. Waring, stretched
at ease upon his blankets, was poring over the pages of
a book; yet his interest in it was not such but that both
eye and ear were open to the attractions of his surround
ings. Silas and Len were out on the meadow looking
after the horses for the night; and to the rhythm of the
driving of the stake-pins as they were reset, my pencil
came to move in unison in the finishing of my sketch of
the morning. Ballard, the younger Ferral, and Sutcliff,
squatted upon some saddle-blankets, were deep in a game
of cards. But Ferral alone showed interest in the game
perhaps it stood in his favor, an occasional word only
coming from the lips of the other two. Sutcliff in fact wa&
more than usually abstracted of mood, and I caught him
several times, while the cards were being shuffled, make
a half-turn and glance over his shoulder toward the Butte,
where the mysterious fire of the day twinkled redly in
the gathering gray of the night. His thoughts to all ap-
59
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
pearance were centred there rather than upon his playing.
As the dusk deepened I desisted in my work and fell to
admiring the massiveness of several sugar-pines some dis
tance away, whose tops still glowed in the evening light
against the gray of the eastern sky where the silver disc
of the full moon shone in the low depression of the Gap.
Then suddenly I became aware of a sound alien to any
of those to which my ear had become attuned, the approach
of stealthy footsteps. At the same moment Sutcliff looked
up, a surprised exclamation, half imprecation, breaking
from him. I turned, and against the glow of the west
saw silhouetted the form of a man approaching through
the brush. Sutcliff had already recognized him ; for me
it required a closer approach into the open to know in him
the half-breed we had met in the morning.
" Where, under the shining sun, do you come from ?"
asked Sutcliff, too surprised to wholly hide the, to him,
unwelcome nature of the visit.
The Indian gave some explanation about night having
overtaken him on his return from a jaunt to the Chi-
quita, and how, in his haste to reach the Gray clearing
he had somehow drifted from the trail, until utterly at
sea he had accidentally come upon our camp. Unable to
understand the reason of his coming myself, I watched
the lines of Sutcliff s countenance for some ray of light
it might afford me, and I saw at once that the narration
found no credence with him.
" Lost be damned," he muttered in an aside to me a mo
ment later. " It s a plagued sight easier to lose old Ling
in his kitchen than one of these fellows in the mountains.
Have you had your supper ? " he asked, turning to the
Indian.
" I m not hungry," the half-breed answered simply. " 1
always carry some bread and jerky with me."
60
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
Nevertheless Sutcliff placed before him the remains of
our supper, and upon these the wanderer fell without cere
mony.
A few moments later Faggerty too appeared, having
hovered unseen upon the flanks of his charge until, with
an air of contented repose, it had settled itself for the
night upon a ridge about a mile below camp. With pipe
in mouth and the half-blanket of brown vicuna held
snugly about his shoulders, his gray, grizzled beard so
completely covering his face as barely to afford space for
two gray and very bright eyes, and a red and somewhat
bulbous nose, he came out of the gloom of the forest
like a spectre of the Sierra and took up a position by the
fire in silence.
There now was an air of animation about camp wholly
wanting a few moments before. We settled ourselves
for the fuller enjoyment of the evening. Logs of gene
rous proportions were heaped in great quantities upon
the fire ; which soon flared up and illumined the trunks
of the surrounding pines, and deepened into inkiness the
shadows playing among and above them. Then Sutcliff
passed a small flask of some choice spirits around, and
I my refilled cigar-case.
For an hour or more the conversation was of a light,
bantering nature, in which the younger Ferral, Ballard
and Sutcliff, again his normal self, particularly excelled,
though we all dipped an oar occasionally. Gradually,
however, the various threads focused themselves almost
as if guided by some unseen hand, and, of all subjects
for discussion in a mountain camp, it settled upon psy
chology. Psychology? Well, no. Psychology is a
science, to be discussed in a scientific way. Our dis
cussion bordered more on a medley as very few of us
61
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
had given the subject even the most cursory attention,
and would have found no mention here but for the fact
that it led up to the one event of the evening which had
relation to our tale.
For a few moments it was without order or sequence,
each relating his ideas, beliefs, and experiences as
suited him best. Then by a direct question Sutcliff un
consciously restored a semblance of order.
"What do you know of the soul, Roger?" he asked
during a pause in the conversation, and with a smile
of skepticism upon his lips.
For some reason Waring was looked upon by all
present as an authority on the subject, possibly because
of the fervor with which he had championed the cause.
For a moment it looked as if the gathering was
doomed to disappointment.
" But very little, to be frank," he replied rather curtly,
a little offended I thought at our friend s brusquerie
and evident unbelief.
" Nevertheless," interrupted Len Ferral with a quiet
diplomacy, "you are not so soulless but that you feel
you have a soul."
: That s just it," Waring was moved to answer with
a smile. " And feeling that way I have given the matter
some thought and hold certain theories in consequence."
" Come, then, let s hear them," again suggested Len,
settling himself more comfortably for the better enjoy
ment of the impending discourse.
" Well, I don t mind, I m sure."
Then after a moment s thought:
" You all believe in the Atomic Theory of course ?"
We all did, judging from the general affirmation ex
pressed.
62
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
" In that admission, and irrespective of whether the
atom be divisible or not, you are conceding the first pre
mise of my stand, namely, the existence of matter in
a form, or series of forms rather, other than that to
which we are ordinarily accustomed to. For my firm
belief is that soul is but an emanation of matter, mat
ter of a nature so fine as to be invisible to the human
eye. Now, let us not forget that the moment we admit
of this belief we are leaving the purely abstract behind
and have entered the realm of the concrete. For matter
is matter in whatever form we find it, and concrete.
" I will go a step further. Not only do I believe the
soul, coupled, remember, always to spirit of course, the
incomprehensible, God-given spark, the highest quality
of the triune man, to be etherealized matter, but that that
matter is ceaselessly etherealizing further ; that it retains
the human form, and ."
" Why that ? " here interrupted Sutcliff.
" Because throughout the realm of nature I recognize
a continuity of purpose. Man s form is not the result of
chance but the result of law. Nor does the purpose of
his creating end with death."
" What makes you think that? "
"An appeal to my common sense. Step out into the open
of that meadow yonder and let the stars answer you.
Standing there and looking upward, can you for a mo
ment doubt but that their grand mystery will some day
stand revealed to you and me and all the world ; and more
particularly to the ardent soul panting for its wisdom?
I for one have a greater faith in God."
" But matter has weight," suggested Sutcliff, giving
the argument a slight turn.
"And so has the soul, so has of necessity everything
63
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
that is created. Did I not just say that we have entered
the field of the concrete? Those very atoms if they ex
ist at all are as subject to weight as any of these
mountains by which we are surrounded."
" Do you mean us to understand that the soul can be
weighed ? " asked the younger Ferral in open wonder.
" I do, the means once provided. And let the won
der be not that it weighs so little but that it weighs so
much. Do not forget that it is not so very long ago
that the idea of weighing the elements was scoffed at.
Yet not only is this done to-day but an even more im
ponderable fluid is being meted and curbed, namely
electricity."
" The thing sounds absurd just the same," remarked
Ballard.
" Only in view of our present means and knowledge.
Once the existence of the soul is more universally, and
I may add more intelligently, acknowledged, and the
attention of mankind becomes more centred upon the
subject, I have every faith in the world that the thing
will not only be found possible but that it will be done.
The great trouble is, we let our senses too often play us
false. We forget that they are limited in their ca
pacities. We forget that everything mundane is com
parative, no matter what it is. That is an unchange
able characteristic of the finite. We forget if we
think at all, that there is but one absolute point in all
the world, one superlative in all the Universe, God him
self. Stop to reason. What means an inch, a foot, a mile,
in distance that has no end ? What an hour, a day, a year,
in an eternity? These are all arbitrary terms born of man
and his needs. And what possible conception of size
and weight can we have in the face of the fact that as
64
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
small a thing as a flea stands intermediate between the
largest and the smallest known of animal life? Ab
solutely nothing. Just so in this matter. The animal-
culae brought to light by the use of the microscope, and
of which it takes, Heaven only knows, how many to
make a point discernible to the naked eye, have weight
just the same as has yonder Butte, though both are be
yond our present means of intelligent weighing."
" Do you know," I interrupted, carried away by the
plausibility of Waring s argument, and for the moment
obtaining a fleeting glimpse of even greater possibilities,
" that this may mean that the future could to some ex
tent be foretold ? "
The Universe is as God made it, not as it may seem
to us. As I have said, He is the one superlative point,
and views all existence at a glance. He is all-permeat
ing, all-embracing. For Him there is no future, as there
is no past ; there is only, as Lytton has said, "an ever-
present now" I leave it to your good sense to say
whose is the truer view ; man s, lost in the shadows of
earth, or His, from the pinnacle overlooking all life?
whose the more comprehensive estimate, ours, lying,
we feel, so much nearer the great Fountain-head of
Wisdom, or the barbarian s, on the lowest round of the
human ladder? "
There was profound silence.
" What then are we to understand by the term
future ? " at last asked Ferral the elder.
" I do not go far astray, I think, in saying that the
popular idea and acceptance of the word is the unformed
in nature. My conception is somewhat different. The
future to me is simply that portion of Creation, and in
the use of this word I include the entire Universe, the
65
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
ordained field of man, not yet within the pales of the
knowledge of the individual. The moment any portion
of this unknown world comes within the range of our
understanding, it becomes what is known to us as the
present, the past, and a fact. Now, the future, that is
our future, is as much a fact to God and, in proportion,
to the higher intelligences as the present is to us. For
as we grow up in the various spheres of life, we become
more and more Godlike; and as we become more and
more Godlike we find that we have somehow absorbed
more and more of the attributes of the Most High;
among others these of all-permeation and the all-encom
passing. And the fact remains that while we are so
journing here, all the spirits who have for ages past
gone before are, each according to his understanding,
enjoying the light of His presence at this very moment;
proving, I hold, that, while not a part of our present,
there is a general present of which this life is
part, and, which is because of this connection if for no
other reason, a fact. You understand? And it
is, let me add, in every way as natural a life, and lies
as much within the domain of natural law as any part
of that life now within our grasp. The rugged peak
that for ages raised its height in an unknown land
existed none the less to the world at large because for
a time it lay beyond the human ken."
"Why then are the lines so absolutely drawn?"
queried Sutcliff after another pause.
"Are they? That is a mooted question with me. I
believe it rather a matter dependent upon the individual
choice. If the light shines for you, and you persist in
turning your back upon it, whether from ignorance or
willfulness, whose fault is it that you see not the splendor
66
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
of the sun. God courts investigation; he does not pro
trude his secrets upon us. It is our spirit of skepticism
that proves the obstruction always. We look too much
to the past and too little to the future."
" We are to infer, I take it, that the line of demarca
tion you allude to is that between the seen and the un
seen at death, in short?" asked Faggerty with a ju
dicial air, turning to Sutcliff.
"Assuredly."
" That is but the limit of your senses, the line of those
who have eyes yet see not, and have ears and yet hear
not, " resumed Waring. " Believe me, to the spiritually
inclined the line is much more elastic, varying each day
in fact with the wisdom gained. Intelligence and love
mark the boundary. Faith buoys us up and on; and to
the beauty, to the content of heart and serenity of mind
born to them there is nothing on earth to compare."
" What are we to understand by the expression you
have just used, the higher intelligences?"
" The souls of those who have gone before. Under
stand my conception of heaven is not orthodox. My
idea is one of ceaseless development through an eter
nity of time, an endless perfecting with no hope of ulti
mate perfection. And strange, this thought is the great
solace of my life. For the thought that the time will
come, however remote at the present moment, when we
will have absorbed all of wisdom there is about us, is
abhorrent to me, and is only to be measured in its hope
lessness by the one of annihilation. I enjoy the thought
as I enjoy naught else, that there is always something to
learn ahead."
" But if human, why do you emphasize by calling them
higher? "
67
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
" Because of this. The one thing patent to all on
earth is growth, first material, then mental and moral,
and lastly spiritual. The theory of evolution is based
upon it. We see it in the plant and animal life about
us. But in the body, the material that is, there is a point
where the development ceases and disintegration begins.
Not so with the mind and soul. The old adage says that
we are never too old to learn. Even death puts no bar.
Here again we have the law of continuity. Mind is the
kernel within the soul and is imperishable. And why?
Because it is the home of the spirit, that spark of living
fire breathed into us at birth by a loving God, the ego,
which as it expands requires a cloak less and less ma
terial."
" The thought is certainly elevating. Then you must
think communion with the dead possible ? "
" To some, yes ; depending upon the stage of their
mental, and their moral and spiritual activities, particu
larly the last. This has been proven beyond cavil. Why
not? Thought is a prepulsive force set into motion by
the will, which, like sound, starts the lighter waters of
the ether into waves, to leave an impress upon natures
attuned in unison, and intelligent enough to interpret
its meaning. I believe in affinity of mind as well as of
matter. I believe, that from the moment mind first
worked through the gross material to the point of self-
consciousness in man, it forms an unbroken chain
throughout the Universe with the present. I believe
that along this channel comes all of wisdom that is
vouchsafed us. The two points the extremes, are
seemingly irreconcilable owing to a great disparity; but
there is one point upon that chain where the difference
is not so marked. That point is death. There the af-
68
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
finity is closest. And that has always been the point
in dispute."
" What reason have you for your claim that at this
point the change is slightest?" asked Len Ferral,
poking a burning log absent-mindedly with his heel,
and starting a glorious shower of sparks far up among
the interlacing branches.
" Is the change greatest in you between the hours of
retiring at night and your awakening in the morning,
or between the days of your childhood and old age? I
repeat, I have faith in the Law of Continuity. I can
not believe that the change wrought by a moment of
time even though that moment marks the transition
we call death, is so radical as to rob us of all means
of communicating with those we love on the opposite
bank of the Styx. Growth is comparatively slow, as is
apparent everywhere. We find no radical deviation
anywhere in nature. I maintain, that our means of com
munication only have been changed; that instead of the
organs of speech and hearing, and our sense of touch,
we are forced to the use of other and higher means,
less understood and, therefore, more liable to misap
prehension. The means are there, however, and the
gulf is to be bridged."
"And the means are ? "
" The use of the higher senses. Man, you know, is
here endowed with the physical or objective senses,
supposed to be five in number. I say supposed, be
cause it is a matter of dispute whether man is not pos
sessed of more. Personally I believe, he is, but they are
not purely objective. We may well call them the
Transitional. The function of the physical sense is to
receive and convey to the mind the suggestions and im-
69
The Lost Mine or the Mono.
pressions of the outer world. Now, I have endeavored
to make plain that the absorption of the wisdom stored
throughout the Universe is progressive, just as it is
here on earth ; and for the absorption of these higher
truths, which is wisdom, and for the intelligent under
standing of this higher life, the soul is equipped with
senses peculiarly its own. We have them here with us
in the so-called subconscious faculties. We are aware
of their existence in a way, but hardly as actualities.
Nevertheless, they are. The faculty of perception which
permits you to see the truth or fallacy of a proposition
is as much a fact as is the sense which permits you to
distinguish form and color. It is the corresponding
sense of the soul. In its highest development it is but
a step removed from what is known in common par
lance as "second sight " or clairvoyance. Then there is
that supersensitive sense of hearing known as clair-
audience. And who of us at some time or other has
not heard of or met with the high-strung nature lhat
feels the approach of friend or foe some time before the
actual appearance? These are simply so many words
sent along the wires I speak of as possible of establish
ment. Life is complex. We do not weigh gold as we
do iron, nor diamonds as we do clay. We change our
method to accord with what we have to do. Just so
must we do throughout life. The finer the truth to be
received, the finer must be the instrument to receive it."
" But how are we to go to work ? That is the next
question."
" We must first of all learn to acquire a faith in man s
higher destiny. We must turn toward the light. We
must rid ourselves of that hardness that marks the man
of little faith. We must go commune with nature so
70
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
that her magic influence may work its charm. We
must at times at least turn away from the things of
earth to those on higher planes, to things spiritual. We
must seek out the beauty which everywhere prevails.
We must do everything which we feel will conduce to
our moral elevation. We must do God s bidding in all
things, be they large or small, and at all times ; which
simply means, as Christ taught, do your duty. Let us
not go to church but two hours a week, but let us bask
in His presence and that of higher things twenty-four in
the day."
" But, man, are we to become hermits out and out ? "
laughed the younger Ferral.
" Not at all. Nor does anything I have said imply
this. I say, enjoy yourselves here upon earth by every
legitimate means at your command. That is God s wish
or else he had not put you here and filled the earth
with beauty. But let it be legitimate, by which I mean
in accordance with the Higher Law. And believe me
that in following out this course you are only preparing
yourselves for a fuller appreciation of this earth life.
Virtue is its own reward always. Any apparent in
congruity lies simply in the trouble with so many of
us, a want of balance. We are always at the one ex
treme or the other. The man of business has no time
but for the chase of the almighty dollar; the man of
leisure none but for the realization of his dreams of
pleasure. There is no sphericity. If we would but pre
face the day with a thought to consequences, we and
the world would be much better. Less of wrong would
prevail, and less of remorse. And our lives would round
out in the process."
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
"And what is your idea of the nature of this life ? "
asked Len after a short pause.
That it is one of sensation just as much as is
this, a strict continuance of it in fact, but with all of
blatant evil and wrong eliminated. Recall to mind each
of you the moment of your keenest pleasure I am
sadly mistaking if you do not find it to have been one
of mental or moral elation, and let that mark for you
the ebb of the possibilities of the life beyond death. You
have but to desire it for you to follow there any trend
toward the light of your moral or mental nature. Our
every aspiration toward the ideal remains the same. If
you find pleasure here in the pursuance of a branch of
art, it will remain with you to continue that pleasure in
definitely and only intensified unnumbered times, in the
world to come. If you admire the grace pictured in the
human form, that appreciation will not be denied you
either. With the lust of earth cut out, the emotion with
which you will approach the subject will be chastened
into one bordering on reverence ; the emotion Heine can
be conceived to have felt when he rested a reverent
hand on budding womanhood and was inspired to write,
Thou art like a flower. Perversion there is impos
sible. That is due to the double polarity of life on
earth."
" What on earth do you mean ? "
This. Who of us at some moment or other has not
felt that two natures possess him? the one, the evil,
tying him to earth and its grovelling; the other, the
good, prompting him on to better things, and whisper
ing of the limitless possibilities within him? That is
what I mean. I hold that the body is a battery charged
in some way, and attracted and influenced by the other
72
TTie Lost Mine of the Mono.
and greater batteries about him in things material, and
that the soul is another and finer instrument, attracting
through the sentiments to the higher order of things.
Between these contending forces we vacillate; what we
know as duty calling us upon the one side ; that more at
tractive siren, inclination, beckoning on the other. Per
version is the consequence. And in this dual nature of
our lives I plainly see the dove-tailing which connects
our life upon earth with that beyond our present sphere,
really, I believe, one and the same. At death we sever
the earthly circuit; its bonds no longer attract us except
ing in so far as the soul wills, and our thoughts and de
sires forever turn upward and heavenward.
" Now, understand me when I speak of the severance
of the ties of earth I mean the ties material. The bond
of love binding soul to soul, whether inhabiting the body
or out of it, still holds, for that is a tie supernal.
You have heard about true marriages being made in
heaven ? Well, here is where they come in. But such
bonds are not necessarily those existing between sweet
hearts, or man and wife. The love of a parent for a child,
or the child for its parent ; or the love of a brother for his
sister, or a sister for a brother, all are as cogent. These
are simply so many variations, eddies you might liken
them to, upon the bosom of that great current, Love,
which makes the Universe one grand whole, and along
which kindred minds may hold intercourse, no matter
what distance lies between.
" In conclusion let me say that this is but a mere out
line I am giving you. There are many little incidental
byplays which go to modify the conditions I am essay
ing to describe for you, just as in our daily life much
happens to disturb the even tenor of the ordained course.
73
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
But they prove a bar to the novice only; the adept
brushes them aside and bares the string, so that the mel
ody he would play rings out to the world pure and clear."
He paused.
" It certainly is a wonderful life, this of ours," com
mented Len with a sigh, settling himself to greater com
fort against the bole of the pine against which he re
clined.
" There is another mode of communication open to
those less sensitively organized, " Waring continued a
moment later. " I mean that of the trance. The medium
enters at will into a trance state during which the soul
withdraws, and the spirit or control from beyond the
borderland desirous of communicating with earth takes
possession of the thus temporarily-vacated body, and
through the use of the everyday organ of speech makes
his or her wishes known. It is quite a common means."
" So I understand. But tied down to the ranch as I
am, opportunity has never been offered me to investi
gate upon my own account," said Len, who seemed
greatly interested in the discussion.
" It is an unsatisfactory means, I should say," I inter
rupted, " since the medium, as I am told, carries away
no impressions of the after life."
" True. Or they are, at least, very dreamlike. But,
by way of analogy, what impression of life as we see it
can a babe be supposed to carry with it after a so
journ here of an hour or less? It takes time for im
pressions to grow to the point of retention."
" Impressions are instantaneous."
" They are comprehensible only where order exists.
And order exists only in the mind capable of understand
ing the principles underlying the life of which those im
pressions are a part."
74
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
" But you seem to forget that there is still a differ
ence," laughed the younger Ferral. " We are not babes."
Waring laughed.
" What did I attempt to impress upon you earlier in
my argument? That things mundane are comparative
only. The mentally matured stage upon earth is the in
fantile in the world to come."
" Have you had experience along these lines ? " asked
the half-breed, interested.
" I have," returned Waring simply. " Several times
I have been more than ordinarily successful in results
while acting the role of a medium."
"And here I ve been chumming with you for years
without the least intimation that your inclinations ran
toward this outlandish channel, Roger," said Sutcliff,
with serious mien, eyeing our friend comprehensively.
" It is a phase of my life I say but very little about,
knowing the popular prejudice. That nearest the heart
of man is generally more or less in the nature of a re
ligion, and is not to be bared to the jeering eyes of the
crowd."
" I understand," I returned. " You might then have
scruples against a semi-public display of your powers.
I was about to suggest a seance in camp. The con
ditions are certainly all you could wish."
Waring hesitated, and for a moment it appeared that
a refusal was in order. But all were in favor of the
project, one half for the diversion it would bring, the
more serious-minded hoping for a successful issue of
the experiment. Waring succumbed.
By a motion he requested the hand of his nearest
neighbor on both his right and left, by a further signal
signing the others to complete the chain thus begun.
75
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
So we formed a ring about the fire, which had con
siderably abated from its first fiery fury. Even the
half-breed was persuaded to join, though somewhat
against his will.
As I have said, one half had entered into the game
for the fun that was to ensue, and with the spirit of
mischief uppermost, and this spirit manifested itself
quite freely in the earlier stages of the experiment. But
soon the serious portion of us affected it, and a hush
of expectancy fell upon all. For a few moments no
result followed, and we were nerving ourselves for
the disappointment to come when a slight, involuntary
twitching passed from the one to the other of us. It
was very like a light battery shock. Others in quick
succession followed. Turning my eyes curiously upon
Waring I found his closed, and the muscles of his face
working convulsively.
Suddenly he cast the hands he was holding from him
with an unintentional violence, rose quickly to his feet,
and, with head erect and hand moving in imposing ges
ture, two traits wholly foreign to him, he poured
forth in stentorian tones, and in a language unknown
to me, a volume of excoriating invective upon the half-
breed. For several minutes this continued, each moment
growing in dramatic power, the entire party of us firing
with the terrible strength manifested in tone and move
ment. Then he suddenly ceased, trembled spasmodi
cally, and then slowly opened his eyes like one just
awakening from sleep.
" If you can make sense of that," he remarked quietly,
pressing his eyelids with his finger-tips as he settled
back to the normal man, "you can do more than I can."
There was a surprised silence for several minutes;
76
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
for with whatever thought we had each approached the
incident which had just closed so strangely and unex
pectedly, there now prevailed but one feeling, and that
was an unshaken faith in the genuineness of it all.
As usual it was Sutcliff who was the first to speak.
" It is a lingo beyond me," he remarked with a shrug
of the shoulder.
"And me," assented the younger Ferral.
" What did you make of it, Faggerty ? " asked War
ing, turning to the frowzled herder of the Ferrals.
Squatted by the fire, his knees in close proximity to
his bearded chin, his fingers tightly interlocked about
his ankles, and his eyes in thought upon the fire, Faggerty
was smoking with more than his usual assiduity. His
ideas of life had just been disturbed by the related inci
dent to their very foundations. For forty years he had
laughed to scorn all thoughts of a life beyond this; had
worshipped with much parade at the shrine of the ma
terial, and more particularly at the shrines of two gods
of his own erecting, Burns and Ingersoll. For like so
many of the thoughtless he had caught but the super
ficial, and had failed to discern the deep spirituality
breathing in the works of at least the former ; it being
a restriction of nature that a man can grasp but so much
of another s nature as he himself possesses and can re
spond to. For the first time since their installation they
trembled upon their pedestals. He smoked on oblivious
of the question that had been put to him.
But a repetition of the appeal awoke him to his sur
roundings.
" Indian." he answered laconically.
I learnt on later inquiry that Faggerty had spent many
years in the mountains, and mingling much with the
77
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
Indians on the Fork as well as elsewhere, he had come
to be master of their language to quite an extent.
" Indian ? " we echoed incredulously.
" Mono," he affirmed with a shake of the head.
" I just caught enough, boys, of the pesky palaver to
satisfy me that I am right," he explained a moment later.
"It was something about a murder committed in these
mountains years ago. But, here; where is the half-
breed? Ask him; he should know."
We turned in a body to the point in the circle where a
moment before our unwelcome guest had stood.
But to our amazement Joe was gone.
CHAPTER VII.
WE CUMB TO THE BUTTE.
WHEN I awoke the next morning it was to find my
ears assailed by a fearful volley of oaths, punctuated at
intervals by another sound, the nature of which in my
then half-stupefied state of mind I failed to recognize.
Raising my head I found the day just breaking and a
hush upon the dusky forest that is simply indescribable.
Excepting the profaning ones mentioned not a sound
broke in upon the silence but the faint, distant roar of the
Black Laurel, which filled all the Basin and yet seemed
in no wise to impinge upon the stillness. I found, too,
a bright fire burning where only the red embers of our
campfire had lain on retiring the night before, and that
the younger Ferral was up and around. More; I found
that the string of expletives came from him, and that
he was most oddly occupied in kicking the only coffee
pot the camp boasted of possessing about its precincts.
"Hello, there, Sam Ferral," I heard Sutcliff shout
from his blankets, intuitively recognizing the danger
threatening his camp-conveniences, and assuming an ex
cited sitting posture, " are you gone demented ? "
The interruption was most timely. With one last
swing of the foot which happily missed its mark,
79
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
Ferral paused, picked up the object of his assaults, held
it up on a level with his eye, and burst into a laugh.
" What a fool man is at best," was his philosophic
comment.
" What on earth was the matter, Sam ?" asked Sut-
cliff, as he now leisurely drew on his boots.
"Matter?" with a slight return of his ire. "Why
the cussed thing toppled over just as the water was at
the point of boiling. Matter enough that, eh ? "
" But say, Sam," spoke up Waring with an exasper
ating sangfroid from another part of camp, where he
lay snuggled cosily in his bed-clothes, " I m surprised
at you, to say the least. A man with your experience
ought to have known better than to set a pot on the apex
of a pyramid of burning sticks."
" Too true," retorted the other. " But do we always
profit by experience? Do we not in fact tempt fate at
every turn? Does the singed moth forever shun the
candle? Nay, are you not a living example to the con
trary yourself? But a short year ago I remember Miss
Rivers giving you the go-by, when you were heart
broken, and lost flesh; and here on your return from
your last term at college we find you as deeply enmeshed
as ever."
There was a hearty laugh at Waring s expense at this.
For where ordinarily reticent about matters affecting
his heart, in an unguarded moment he had let slip
enough of a strange infatuation that possessed him for
a pretty face and form he had had a passing glimpse
of on a crowded street of the City for the boys to build
surmises on that came perilously near the truth.
" That was a great idea of Waring s though," inter
rupted Len Ferral composedly from the warmth of his
80
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
blankets some moments later, his fingers interlocked be
neath his head. " I mean that of returning for another
course. He ll be a civil engineer of note some of these
days, mark my word."
" He ll never be a civil engineer in God s green world,"
affirmed Sutcliff, placing the refilled coffee-pot by the
fire. " He s too uncivil by half. You ve never had him
lay it out to you like a Dutch uncle as I have time and
again or you had not erred so profoundly."
"But it was always with good and sufficient reason,
you will have to allow," laughed Waring.
" Allow hell !"
The thing is," I now interrupted, straining my eyes
to descry if possible the bird across the meadow which
had a moment before suddenly thrilled the morning quiet
with a strain of liquid music, " the thing was in the
carrying out of your idea, Roger. We all have our mo
ments of inspiration, but how few of us ever put into
practice or execution the brilliant suggestions which
sometimes attend such moments."
" I ve an idea," broke in Sutcliff as he deftly turned
a flap-jack over the fire, " that it is time to rise and get
ready for breakfast an idea, while not brilliant, I hope
to see you put into execution."
With a laugh we arose and lounged over the fire to
warm ourselves, watching with pleased eyes the pre
parations for breakfast.
" Come, you ll find soap and towel down by the creek.
Off."
" This," I remarked a moment later, again hanging
over the fire, for the air was sharp at that early hour,
and rubbing my hands up and down my trousers legs in
my enjoyment, " this is living. Somehow we folks of
81
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
the City hug an idea that the country simply vegetates,
where the truth is that you get the very cream of life.
Now, yonder tints of the rising sun upon the mountain,
are they not enough to please the eye of the most ex
acting? It is simply grand, with that dark stretch of
slumbering forest at its foot."
"And is there not a charm unspeakable," interrupted
the irrepressible Sutcliff, buttering his pan for another
cake, "even in Ballard s snoring, which one can well
imagine would be lost under other surroundings, say a
room ten by twelve? Hey there, Craigie, arise in your
might and glory and come to grub."
Ballard now appeared yawning cavernously, with hair
unkempt and eyes half closed. The temptation to dally
over the fire was not to be withstood, and for some mo
ments, with palms open to the blaze and legs outstretched,
he dodged the rising smoke, now wafted to every point
of the compass in turn by a rising breeze from the Gap.
Being persuaded to perform his morning s ablutions too,
he soon returned, when we all sat down to breakfast.
The sun was just coming into view as we finished.
Then Waring and myself went out into the meadow to
re-stake the horses, leaving Ballard to the tender mercies
of Sutcliff and the younger Ferral, who remained behind
to "clean up camp." On our return we found all in read
iness for the start. A lunch of bread and canned meats
had been prepared by the thoughtful Silas, and the
question now up for decison was that of the distribution
of arms. This, however, was a matter quickly settled.
" I will take my Winchester," said SutclifF as he
strapped his cartridge-belt about him and sheathed the
bowie he was never found without ; "a deer might show
up, or, who knows, a bear. By-the-way, Ballard, have
82
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
you ever seen a grizzly or cinnamon in all his forest glory,
feeding, say, in a manzanita-thicket, or demoralizing an
ant-nest? No? Well, dog on me, if we don t give you
the chance before you return to the stultifying influences
of that cesspool of iniquity, the City. You just follow
us some day; eh, Waring? We will very likely have the
opportunity of showing you some of the footprints he
leaves on the sands of time, if not a sight of old bruin
himself, before the day is over. I once came upon one
that measured fourteen inches across, and the big toe
was off too. Say, talk about sport ! If a good bear-hunt
don t take the cake I give it up. Of all the boys about,
I think Morrow the coolest thing at the business. Here
one morning three years ago he fell in unexpectedly
with a whole family in a tamarack-grown gulch under
the Pin-Cushion. Instead of taking to his heels as any
ordinary man would have done, and I for one would not
have blamed him were it not for the suicide of the move,
Jack gave a whistle of surprise and then began to pump
his Winchester like the very Nick, until the old she-bear
and the two yearlings were done for, and the old he-one
had taken to the brush. That was a morning s sport for
you. Carpenter just delights in telling the story."
Ballard and I took the rifles we had brought with us;
Silas, the old Sharp, and I have no doubt the full com
plement of ammunition which the evening before had been
the subject of so much ironical remark. In addition to
the large Colt s revolver he always carried, Waring con
tented himself with the little twenty-two, as it was light
and he hoped to fall in with a covey or two of mountain
quail or possibly a grouse up on the mountain.
Faggerty had some time before departed into the forest
to intercept his band, which he knew would break camp
83
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
early and work up in our direction, we could in fact at
the moment hear the distant tinkling of the leaders bells,
and we had but to bid adieu to our friends, the Ferrals,
when we stood ready for the start.
The choice of route we left to Sutcliff, and he now led
straight for the mountain. This necessitated a descent
of perhaps half-a-mile into a shadowy canyon, in whose
depths we crossed a stream, the banks of which were
dense with a vegetation almost tropical in its luxuriance.
Then our ascent began. It was gradual enough at first,
lying through an open forest scattered with low-lying
thickets of snow-brush, above which the trunks of the
pines arose in innumerable columns in support of the
sun-kissed canopy overhead.
We moved slowly, Ballard and myself a little in the
lead, yet taking our pace from Sutcliff and Waring, who
were better acquainted with the arduous nature of the
work ahead and were guiding us accordingly.
We had barely travelled a mile when Ballard came to
a sudden halt.
" See there," he whispered hoarsely, turning and point
ing up the mountain-side.
A fine buck was browsing amongst the brush barely a
hundred paces from where we stood. He was as yet un
aware of our advent upon the scene for our approach had
been quiet, and what little air was astir came more from
our right and wafted all scent of our presence away.
Sutcliff s eyes sparkled at the sight and his fingers
twitched nervously about the guard of his rifle. But he
was too much the sportsman not to consider the shot as
individually Ballard s and he now whispered him :
" Here s the chance of your life, Craig. Take a good
aim, not too long, mind you, fire, and he is yours. Dog
84
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
on me if there isn t the finest antlers I ve seen in years."
Ballard turned and raised his rifle. But what was it
that so suddenly possessed him? His frame began to
tremble as in a fit of ague, and the muzzle of his weapon
vacillated in a manner that was remarkable if nothing
more. Try as he would he seemed unable to regain con
trol of himself. Finally in sheer despair he grounded his
rifle and turned to Sutcliff with features ashy pale, and
with the perspiration exuding from every pore.
" For Heaven s sake," he cried in desperation, "you
shoot, Sutcliff."
But Sutcliff was in the midst of a spasm of uncontrol
lable laughter, and before he could recover himself suffi
ciently to follow the request the buck had taken the alarm
and was bounding away over the brush and through the
woods at his best speed, so that the parting shot he gave
him, while a good one, had no other effect than that of ac
celerating his departure.
Sutcliff now seated himself upon a rock and, with rifle
across his knees, indulged in another fit of laughing, a fit
so prolonged and hearty that from ashen-pale Ballard s
face turned a shame-faced red.
" What the devil was the matter," inquired the poor
fellow. " I swear I never felt that way before."
" No, no ; I guess not," laughed Sutcliff, stamping his
foot in his glee, " no, I guess not. Why? Because you
never met a buck before among his natural surroundings,
boy. Dog on me if I ve had as much fun in a year ! No,
no, Craigie. If ever you return to that centre of fraud
and machination, the City, tell the inquiring public that
among the ailments of your younger days you once had
a touch of buck-ague."
We resumed our way. At the distance of about three
85 f
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
miles from our point of starting the trail grew steep and
rugged. The straight reddish-purple trunks of the sugar-
pines and the brownish-grey of the firs, between which
we had many charming foregrounds presented us in the
sappy greens of the low deciduous growth, still retained
their magnificent proportions, but the ground was more
broken, the streams sang in sharper keys, and tumbled
boulders began to strew the slopes at frequent intervals.
Wild cherry intertwined the snow-brush, and here and
there a phlox or lupin gave a dash of color to the green
tangle of fern and wild thyme growing among the rocks,
or carpeting the dim trail which we were pursuing.
A change in vegetation due to altitude is much more
quickly to be observed than when that change is due to
difference of latitude only. In other words, we might
pass over several degrees of latitude without noting the
differences in the flora of a country that a thousand feet
of altitude might bring. So, when after half-an-hour
more of climbing we came to another bench, an even
more marked change became apparent. The forest scat
tered, and the trees lost in size. Boulders, gray, rounded,
and streaked a thousand shades of tawny browns and
yellows by the percolation of the waters of early spring,
strewed our path on every side. Scrub-oak and chinka
pin, graced with an occasional clump of blue-brush
another of that extensive family the so-called California
lilacs choked out the more valuable underbrush of the
lower levels.
Here I noticed for the first time that our little party
had been deserted by Silas, how far back on the trail I
had no way of telling. It proved, however, as I made
the desertion known, a matter of unconcern to both War
ing and Sutcliff, who were better acquainted with the
ways of this human oddity.
86
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
" Don t waste a thought upon him," was Waring s lone
comment, as he was about to resume the trail. " He is
no tenderfoot."
Here, too, a moment later Sutcliff came upon the signs
of a doe, and while he and Ballard went reconnoitering,
Waring and myself continued slowly on our way.
As we skirted the side of a wooded canyon that lay a
thousand feet below us and re-echoed to the subdued
roaring of a hidden torrent, and while clambering over
some brush which opposed our way, Waring s mountain-
trained ear caught the note of alarm of a mountain-quail
just ahead. Signing me to silence and immobility we
awaited its appearance. In a moment we were greeted
by the sight of the mother-bird in the lead of her callow
brood, clucking and making as much ado as could well
be, the male bringing up the rear. The ground upon
which we stood was the disintegrated granite, very yield
ing beneath the feet, and I found it necessary to cling
with one hand to the scrub-oak in the clefts of some
rocks in order to maintain my balance, holding my rifle
with the other. In the attempt to secure a better foot
ing beneath him prior to picking off the male bird, the
stones beneath Waring s feet gave way; the mother-
quail gave one quick note of alarm, and while the par
ent-birds took swift flight, the chicks on the instant, and
as if by magic, disappeared in the low-lying brush.
" It is just as well so," said Waring with a sigh of
relief. " It was really too interesting a sight to dis
turb."
Then turning and pointing down the canyon he
said :
" It was in here that we came upon the body of old
Wohipa, the Indian; that is, a little higfier up, just under
87
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
that rock you see projecting there, and over which he
seemed to have been hurled."
We now clambered through an opening upon our
right, and having regained the crest once more fell in
with Sutcliff and Ballard, whose reconnoitering likewise
had been in vain.
Rock formations now became the dominant feature
of the landscape. Our path lay over the comparatively
open surface of a ridge or rib of the mountain which
led clean to the summit. Where the sterile soil lay in
sufficient depth to sustain life at all, it generally com
prised the oak-brush so often referred to, chinkapin,
and a dwarfed manzanita, thickets of which we met acres
in extent. Here and there a bunch-grass would sparsely
dot the white, blinding surface of the open stretches,
varied occasionally by the addition of a mariposa lily, a
yellow lupin, or a rose-colored fox-glove. The timber
scattered more and more, and its now gnarled appear
ance spoke eloquently of the battle for a bare existence
that was being waged here through the centuries with
the frost geni that hover about the mountain throughout
the year. The wind grew cold and penetrating, and
chilled me to the bone. And as for the silence, ever
growing deeper as we advanced, it here reached the point
of savage brooding, and its effect upon the general
spirits was plainly in evidence, for not even Ballard had
a word to say.
It was now about ten o clock, with still a thousand
feet and more of an ascent ahead before we could reach
the crest and the burning pine, then being fanned into
living flame and plainly visible from our point of obser
vation. Neither Ballard nor myself had partaken as
heartily of breakfast as had the others of the party be-
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
cause of ignorance of what lay before us, and of the
necessity that exists of laying in very often in anticipa
tion of an appetite as of appeasing any existing one.
This fact, coupled with the bracing atmosphere we were
inhaling and the strenuous exercise we were under
going, had developed in us a ravenous hunger, whose
incipiency we had felt already some miles in the rear.
We now made our wants known.
We withdrew to a copse of young fir in a depression
on our right where a little meadow disclosed itself, and
here, seated upon the brown carpet of needles, we
opened the lunches and fell to with the heartiest gusto.
A very few minutes sufficed for their disappearance,
when, first quaffing of an icy stream that gurgled near,
and where I gathered a few scarlet columbines among
the whitened rocks, we once more stood in readiness,
this time for the final spurt.
As I have said, the greater portion of our way so far
had been up a sinuous rib which led clear to the sum
mit of the mountain. But our further progress up it
at this point was debarred by a sudden increase in pitch
bordering on the perpendicular, and the interposition
of a rocky surface, hard and polished as a mirror. The
only feasible route visible from our point of view was
up the moraine in which we found ourselves. And
that, to say the least, was far from promising. It
seemed about equally to consist of brown brush-oak and
loose fragments of white granite, both of which were
lost in the upper reaches in drifts of glistening snow.
To add to the danger this debris was not made up of
the rounded boulders which hitherto had strewn our
path, but was sharply pointed and edged, just as it had
slid from the walls on either side when it became de-
89
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
tached through the action of the frost or some other ele
mental agency. The prospect was enough to dampen
the ardor of the best of us.
Yet strange to say such was not the effect upon us.
On the contrary we felt ourselves buoyed by a hope
we could not understand, in such utter disproportion
was it to the task we had in hand.
" Courage," cried Waring, springing forward, rifle
in hand, his voice ringing with an unwonted excitement
and his eyes aglow with a strange light, courage,
boys. We do not return until our feet have touched
yonder summit. Follow me: I will show you a way."
It is said that distance lends enchantment to the view.
How then when distance fails in its office of robing the
scene in gorgeous hues, as in this case, and you come
face to face? We found the way even worse beset than
we had anticipated. Every step of Waring s forward
I expected to be his last and a retour inevitable. But
strangely enough every step forward, whether to the
right or to the left, was ever the right one. Was he
being led by an unerring instinct, or by some unseen
hand? A thousand feet thus of the most stupendous
climbing, over obstacles enough to discourage the
boldest, and we gained the lower edge of the field of
snow. Here our progress again became comparatively
easy as it sustained our weight with ease. A few mo
ments more and, worn but triumphant, we stood upon
the highest pinnacle of the Butte.
90
CHAPTER VIII.
THE ENCHANTED NOOK AND ITS TENANT.
UPON the summit we dropped our arms and sank ex
hausted upon the ground. For fully five minutes, too
occupied in our momentary discomfort of body, not a
word passed between us.
But it was not in the nature of Sutcliff to remain
silent long.
" Well ? " he questioned as he sat silhouetted against
the blue of the sky, the broad brim of his hat hugging
his temple, and his crimson neckerchief flying in the wind.
"What do you think of it? Vegetating? Well, I
reckon not. There s no denying one thing, however,
whatever other thoughts may come, and that is that it is
blamed hot work. But no matter. If a search of
health, mountain air, and scenery has brought you here,
my friends, behold them in exhaustless supply before
you."
It was indeed so. Charms the most varied, and, there
fore, the more indescribable, lay around us in a superb
panorama. Far below to the west stretched the dark
sea of bristling pine which that morning and the day
before we had traversed. Beyond, according as they
were near or far, the broken ridges of the foothills arose
9 1
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
in shades of smoky blue; and yet further away, the
smiling, straw-tinted plains veins of the palest blue
marking their wooded streams, stretching far to the
north and south; and to the west, a hundred miles as
the crow flies, to where a dash of the faintest gray
marked the hills of the Pose, the Cantua, and the two
Panoches.
To the east the scene was of another type and even
more imposing. The broad, deep canyon of the Chi-
quita there swept down in a dark, majestic curve to
where the titanic walls of the Kaiser directed it into the
gorge of the San Joaquin. In the haze of the further
distance rose the serrated peaks of the Jackass, and the
sublimer Minarets. But I fail most signally to describe.
The spot upon which we stood was a very wilderness
of granite cut into many fantastic shapes by wind and
weather. But little timber stood around and that little
was much gnarled and distorted. One of these monarchs,
dishevelled, and blasted years before by a lightning
stroke, stood in the last stages of decay. The largest
there, and black and grim, it was fast being consumed
by fire. As I watched it I saw Sutcliff beneath its
flaming branches reconnoitering, but I felt myself too
fatigued at the moment to bear him immediate company.
But a hail from him brought us instantly to our feet.
" There is something peculiar about this," he explained
on our approach. " This tree has been fired intentionally
and with the express view of attracting attention.
Whether ours or not I can not, of course, say ; but some
one s."
" What makes you conclude this ? " asked Ballard.
"A process of simple reasoning. For instance here
are impressions made by feet other than our own. And
92
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
note, they come from a certain point on the brow of the
mountain, and return as directly to it. There has been
no hesitation. Now, what are we to conclude from this
simple fact but that the party came for a fixed purpose,
that purpose to fire the tree, and why fire the tree if not
to attract attention ? "
" Your reasoning is good," returned Waring, serious
ness in his voice.
" The question remains, whose attention was it he
wished to attract ? "
" I can not say, of course. But the fact as indubitably
remains that he has attracted ours."
Sutcliff stood in deep thought for a moment.
" Come," he said with a sudden arousing, " there is
but one way out of the puzzle. Let us follow the foot
prints."
He shouldered his rifle and slowly followed the im
pressions to the eastern brow. Here he paused.
They are quite fresh," he remarked ; "made since the
storm."
Then he began the descent. It was by no means as
arduous as had been the ascent up the western slope.
Though nearly as steep, there seemed here more of a
natural pathway; often, it is true, leading over rocky
faces and spurs on the mountain, where the trail became
labyrinthine and we lost the guiding impressions for the
time, always, however, to come upon them again on
the softer ground that invariably opened up beyond.
Halfway down Sutcliff came to a sudden stop.
" Say, am I mistaking, or is there the slightest pos
sible film of smoke rising from that timbered bench be
low us ? "
We gazed intently.
93
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
" You are not," spoke up Waring. " There certainly
is a smoke rising."
"And that glimmer of blue among the pines ? Dog
on me, it s a lake. There must be someone camped there.
Come on, boys," he now shouted, wildly bounding down
the declivity at the imminent risk of a broken limb,
followed by Ballard. Waring and myself, while quite
as excited, followed with greater care. In a very few
minutes we were at the base of the incline, and once
there we looked around.
It was one of the most beautiful nooks my eyes have
ever rested upon, comprising a flat of some six or seven
acres in the shape of a perfect horseshoe and over
shadowed by as fine a forest as ever stood, in the cool
of whose overhanging branches a breeze stirred into a
gentle and seductive life a luxuriant tangle of ferns
and thimbleberry. On three of its sides arose great
granite domes whose clefts, and the miniature canyons
between, also, were densely wooded with the pine, the
fir and the aromatic cedar. On the fourth the straight
side, it lost itself in an abrupt drop into the canyon
of the Chiquita, affording there a vista beyond of dis
tant peaks in gray and white that was sublime.
But what surprised us most was to find a little lake
gemming its bosom.
" I always suspected the existence of such a body in
here though from the lay of the country," said Sutcliff,
lost in admiration.
It was but shortly past the hour of noon, yet the
shadow of the mountain above us already fell across the
glade in slowly-lengthening points. In another half-
hour the entire place would lay beyond the reach of the
sunlight.
94
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
" Jove, but it s a pretty spot," ejaculated Sutcliff.
" But, say, where did that smoke come from we saw
from above ? "
An interested search was instituted, and our surprise
was complete when after a short quest we came upon
a small log-cabin with a shake roof, an open doorway,
and with a pale smoke issuing from a chimney rudely
built of sticks and stones, at the foot of the western
dome, where a little stream of crystal clearness sang
its way over a pebbly bed.
" Is the place haunted do you think," exclaimed Sut
cliff lightly as he led the way to the open door, where
he knocked upon the sill of the threshold.
No answer came from within, but a chipmunk scur
ried by us with a chirp of affright and a spasmodic flip
of his tail.
" May we enter then ? Silence gives consent."
Without more ado he entered and we followed. All
was dark within. But a sunbeam entering through a
chink in the wall showed where an opening had been cut
for the double purpose of letting in the light and air.
This Sutcliff, the sense of mystery growing upon his
nerves, hurriedly opened, and by the aid of the flood
of sunlight that entered we looked around us. It was
a chamber that was not larger than ten by twelve, and
a fireplace, in which a cedar log lay smoldering, took
up one entire end. A table stood at the other, and
beneath it a rough bench. By the side opposite the
window a cot had been constructed and upon it lay a
man, dead, as the pallor and rigidity of his features
denoted. Yes, dead ; and our surprise was the greater
when in him I recognized my uncle, and Waring the
stranger he had met two years before in the Flats.
95
CHAPTER IX.
ANOTHER STRANGE EPISODE. WE RETURN TO CAMP.
" FOR God s sake let me out of here," exclaimed Sut-
cliff springing for the door.
As you can very well imagine it was a moment of
general mental paralysis, when to receive a suggestion
was to follow it. Mechanically, therefore, it was that
we followed Sutcliff, to stand for some moments in ir
resolution without. And various the emotions that
seized upon us there. Shaken in every fibre of his be
ing, yet holding a steady control over himself through
sheer exercise of will, Sutcliff moved about uneasily,
punctuating every few steps with a perturbed shake of
the head, followed uncertainly in the rear by Ballard,
who trembled like a mountain aspen. Waring, while
silent and pale was at the same time cool and composed ;
and myself felt a vague sense of uneasiness which had
several times that morning, and in varying degrees of
intensity, possessed me, depart and a calm, mild and
warming like a breath of early summer, permeate my
whole being.
I looked around with a sense of elation I had never
felt before. I seemed to see with a preternatural clear
ness. The shadow of the mountain enfolded the floor
of the glade, the crests of the domes and the pines alone
96
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
bathing in the sunlight. The stream by the side of the
cabin rippled softly and unendingly; the breeze of the
afternoon dallied with the tall ferns and the luxuriant
mat of thimbleberry beneath the oaks and buttonwoods on
its broken banks, among whose branches a lone robin
appeared and made the solitude of the place only the pro-
founder by the contrast its occasional song afforded.
The supreme beauty of it all touched me as I had never
been touched before.
Sutcliff went to the brook, and stretched at length
drank of its waters, followed by Ballard.
This has become the mountain of mystery, Waring,"
he remarked on his reapproach, proffering me the goblet
which he had then taken from his pocket, opened and
filled, and which I drained to the last drop. " Old Wo-
lupa first, and now but it s no use talking; it simply
beats my time."
"And mine, too, if the truth is to be told," returned
Waring, passing his hand over his brows as if to restore
a little order to the riot of thought then reigning within.
"And what do you make of this ? " Sutcliff continued
a moment later with a sudden accession of interest,
pointing to a heap of mold which had the appearance
of having just been turned.
We drew nearer. I believe that for a moment Sut
cliff did not quite take in the full significance of the ob
ject, possessed as he was with the thought that it was
the mouth of a shaft. But its careful regularity, and
the thoughtful care with which the walls had been cut
and smoothed, impressed me at once. Tt was a newly-
dug grave. The pick and the shovel that had been em
ployed in its making stood up against the nearest cor
ner of the cabin.
97
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
Sutcliff, with another shake of the head, turned away,
while Ballard mumbled a few words which I interpreted
to mean our immediate departure.
But Waring by this time was again master of himself.
" No," he said firmly ; "not until we have given him
burial. That he wanted such is plain enough, even if
common decency did not demand it. Now, courage and
follow me."
The few moments of respite had done their work of
at least partially restoring the general equilibrium, and we
now entered with an air of conviction to give the room
a closer scrutiny than we had found possible in that
first moment of bewilderment. Several cooking utensils
stood upon the hearth-stone and in the ashes of one cor
ner of the fireplace, while the rough, mud-chinked walls
were hung with various articles of wearing apparel, a
rifle, and several cheap prints in colors. Carpeting the
earth-floor by the cot s side lay the pelt of a great
mountain-lion. Upon the table stood a cup and saucer
just as when pushed backed after their use, a candle
stick with the candle burnt down to the socket, a flute,
some music, paper and writing materials, a diary and
several books. These last took Waring s immediate at
tention. Burke s "On the Sublime and Beautiful,"
Locke s " On the Working of the Human Understand
ing," " The Unity of Truth," and Drummond s " Natu
ral Law" were the titles of a few, and would have given
some insight into the character of the man stretched
there upon his cot had other evidence been wanting.
But intuitively we that is Waring and myself,
seemed to read the whole story. Death to him had been
a welcome and expected guest, for no sign of a struggle
showed upon his countenance or in distortion of body.
98
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
Stretched his length, with the blanket turned down at
the waist, he looked but for the pallor of his features
and the iciness of his touch as if steeped in profound
slumber only. His hands lay loosely interlocked upon
his breast as if at the last moment they had been ex
tended in an embrace until, nerveless, they had fallen
there, never to move again. His countenance wore a look
of unspeakable calm, an air of joy one might almost
say, and which, strangely enough, seemed a reflex of
the emotions which at the moment possessed me, standing
there in his dead presence. In a few words, the final
dissolution had been a release to a soul wearying of its
sojourn in its house of clay.
It took the united efforts of our party to wrap him in
his blanket and lower him into the grave which he had
prepared for himself. Then, with heads bared to the
heavens, and with truly none of that depression of
spirits which so ordinarily accompanies such ceremonies,
we covered him with the cool, moist earth. What a
strange, life-giving sensation was this of ours which
gave us as never before to understand that our friend,
and my uncle, had not died but simply gone before.
And now we come to an occurrence stranger than any
so far recorded. While Sutcliff and Ballard were com
pleting the filling in of the grave, Waring and myself
again re-entered the cabin, this time to inventory its
contents. I had taken down the rifle and had lain it
upon the table with several other articles, intending to
take them with us upon our return, and, with my thoughts
far removed on the strange occurrences of the day, was
fumbling with the diary I have mentioned when a letter
dropped out from between its pages. There was nothing
unusual of course in this, but imagine my surprise and
99
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
stupefaction when, on the point of returning it to its
place of keeping, I found it superscribed to Roger War
ing.
Yes, Roger Waring; and surprises it appeared were
not to cease, dated but two days before; the morning
in short on which we had driven forth from Shepherd s
Rest and not one of us could have told with certainty
just where the evening of that or any of the succeeding
days might have found us. For, as you know, we had
mapped out no itinerary beforehand. We had departed
from the ranch with no particular goal in view, and
most certainly with no intention of climbing this Butte,
yet here was a letter in a secluded nook of a mountain
comparatively little known addressed to one of our party,
and with a certain air of assurance awaiting his com
ing. And he had come; that was the strangest part
of it. And, tracing backward, by what a flimsy chain
of circumstances had he come? It can easily be realized
that the incident threw us into a chaos of thought from
which at the moment there seemed no extricating.
Nor was our bewilderment lessened in any degree
by its text, for it read as follows :
" My young friend :
" Rose, my angel wife, tells me that you and your
friends start this morning on a trip of pleasure for
the mountains. You have no fixed point in view,
but she will guide you to the Basin. To-morrow
you will enter it, and I must climb to the crest of
the mountain and fire the dead pine by which I am
to obtain your attention. When you find me
I will have been dead but a few hours ; yet bury me ;
it is her wish as well as mine to see the poor clay
100
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
she so loved on earth decently laid away beneath
the surface.
" The last duties to the dead completed, you will
take with you my rifle and flute, my books, my diary
and papers. My rifle send to my son, Walter Car-
rington, Pleasanton, Yolo Co. ; my books to Mrs.
Eve Early, Alameda; and my diary and papers to
Ida, Rose breathed to me that your thoughts are
centered in each other, and we are content. My
flute you will retain as a souvenir from one who
sought to do his duty to the world, how imperfectly,
the pages of my diary will tell. Read them, and
may you profit from the lessons they may contain.
" And now adieu. With death between, Rose and
I will still guide, as in life here, the hearts, the
minds and the fortunes of our children.
THOMAS CARRINGTON."
Were these the ravings of a mind gone mad, we
asked ourselves again and again. So much, on the face,
appeared the purest hallucination. Yet it might not well
be, in the face of all the testimony we had had at every
step of that day s strange progress. True, there was
much we did not understand; but is there not much on
the other hand, in this world we do not understand, or
can ever hope to understand? A perusal of the diary
and papers no doubt would afford us light to much that
was enigmatical to us now. But for that we must bide
our time; the present was all too short. With an effort
we gathered the various articles mentioned in the
strange missive to lay them together upon the table.
We had barely finished when Sutcliff entered, followed
by Ballard.
101
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
" Come," he said hurriedly, "we must be off. The sun
is sinking fast and we have a long trail ahead."
Just then he caught sight of our strange array.
" What are you going to do with these ? " he asked.
" Take them with us in compliance with his wishes,"
returned Waring soberly.
" Wishes," echoed Sutcliff ; "whose wishes ? "
" The dead, Carrington s uncle the man you have
just buried. But here, read for yourself."
Roger handed him the note, I will always maintain
for the moment s quiet amusement the study of our
friend s countenance during its perusal would afford
him. But if so his pleasure was short-lived, for Sut
cliff almost immediately began to shake his head as was
his way when sorely perplexed, and returned the writ
ing but half-read, I thought, or at least but imperfectly
understood.
" Here we are, Waring," he remarked in a shame
faced way ; "dog on me if I can make head or tail to it.
I repeat, it beats my time. But we can argue that out on
the trail ; we have no time to waste now."
We distributed the various articles amongst us with
the view of not overburdening any one individual. The
books I divided between Ballard and myself. The flute
Waring un jointed and thrust into the bosom of his shirt.
The diary he, too, retained. Sutcliff was asked to take
the music which Waring desired to preserve also,
and to relieve Waring at times of the rifle, the convey
ing of which in connection with our own over the rough
trail was in truth no small matter. Thus equipped we
stood ready for the return.
Loitering for a few moments, bareheaded, over the
grave I took one last look around. The lake lay smooth
102
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
as a mirror reflecting with a miraculous clearness the
environing pines, and the blue, cloudless ether overhead.
The spot lay by this time in complete shadow, the
domes alone being tipped with the gold of day. To the
east where the sudden shelving into the canyon of the
Chiquita afforded that sublime prospect, through the
hushed atmosphere of the afternoon, the many peaks
beyond arose in pale violet-grays and ochres, half hid in
high, imposing cloudbanks of immaculate white. It was
a scene to fill one with wonder and a veneration of God,
and I fell to conjecturing by what possible chance it was
the hermit had been led to choose a site surrounded by
such incomparable scenic beauty.
Then we started.
The ascent of course we found more fatiguing than
the descent of noon, and the sun was but an hour high,
as Sutcliff asserted, with palm open at arm s length
measuring between the orb and the horizon, when we
gained the summit.
"All s well so far, boys," he said cheerily, for a mo
ment pausing to regain his breath. " If by sundown we
reach the meadow where we lunched to-day, why, the
rest of the way is easy enough. Now then."
He led the way over the snow, following the footprints
of the morning, and our descent began in earnest. It is
unnecessary to go into details. Suffice it to say that
after a struggle of nearly an hour we gained the bench
below just as the sun, a glowing ball of fire, set in a
violet mist over the far Panoche hills. Around us, like
sentinels in glowing bronze, the scattered fir-groups
stood in the white waste of granite ; while above, in the
sunset fires reflected from the west, the field of snow and
the broken walls of the summit burnt rosily. The wind
103
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
of the day had died! away, and the air was hushed and
still, and full it seemed to me of secret life and promise,
fresh as I was from the peace and the beauty and the
hope of that death beyond the mountain. Again it was
beautiful beyond words.
A little further on, in the dimming light of encroach
ing night, I had the good fortune to drop a couple of
mountain quail, and Sutcliff made a remarkably fine shot
at a tree-squirrel. With these additions to our already
wearisome loads we continued on. It was dusk when
we came to the spot where we had seen the deer in the
morning, and thoughts of old Silas and his delinquency
reverted to my mind; and the moon had risen and was
silvering the woods as we crossed the stream at the foot
of the ridge upon which our camp lay and we took up
the final ascent. Ten minutes more and completely
worn after a day of the most astounding character, as
you can well imagine, we reached the meadow, checkered
with a delicate tracery of light and shadow, where our
animals grazed.
104
CHAPTER X.
SUTCLIFF GIVES US EVIDENCE OF THE EXISTENCE OF THE
IX)ST MINE.
WE had hoped to find old Silas in possession and a
smoking meal awaiting us. But instead all was dark ; he
had not yet returned. But Sutcliff, always a man of de
cisive action, hastily divesting himself of his burden, gath
ered a handful of pine-needles and a half-dozen of the
long, resinous cones of the sugar-pine, and in less time
than it takes here to relate it had a fire blazing to cheer
our wearied souls.
Ballard and myself, too fatigued to stand, sank help
lessly upon our blankets, while Waring assisted Sut
cliff in the silent preparation of our simple meal. The
bean-pot was placed by the fire to simmer; some bacon
was sliced very thin and grilled to a delectable crisp
in the skillet, and a full pot of tea set to steep. Then
a fresh supply of fuel was heaped upon the fire, and,
with the dutch-oven containing our bread within easy
reach, we sat down to satisfy the cravings of the inner
man Sutcliff, Waring and myself, for Ballard was al
ready in the arms of Morpheus.
For what seemed to me an unusual period silence
held between us, each confined to his own thoughts. And
105
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
what wonderful food they were that evening can well
be imagined. But before very long, his appetite sated
to some extent, Sutcliff interrupted.
" Say, Carrington, when you and Ballard return to
the City you can without fear of being called pre
varicators, report having passed through the most aston
ishing experience that ever befell mortal in these moun
tains. Or perhaps it would be just as well if neither
of you uttered a word. For no one would believe you,
you know, not even that most credulous creature be
neath the sun, your grandmother. Nor is it to be won
dered at if you will but stop to consider a bit. What
would you think," with an amusing, cynical smile upon
his lips, "of the man who started to fill you with a
story of how he and a party of friends had started forth
upon a certain day for the mountains on a trip of
pleasure; how the next day they had entered the Basin;
how barely had they entered than their attention was
called to a mysterious fire upon the brow of the Butte;
and how quite as a matter of course they resolved
to climb the mountain? They do so; and here led by an
incident natural as life itself they follow the footprints
of a human being and come to one of the swellest little
nooks in all America. A lake ; trees ; a brook of pellucid
clearness ; a view of distant peaks ; a little cabin ; an
open doorway; smoke issuing from the chimney in a
thin flim of blue. Inside a man upon his cot, dead
but two or three hours ; books and papers upon a table,
and among them a letter, a letter addressed to one
of the party and awaiting his coming. He has come;
he opens it, to find what has come to pass foreshadowed
days before. It speaks to him of guardian-angels
plural number, Waring, one in this world and one in
106
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
the world to come. It makes requests; it bequeathes;
it no, no, Carrington, if you value your liberty at
all, keep mum or they ll corral you in some asylum for
the feeble-minded."
This somewhat lengthy comment was delivered with
such an unusual air of seriousness by our companion
that both Waring and myself, knowing his volatile
nature, laughed outright.
" That was not so bad," I remarked admiringly, re
membering how little credit for discernment I had given
him.
" This guardian-angel business," said Waring
thoughtfully, after a few moments of silent reflection,.
" is the one thing I can not understand of all this day s
unusual occurrences. I could understand one well
enough, but two ."
And he shook his head in perplexity.
" And that allusion to thoughts kindlily reciprocated.
Who is Ida, pray ? "
" One of the sweetest of girls, Roger ; my cousin, to
know whom is to love her."
" But you forget that I do not know her."
To this, of course, I could but shrug my shoulders.
"And say," continued SutclifT after still another
pause, and with the air of one who has had an incident
suddenly recalled to mind, "what do you think of this ? "
He placed his metal plate upon the ground beside him
to more readily take from his shirt pocket an article
which he handed to Waring. My^ pulses stopped their
beating. It was a bit of quartz, white and sparkling in
the moonlight with free gold in lacings of generous
proportions, the very counterpart of the specimen I
had seen in Waring s collection.
107
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
"Where on earth did you get this?" asked Roger,
rising precipitately and stepping to the fire for a closer
scrutiny.
" Over the mountain. It is the lost Mine of the
Mono. My blamed head has been so full of that over
shadowing incident of the grave that I quite forgot to
tell you. But while you were in the cabin the last time
I came upon this lying by the cabin door."
" Was there more of it ? " I inquired, as Waring re
sumed his seat and handed over the rock for my in
spection.
" Yes, quite a heap ; enough at least to make plain to
me that the old man was on to the lead."
Yet strangely enough the news brought no elation
with it. In the face of the lesson we had just been
taught in the life of one who so tranquilly could face
death as had my uncle, what were material advantages?
" No doubt," said Waring, referring back to the point
in Sutcliff s first interruption, " his papers will explain
much that is dark and a riddle to us now."
He arose as we echoed the belief and stood over the
fire in profound meditation for a time. Then, still in
reverie, he took up the flute, jointed it, and blew a few
rippling arpeggios. It was soft and mellifluous in tone,
and its music carried dreamily among the fir woods.
The horses for the moment ceased their grazing to
prick up their ears, as was evident from the sudden
cessation of the regular pulsation of the leader s bell ;
and an owl which had at uncertain intervals disturbed
the quiet of the night with its weird hootings, paused
to listen. He then played a few old and well-known
melodies mostly in the slower movements, and just
suited to the moods we were in.
1 08
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
Whether owing to extraordinary qualities in the in
strument or that Waring found himself particularly
inspired, hours passed unheeded, and the mid of the
short summer night drew near. I remember I dozed
over the coals. When I awoke to my surroundings
it was to find Silas standing over me, a hand upon my
shoulder. At easy length on the opposite side of the
fire lay Sutcliff in profound slumber, with Waring
squatted upon the ground beside him still playing, the
arm supporting the flute resting upon his knee, and his
eyes cast dreamily upon the flickering embers. My awak
ening appeared to break the spell that was upon him,
for he rose to slowly put the instrument away; a mo
ment later returning and arousing Sutcliff before the
dews which were falling about the meadow should chill
him. I crept to my own blankets, and without wait
ing to disrobe stretched myself in luxurious ease be
neath them. And so, with a strange comingling of
visions of Naomi, the nook in the mountain, and the
placid face of my dead uncle, the few remaining night-
hours passed away.
109
PART II.
The Mystery Solved
CHAPTER XI.
WE RETURN TO THE BASIN.
WITH the morning came a change in our program.
I returned to the plains, and Waring, as my host and
entertainer, accompanied me; first promising the three
we left behind that he would return the moment he had
seen me safe to the station and aboard the train that
was to bear me north to break the news of my uncle s
death to his family. But at Oro Fino, acting no doubt
upon a suggestion from somewhere, for flower, bird
and breeze held missions for him always, he decided to
accompany me further; even to my cousin s home; feel
ing, and quite rightly too, that his position in the matter
was rather that of principal, and that that fact should
rob of intrusion whatever of this characteristic his de
cision might under other circumstances have been at
tended with. So at the point named he wrote a hasty
note apprising Sutcliff and his companions of his sud
den change of mind, and entrusted it to the care of a
passing teamster, with instructions to forward it by
Indian messenger from the Fork.
From the ladies at the ranch our story met with much
astonishment, not to say open incredulity. With Ida it
was different. Hers is the temperament of a mystic,
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
and it became apparent at once that there had been no
secrets between father and daughter. At her home
quite a little surprise lay in store for us when it devel
oped that my cousin was no other than the cherished
idol my friend Waring had been worshipping in secret
for a year and more: the chance passerby upon one of
the streets of the City, the fleeting glimpse of whose
bright eyes and attractive person had made such a last
ing impression upon his susceptible nature.
I remember on our arrival at the house being shown
into the music room, the servant then disappearing in
search of her mistress. We presented no cards and had
mentioned no names, it being my wish, for reasons of
my own, to hide our identity for the moment ; so that
she had no knowledge, unless intuitive, of our prox
imity.
Ida was my favorite cousin and a girl to be proud of.
She had all the beauty and the certain elegance of her
mother ; the same unfathomable blue eyes ; the light
hair over a brow, high, and as smooth and pure as
marble; the same clear-cut profile; the same lithe form,
whose slightest movement somehow always suggested
to me something that was higher than earth. To be
frank, it was rather a proud moment for me to be able
to introduce so much grace as kin of mine ; to say noth
ing of the satisfaction I felt on the other hand of blaz
oning Waring s many commendable qualities to my
cousin.
T recognized her light footstep in the hall, and the
next moment she stood in the doorway. At the sight of
me she began to tremble from head to foot, and clutched
wildly at the door-frame for support. For a moment
T could not understand her distress, and the next my
114
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
attention was taken to other things. For at the sound
of her approach Waring had turned, a movement that
became a start of surprise, and which recalled Ida to
herself, and to the fact that we were not alone.
That she on her part recognized Waring, and with
pleasure, she acknowledged by a heightening color, and
the smile of welcome which lit up her blue eyes as he
bowed over her extended hand. As if by a miracle all
the fears of that first moment had disappeared. But it
was for a moment only.
" You have come," she said an instant later, with a
slight return of her pallor, her eyes reading mine,
" you have come to tell me that my father "
" Is at peace," I ended for her, feeling that she ex
pected the worst.
She gave a quick cry of despair and was about to
fall. I made a move to support her but Waring anti
cipated me, caught the fainting form and bore it gently
to a couch. I went out of the room in search of a re
storative. When I returned he was down on one knee
by her side pushing back with a lingering touch the
straying films of hair, and watching with concern for
the return of the rose-flush to cheek and brow which
was to tell of her return to consciousness as well. In
the look which he turned upon me there was something
which told me that he was on the eve of a better under
standing of Sutcliff s allusion to guardian-angels in the
plural number.
For reasons made plain by the foregoing, his visit
North was prolonged much beyond his first intention ;
so that when at last he did return it was to find that the
mountain party had beaten him in by several days. Of
that party, I found out later, none had in the interim
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
returned to the nook in the mountain. Horses, I knew,
could not have drawn Ballard there (gold might have,
but Sutcliff had kept the secret of his find from him) ;
and Silas had met with a knowing smile and shake of
the head every detail of that day s adventure, until Sut
cliff had given up in disgust and pique. As for making
the attempt alone, the thought of the danger of that
trail, and the solitude of the glen with its deserted cabin
and rounded mound, somehow did not seem to place the
idea in a particularly pleasing light to him. Upon his
return Waring at once hunted up his friend and arranged
for a return at the earliest possible moment.
For a time it looked as if fate was to intervene a
finder to prevent the contempleted move. Duties that
were not to be cast lightly aside demanded their atten
tion from the first. There was first of all the annual re
arranging of the camps for the better occupancy of the
various flocks, the period of whose return from the
mountains was now fast approaching; broken panels
to repair; corrals to erect; wooden tanks and long lines
of leaky watering-troughs to caulk ; horse-powers to oil
and otherwise put in order, and the thousand and one
other duties which go to make up the day of a busy
stockman. Then came the fall shearing with its fort
night of pandemonium and confusion, followed by the
half-yearly dipping; and then an unexpected group of
visitors which had to be taken back into the hills for a
week s quail shoot. In short, October found the spot
still unvisited, and the site of the mine as much a mys
tery as ever. Then came the autumn rains.
In fact it was not until the spring of the following
year that we found the opportunity so long and ardently
looked for, Waring in the meantime paying another
116
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
visit to the home of my cousin. That was the year 1884.
If you are an old timer you should easily recall how very
wet and late was that spring of 1884. I remember I ar
rived the first week in June in response to an urgent re
quest from Waring to join him, and for three weeks
was rain-bound at Shepherd s Rest. Not that the fact
annoyed me. Up to that time those were the happiest
three weeks of my life. For Naomi was there and the
intervals between showers were passed in spirited rides
over the plains, and in visits to the Table Mountain,
where we studied the flowers together, and watched the
piles of white cloud and the great spaces of limpid blue
between, chase in waves of sunshine and shadow across
the broad, open valley at our feet, taking in on their way
the dark clump of gums of the ranch, and the towering
windmill, finally to loose themselves over the rounding
tops of the more distant hills. And when the rain fell
we hung in sweet tete-a-tete over the piano at the dusky
end of the low-ceilinged room, where a fire smouldered
on the hearth, more to cheer by its presence than to
rob the air of any sharpness, paying heed to neither
time nor tide. It was the last of June, and the mullion
by which Roger had his easel and sat at his work, wholly
oblivious of our presence, was wide open in welcome to
the season. It was all settled in those few weeks. Mrs.
Waring was most kind and motherly; Roger, himself
in the heaven of his new-found love, most considerate.
If ever the course of love was made to run smooth it
was ours.
When at last the weather cleared for the summer and
the last of the ewes and lambs had departed for the
mountains, Waring made his final arrangements for the
oft-postponed visit to the scenes of the past summer s
117
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
adventure. On this occasion, unlike the other, we
started from the ranch, the three of us, with pack and
saddle-animals; and instead of the wagon-roads we took
the trails which everywhere seemed to cut through the
hills, and all of which were equally familiar to the in
stinctive intelligence of Sutcliff. As before, the first
night out we camped on the Fork, the next day enter
ing the Basin. On the Lip we paused for a view of the
Butte, the cynosure, of course, of all eyes. From top to
base it was cloaked in snow.
" It is quite evident that we can not make the riffle
there," said Sutcliff quietly, guiding his horse to the
trail and beginning the easy descent into the gently-de
clining, saucer-shaped depression. " We must go by
way of the Gap. You say there is a trail entering from
there, do you not, Waring ? "
" Yes."
And instead of stopping to encamp upon the verge of
the Cherry-Creek Meadows we passed on beyond some
distance to where a small side-hill or "hanging" meadow
offered the sought-for horse-feed, and there unpacked,
in the near vicinity of the Gap.
" It must have been in here that Silas killed the buck
last summer which Ballard, you remember, roused from
his feeding," said Waring, pausing for a moment in the
work of unpacking to look about him.
I laughed quietly at the recollection.
" Yes," returned Sutcliff with a show of severity.
"And not content with killing the only buck we met
upon the trip added insult to injury by returning to
civilization with three cartridges to his name."
" He only had four to begin with I remember."
Sutcliff shook his head affirmatively.
ITS
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
"And you? " I asked, curious for a reply.
" Love noise and bluster too much to have fared as
well."
We pitched our tent, and about sunset went up into
the Gap for a view of the far mountains. Strewn with
the needles and the pollen of the pines, much snow still
lay piled in the shadow of the fir-copses and in the brush-
entanglements, from which little rills of water crossed
our path at every few steps, softening the ground to
that unpleasant consistency that we sought the higher
and more sterile slopes to pass over.
" We ll never get through here to-morrow with the
horses," said Sutcliff, pausing in the climb to survey the
conditions. " We ll have to skirt the ridge still higher
up where the stony nature of the soil will prevent our
miring."
"We ll do better than that," returned Waring; "we ll
simply leave the horses behind and go it afoot."
From the Gap the view beyond was the one I so well
remembered seeing from the Butte s top, only here it
was more on a level with the eye; against a matchless
sky of turquoise the serrated ridges of the Minarets,
very white and very pure in the snow-robes of winter,
and
" Bathed in the glories of the glowing west."
Below, the feathered ridges leading to and down be
tween the two forks of the Chiquita stood out dark and
clear in the translucent blue of mountain shadow ; their
beauty a little higher up and nearer at hand heightened
by the deeper tones of a picturesque group of dishevelled
firs on a jutting crag. The air everywhere was rever
berant with the rush of waters, the only sound it seemed
to break in upon the silence. Not a breath was there
119
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
to pulse into the soul-stirring music of the mountains
their great aeolian harps, the pines; not the chirp of a
bird, the first fore-runner of its kind, nor the buzz of
an insect. The quiet of death itself hung about. But
as we stood the sharp yelp of a coyote came to us with
a startling clearness from some aspens just below, to be
repeated at intervals and at growing distances until lost
to the sense.
Returned to camp we felt ourselves rather fortunate
in coming upon a pitchy log, fortunate I say where all
the fallen timber reeked with wet, by the aid of which
we started a rousing fire. For while there was some
thing of the promise of spring in the air to buoy the soul,
there was also the nip of frost which made the material
man seek the shelter and warmth of an overcoat and
the cheer of a fire. Besides there was no moon. The
night grew dark, thin films of vapor hiding the stars ;
and dancing shadows, which in the overwhelming silence
of the place grew uncanny as the night wore on and our
story progressed, filled the timber just beyond the circle
of light, forming a blurry blackness momentarily pene
trated by an occasional flicker of our fire to the point
even of at times outlining in lurid colors the forms of
our horses on the mountain side above us.
And seated by that fire Waring gave us for the first
time the story of the lost mine in its relation to the life
of its latest discoverer.
1 20
CHAPTER XII.
BEGINS THE TALE OF THE LOST MINE.
" I NEVER heard of a like case in all my days," Sut-
cliff remarked, with the relieved sigh of one who returns
to earth after a flight in fancy to unwonted heights.
Clad in his corduroys, and pipe in mouth, he crouched
at one end of the burning logs to escape the smoke,
which as it rose clung close in indecision for a moment,
to be swept the next in a dissipating cloud into the en
gulfing blur of the woods below by the air-current from
the Gap.
" Ah, yes ;" said Waring, " such love is indeed rare. It
was one of heaven s marriages. You have heard of
such?"
Sutcliff nodded.
" But then he was always of, I will not say a melan
choly, but of a spiritual frame of mind," continued War
ing, "and inclined to idealize every relationship of life.
That may, perhaps, account for some of its vehemence."
He paused as if expecting a reply. But none came.
" No matter," he resumed once more. " The fact re
mains that his life was wrapped up in hers, so that when
death came to claim its own, only the shell of him, so
to speak, was left behind."
121
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
I made a motion as if to interrupt him; but he con
tinued quietly, his eyes in abstraction upon the fire, not
noting my gesture.
" Not that he was wanting in faith, men of his turn
of mind seldom are. To put the matter simply, the ties
of earth were the stronger for the moment. To use a
term of the sea, he dragged his anchor. Like a derelict
he roamed the country with burro and pack aimlessly,
indifferently, hopelessly. It was five or six years ago
that he appeared in this neighborhood for the first time,
and quite by accident fell in with old Gray at the Flats.
Now, old Gray, though he cohabits with a squaw, is a
man it seems of superior education. He is well-read,
and what is more to the point has done "much thinking
along independent lines. The philosophies are his partic
ular hobby. At any rate the quaint character of the deaf
old mountaineer pleased the fancy of your uncle, and at
Gray s urgent solicitations the homestead on the moun
tain-side was made the centre of his peregrinations here.
" For reasons at once obvious its position on one of
the most frequented trails of the Sierra for one the
little clearing is more or less an Indian rendezvous.
And from there it is but an hour s ride to the Fork and
its rancherias. Curious, he fell in with the Indians
there, and shortly became more or less a nomad himself.
For in his then state of mind the true relationship of
things had lost some of its proportions. Where in the
past he had given thought to only the more important,
now the trivial excited his interest quite as much.
Among other things he fell to studying his aboriginal
friends, their manner of thought, their aims, their
language, and their lore.
"And here for the first time he came upon the story
122
The Lost Mine of the Mono,
of the lost mine. The romance of it all, wound up as
it was in the gossamer of a thousand details, had pos
session of him from the first. In his trailings through
the mountains his eyes grew to live only for the pros
pect that in the end was to lead him to its discovery.
Upon the back stoop of the little hut in the grey of the
mountain twilight, and as the moon topped the ridge
above, all the philosophic discussions in the end reverted
to the one subject always uppermost in his mind. Even
his hours of sleep were not free from thoughts of it,
for it was in his dreams that all the vain hopes and
yearnings of the day found realization, and he exulted
in the possession of the mine s untold wealth. The
search became a pitiful, while altogether harmless, mania
with him. He became the inseparable friend of the old
chief, the herder once in my father s employ, and as time
passed on won upon the friendship and esteem of others
of the tribe, man, woman and child.
But all to no purpose. All were bound to secrecy;
at least so it seemed to him, for no one could be found
to divulge a word that would afford him a clue to the
location of this fabled mine. Then accident gave him
the key. Seated one morning it was the day after his
annual return late one spring, gun in hand upon a big,
rounded rock overlooking the brush thickets under the
Figure 7 upon the one side, and the tumbled course of the
Black Laurel upon the other, a dark, insignificant
speck in that vast expanse of sky and mountain mapped
out in the heat and haze of a mid-summer day, he
was recalled to himself by the sudden report of a rifle
close at hand, followed by others in quick succession,
and by half-stifled cries for help. Springing from the
rock he hastened in the direction indicated, and came
123
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
just in time to put a bullet into the heart of a great
cinnamon engaged in deadly combat with a man. That
man was the old chief. This incident turned the tide in
his favor. It bore down the last vestige of racial re
straint between them. Carrington felt he had the red
man at his mercy, and that he might command anything
he possessed.
"And white-man-like he chose the secret of the lost
mine. Great as was the call put upon him there was no
hesitation on the part of the Indian. The mystery of
the location was to be given him. And to this end one
morning while the stars were paling in the east, and an
ebbing moon cradled in a few fleecy clouds hung low
in the flushing sky, they quietly stole forth from the
rancheria on the Fork, followed by the bayings of the
startled dogs of the tribe. On the way, in the light of
the early morning, they stopped at Gray s, where Car
rington told in triumph of their mission. Harmless
enough, but unhappily for all concerned the old man s
son, Joe the half-breed, a fellow with an unreasoning
hatred of everything white, coupled to an avarice that
knew no bounds, overheard. You know the man."
We nodded, not wishing to interrupt with a word the
thread of a narrative so graphically told.
" This man resolved if possible to frustrate their plans.
But how? To harm a hair of Carrington s head was
Imt to invite trouble upon himself at the hands of the
whites, and was of course a thing to be avoided. Be
sides, Carrington was his father s one intimate friend,
and read his Joe s, very soul whenever they met;
which fact bore heavily upon the superstitious streak in
him. The plan the. least resultant of danger to himself
was to kill the old chief traitor he called him to nerve
124
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
himself to the deed, before the purpose of their visit was
accomplished; for he knew of the indifference of the
whites usually to the shedding of blood where that blood
was that of a so-called inferior people. So when they
started again he followed in secret upon their trail with
murder in his heart. And well up on the mountain,
while Carrington had gone somewhat ahead, he stole
upon the full-blood, buried his knife in his back, and
hurled him over the rocks.
" From the trail above Carrington saw all that trans
pired ; and Joe the half-breed saw he saw and fled into
the woods. Carrington followed him the many miles back
to the ranch, sought him out like a nemesis, and in sub
stance said to him : " You have nothing to fear at my
hands ; your secret is safe. Murderer that you are, you
have a worthy father. And that father is my friend. But
for that fact the law should have you." And so the
secret of the deed rested IJfetween them ; Carrington im
mune because of the dread sway he held over the man
of crossed blood; the Indian secure in the promise of
immunity given.
" In his writings Carrington gives two reasons for his
course. The first is that he wished to protect from sor
row the few remaining years of his aged friend, which
was laudable enough. The other is of a much more
complex nature, and was characteristic of the man. It
had not yet been proven to him that two wrongs made
a right. If murder was wrong, he argued, then murder
in atonement was murder still, even if done in the guise
of law, and in the name of justice. And then after all,
what was the material life? Did we not, perhaps, sweet
as it is, give it undue importance? Did not God, the
Center from which springs all light and all the good
125
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
of the Universe, require it at the hands of all? Millions
answered each year in obedience to His call. Not but
that murder was wrong; but with him the wrong lay
more in the violation of that abstract law that marks the
boundary of what we call the right, and the perversion
of that right. He was a man of peculiar mental turn,
you see. With him the murdered had not been sinned
against half so much as had the murderer sinned
against himself, strange as this may sound. For he
believed that the purposes of life, expressed here in the
material existence, are beyond permanent human inter
vention ; that they lie strictly within the control of some
higher power, and continue on in an after-life irrespec
tive of what occurred on earth. But to the murderer,
as to all wrongdoers, comes a day of reckoning as in
evitable as death itself, bringing with/ it the fires of re
morse to waste, and possibly even to destroy, the soul
for whose home-coming we are told the Most High is
continually on the watch.
" The discovery of the body by yourself, Sutcliff , re
lieved him of the necessity of exposing his knowledge
of the affair. And that he stood high in the estimation
of the Indians on the Fork is evident in the fact that
throughout not a shadow of suspicion rested upon him.
He was the last man known to have been with him;
and certain covert tales, emanating, of course, from the
wily half-breed, sought at one time to unduly color
that fact and so raise a sense of distrust against him.
But they were in vain.
"A few days later Carrington returned to the moun
tain alone. For while the secret in its focus had died
with the old chief, enough had been disclosed to very
materially circumscribe the field of search. The vast
126
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
drift of snow at the upper end of the ravine had been
pointed out to him as being directly in the path; and
once on the summit it was well nigh impossible to go
wrong where but one passable depression led down
the declivity to the east. At the foot, he had been told,
they would find a beautiful flat with the horse-feed belly-
high upon it, overtopped with trees of wonderful growth ;
and a lake, set like a gem in the brow of the hoary
mountain. Once the ice of his natural reserve all
melted the poor fellow had grown garrulous on the
short trail.
" But once in the alcove it became apparent at once
that there ended all certainty. The finding of the mine
itself was again as much a matter of uncertainty and
chance as it had ever been in its checkered history. He
returned at once over the mountain for a burro loaded
with provisions and tools. These he cached in the ravine,
again toiling to the enchanted flat with pick and shovel,
and axe. to hew for himself a trail over the rocks ana
through the brush on the almost perpendicular walls to
the right, in the direction of the Gap, so that he might
have easier egress from the place. It was a blind trail
at best, and a pile of fallen limbs thrown across two
boulders upon it most effectually balked any tendency
of the burro to roam. Then began a thorough and sys
tematic search for the hidden treasure. But vain was
his work. For weeks it continued, morning, noon, and
afternoon. The tranquil summer passed away and the
golden autumn came, to find him still at his task. Then
came the first rains ; and later the snows of winter, forc
ing him very much against his will to seek the more
clement weather of the plains.
" With the early spring he came again, T think it was
127
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
the year I met him in the Flats. But in the meantime
a peculiar change had begun to come over him. The
groundwork of his nature had come to slowly reassert it
self. The simple life he was leading away from the
grossness of the crowd, and amid the entrancing beauty
which encompassed him on every hand, the vivid high
lights, the cool shadow-tones, the magnitude of moun
tain, valley, and air-line ; and most potent of all, the
soul-reaching silence, were all working their secret
charm, and revivifying the spiritual side of his nature
far beyond its old-time limits. The long days of intro
spective thought, into a train of which he had been
thrown by the death of his wife, and which of late had
been much intensified by the solitude of the position
he had chosen, were slowly revolutionizing the man.
Not that he took a lesser interest in the things of this
world than in the days of old; the truth was he took
more. But his horizons were enlarging. He began to
see things from a higher and broader plane. He gen
eralized more. Unconsciously he approached the foun
tain-head of wisdom. He still took an active interest in
his search, but the ardor of old was beginning to pale.
" In the pauses that now came between he built him
self the little cabin and the broad fire-place. From his
home in the north he brought with him books and per
iodicals ; and music ; and I have no doubt that many a
night-prowler and particularly the lion whose pelt we
found upon the floor, and which had resented his appear
ance upon the mountain from the first, has paused in
the uncertain light of the forest to listen to the unwonted
sound of his flute."
128
CHAPTER XIII.
HE OPENS TELEPATHIC COMMUNICATION WITH THE
WORLD.
"AND where," continued Waring, " in the other sum
mer he had courted the strictest solitude, occasionally
now the call of his kind grew upon him to a strength
not to be denied, when he paid willing, and what oft be
came protracted, visits to the Gray clearing.
That this world is one full of surprises you no doubt
have discovered long before this. We come upon them
in the most unlikely places. Here we have one in the
old shake-maker whose cabin stands beyond the Lip.
If we judge from appearances, I admit, the assertion
carries with it an air of doubt, but I have the word of
your uncle that this white-haired old man has a knowl
edge of things that would put to shame the learning of
many a college professor. His favorite study and theme
of discourse is the human mind and its workings, a sub
ject that received a new direction now at the hands of
the two friends ; for it seems that Carrington, too, was
well fitted by early education, but more particularly by
nature for the proper understanding and manipulating
of this little-understood subject.
" Both had given thought to the matter in the years
129
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
before their meeting; and the discussions now brought
with them a revival and a certain hitherto unattainable
familiarity, owing to the want of maturity due to ex
perience and age, that but very few enjoy or can even
be brought to realize as possible. They held theories
which they sought to organize into a science as it were.
That they succeeded in their work much beyond the ordi
nary is plain enough, for some very remarkable results
followed upon their experiments.
" They first convinced themselves what they had
argued all along, that thought is a dynamic force cap
able of being projected from mind to mind without the
intermediary of speech. Speech it was claimed is but the
mode of the clumsy. This in a measure is no doubt true.
As we age in experience we find the eye in many cases
to serve as well, or more subtly still, a touch. Carrington
cites instance after instance and I have met cases my
self, where he had read question in the eyes of his wife,
and he had answered them quite as intelligently through
the use of the same channel ; at least so he had judged
from their changed expression. And many times, too,
later in life, when the souls of the two had become more
transfused, on a comparison of notes after days of ab
sence, he was rather surprised to find that there had
been an unconscious communion of thought, though miles
lay betwen them at the time. The idea is simply to be
able to recognize an impression or suggestion from with
out as a message from afar; or, in other words, to be
able to winnow the grain from the chaff. The universe
is full of them, many breathed unconsciously, there
fore, negatively; a few projected with precision, force
and purpose, to be accepted by the wise at their true
value. Nature seems to repeat her processes in all the
130
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
rising steps of her seeming progress, showing, it appears
to me, the existence of one universal law. We cast a
stone into a pool and rippling waves circle to the banks.
We speak, and start similar circles in the atmosphere
about us, to be received here and there by an organ made
for the purpose, the ear. The human will gives rise to
a thought, and we start a delicate but far-reaching pro
pulsive force in just this same way, which beats through
the finer atoms of the ether, to be received by the
nature sensitive enough to respond. Touch a string on
a harp and it is not the wood of the place that replies
but the sister-harp in the corner, attuned in unison. I
ask you to recall if you can my argument of a year
ago on the comparative nature of all life. Try to thor
oughly assimilate this idea. It will surprise you to find
how much of a step it is to the fuller conception of the
ideas of the omnipresent, the illimitable, and the eter
nal : expressions much used but little understood.
" The work of the two at first in this field of thought-
transference was, of course, unsatisfactory. But having
met with partial success, they wrought on diligently
and understandingly, until, just think! an avenue of
communication had been opened up that no earthly
distance could fetter.
:< This success here opened up to Carrington a hither
to undreamed-of field of possibilities. With the key
now in his possession he doubted not for a moment but
that intercourse with the beyond was possible. The
key? The same that makes for success in all the other
walks of life, Concentration. The air is full of yellow
sunbeams, comparatively powerless as distributed by
nature ; yet focus them and you can set the world afire.
So with the mind. Focus your thought and you can
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
accomplish wonders, even such as these. The mind
and the will, that is all there is to it.
" Carrington sought to establish this line with all the
ardor of an enthusiastic nature. For many weeks in
vain. But from the grace which sustained him through
out he felt that he was not alone in the work: that on
the other side of that inscrutable veil we call death a
higher intelligence than his own was working for the
same end. And one afternoon the air was strangely
still, and himself so concentered that for the moment
he was totally oblivious of the beauty on every hand,
he received a communication; a single impression,
the one word " Thomas," yet given with all the sweet
cadence he remembered so well in the days before death
parted them. So realistic was it all that involuntarily he
looked about him, while his heart ceased its beating for
the moment. But he saw nothing, and the movement
recalled him to earth. He sought further, despairingly;
but no more messages came that day. The next he
tried again; but, too expectant, he tried in vain. The
next again ; and humbled by the disappointment of the
previous day, there came to him that same message
" Thomas," but more vividly than before, and dissipat
ing his last shadow of doubt. He was already growing
more responsive. For weeks this continued, through
less and less of disappointment; he at each success com
ing more and more to understand just what condition
of mind was essential to that success. Having mastered
so to say the elements, the single impressions in the
course of time gave way to simple phrases, and later
to more complex sentences. One of the first one
she had often used in their earth-life, gave him a par
ticular pleasure, the simple words of endearment,
" Thomas, my husband."
132
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
"And then came the regret that he could not see. But
no sooner had the thought found life in his brain than
with a swiftness and unerringness that was a revelation
to him it stood answered. " Mind is king. Patience
poor mortal." And true enough, before long there came
a glimmer of light to him, a dawn such as the physic
ally blind whose vision is about to be restored might be
supposed to experience, and through the dissipating
mists, his heart the while increasing its beating, he more
than once felt sure that he had had a passing glimpse
of the airy outlines of the form of his beloved wife.
Here again opened up an era of alternate failure and
success; for here, too, a special preparation covering
many weeks had to be gone through. For to see clearly
required a special control.
" One day it was the first of his full awakening into
the soul-life, she burst upon him without warning in
the full splendor of her angelic loveliness ; her queenly
form clad in clinging garments that only half-hid and
half disclosed its grace of outline ; her brown tresses
piled with a graceful care above the smooth brow ; her
red lips smiling, her blue eyes sparkling their welcome.
The old Rose indeed, but a thousand times more beauti
ful; with a grace accentuated in unnumbered elusive
ways which it puzzled him for the moment to locate
until it dawned upon him that it was not the old beauty
as he remembered it that he looked upon, but a soul-
vision with the cloy and awkwardness of earth gone.
As the mists due to imperfect control of self cleared
away, he noted that she had come to him with out
stretched hands over green fields, shaded afar with bor
dering copses and blue hills, a spot very like their fav
orite haunt in the first years of their married life. She
133
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
glided rather than walked toward him, and as she
touched him he awoke to find himself upon the moun
tain alone with the tops of the pines droning in the
afternoon breeze. He was faint, and a cold perspira
tion was upon him. For a moment he believed the
beautiful vision to have been a dream; but with the re
turn of his equanimity came conviction, and the con
clusion which had had part possession of him for some
time definitely fixed that the true life begins only at
death s door. For life on earth after all is but a span,
while an eternity awaits us beyond.
"Thus was opened an intercourse which grew broader
as time wore on. Nor did it cease, though it was inter
rupted, by the change of environment that came with his
return home that winter. In the privacy of his own
chamber he could always summon the beloved presence.
But it was in the quiet and charm of the mountains that
results were ever the best, and with the earliest signs
of spring he was there again.
" By this time the line of communication had been
brought to that perfection that converse was held as
fluently as though they sat side by side in the flesh.
Under these circumstances, after the first novelty of his
position had worn off, many questions arose to his
mind; to be answered by replies that impinged with a
simple directness in contrast with the uncertain ones
we usually receive here. Why, you ask? I believe, be
cause of our self-sufficiency, we are not prayerful
enough. But as few of these have direct bearing upon
the story I am relating we will pass them over, unless
you feel that some of them might be of interest to you.
" I do not know whether the same feeling strikes
either of you, but to me there is a beauty in this com-
134
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
panionship of the two that somehow strangely appeals
to me. I have read in tales where the hero or heroine
have been haunted or pursued by phantoms, but never one
where a spirit sought to correct and sustain the way
wardness and the inherent weakness of man through
words of cheer and the highest wisdom. And the beauty
of it all lies in the fact that it is all true, that they are
conditions possible to you and me every day of our life
here if we possess but a prayerful heart and the required
amount and quality of faith.
" Day after day, in the earlier periods of this com
munion, they wandered about the forest in silent con
verse, or sat by the open doorway where the button-
wood in the springtime spread its array of magnificent
blossoms, and in the fall its red seed attracted the dark-
plumaged woodcock. An aimless and useless life, you
think; but let us pause to remember that this is due
to the particular nature we have to deal with; and that
the possibilities under the somewhat ideal conditions
which I am trying to paint for you are by no means
confined to the case in hand. Supposing we were given
a man of superior energy, what good might not be ac
complished. And then we might be premature in our
verdict even here. Who knows? The seed has only
been sown, and results are only to be judged at harvest
time.
" This earth-life, it would seem, is never without its
hour of repining, nor do I believe the soul-life to be
wholly so either. Yet it is well for us and the general
good that this is so, that there is ever something to
keep us on the verge of expectancy, and in the moil of
the sequent states of discontent. The trouble lay in
the extremes of emotion to which he was subject be-
135
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
tween the hours of soulful elation on the one side, and,
on the other, the utter desolation of his position on
his return to earth. For such violent revulsions the
body is in no wise prepared, and their effect upon our
friend became somewhat slowly, but too surely appar
ent. They affected his health in a general undermin
ing; their ravages being greater or less just as in pro
portion his interest was stamped with less of earth and
more of heaven. His clairvoyant periods became more
and more protracted, periods of half-stupefaction and
complete absence of mind to those immersed in the
material who occasionally came upon him on the trail."
136
CHAPTER XIV.
THE HYPNOTIC INTROMISSION.
WARING paused for a moment, his eyes upon the fire.
His thoughts had outstripped the thread of his narrative
and were wandering far afield, and without hindrance.
With an effort he drew himself together, looked up at
us with an odd smile, and resumed.
"At times came reaction when the ties of earth re
turned and for a time held him in a grip that reminded
him of the strength of old. At such moments came
thoughts of children, home and friends. And one day
the lost mine.
" When next they met this thought was uppermost.
" Without a word, and somewhat gravely, Rose beck
oned him to take her hand. He arose obediently, and
at her touch felt a thrill, keen yet pleasurable, possess
his whole being, and his inner vision clarify preternatur-
ally.
" Through the trembling mist he saw slowly appear a
stretch of mountain forest where below the sombre tones
of the pines, the foliage of the deciduous growth
had dyed itself in all the brilliant color of fall.
It was apparently late in the season October,
he judged, for the haze of Indian summer hung
137
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
about the woods and the openings beyond. As he
gazed, spellbound, the lone figure of a man appeared,
a dark speck in that sylvan grandeur, gun in hand.
His approach was made carefully, warily in fact, as if
he feared an ambush at every step. Suddenly he stood
erect as a lithe body glided noiselessly through the part
ing brush upon his right. It was the form of a moun
tain lion. With the swiftness of thought he now turned,
raised his rifle and fired. At that same moment Car-
rington recognized in the hunter whom? Strangely
enough, himself. Imagine if you can what this discov
ery brought him in the way of a sensation. Instinctively
he sought much the same as in this life we seek to
grasp two or more ideas at one and the same time,
and while very much alive to the episode enacting be
fore him, to take in something of the further beyond.
But he found that mind was still mind, and incapable
of accepting more than one impression at a time, and
that if he would lose nothing of the little drama un
folding before him and yet wished to behold some of
the scenes in the background, he must take them in their
connected sequence. It took him but an instant to re
alize this; the next his attention was again upon the
animal, which had bounded to cover down a defile to
the right where the dogwood and alder formed an al
most impenetrable shelter. Very carefully he followed,
guided by the blood-trail, until he came to where an
other gulch came down from the right to meet the first,
the two forming an acute angle of some sharpness. It
was a wilderness of brush and boulders which an oc
casional pine overtopped, a natural cover which only the
most intrepid dared penetrate in the face of the danger
known to lurk there. For a moment he even wondered
138
The Lost Mine of the Mono,
at his own hardihood and fell to analyzing his emotions.
It surprised him rather to find that fear was not a part
of them.
" At this point the brute had made a sudden turn up
ward toward a wall of rock which apparently barred all
progress in that direction. It seemed sorely stricken,
and had rested many times to nurse its wound, as the
condition of the trail freely attested ; so sorely indeed
that it seemed often to have moved only as the sound
of crackling brush came to it and told of the threatening
nearness of the hunter following. This fact made the
task a doubly perilous one, and he, Carrington, who
was now following not with eyes only, but with all his
senses on a keen alert, and with all the emotions of a
principal, wondered at the remarkable cowardice of the
animal. Common report gave it the reputation of being
more than ordinarily dangerous when wounded, and yet,
very strangely, here under the most favoring of circum
stances, not the faintest attempt at a stand was being
made.
" Foot by foot he scanned the brush ; foot by foot he
climbed upward toward the base of the wall, where, he
now felt convinced, he would find the lair of this queen
of the mountains. And sure enough before long he had
a glimpse of the tawny form in the dusk of an alcove
formed by an overhanging rock, her bloody flanks pal
pitating tumultuously, and covered with the coarse
granite particles, the dry leaves and twigs of the trail.
"As he drew near she made the one stand of the en
tire chase. Sweeping the ground in majestic curves
with her tail she came forward, defiance in her attitude,
to give him with a bloodcurdling cry a terrifying dis
play of her teeth. But this display of courage was mo-
139
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
mentary only, for she almost immediately withdrew
and then deeper than before, into the natural recess,
and trembling with a fear that was unaccountable.
Slowly and unerringly this time, he again raised the
rifle, and fired the shot that brought the trembling form
to the ground.
" Then the riddle was explained. For by his side
stood Rose, whom the clear instincts of the animal
or possibly some sense of which we know not, had
undoubtedly recognized as something out of the or
dinary. Natural history abounds with just such cases.
" He flayed the brute, her s was a most magnificent
pelt, and this done rested himself for a moment on a
rock before returning. Below him narrowed the gulch
he was in; beyond arose, he thought, the Jackass. It
was all evidently a part of the mountain upon which
he was housed. He sought more fully to locate himself,
but in vain. Above him arose the loose wall of rock,
a wall that had evidently at some early period of the
earth s history been projected intact, and only creviced
by the convulsion, from somewhere far up the mountain.
A little stream oozed from above to water a few late
flowers blooming there. He looked again to more closely
study the formation. It was of quartz, and his heart
almost stopped its beating, it seemed literally alive
with pure gold. He moved feverishly forward : he raised
his hand and broke .
" Ah, another dream ! With a tremor that shook his
entire frame he reluctantly shook himself free of the
influence that bound him. Like one aroused from a deep
sleep he looked about him. The early morning sun shone
brightly in upon him, touching with its gold the blue
of giant lupins whose fingerlike foliage shadowed the
140
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
bare logs of the hut in the vicinity of the doorstep.
Through the trees beyond arose the mountains of the
Jackass almost, it seemed to him, as he had seen them
but a moment before, and in the further distance the
Minarets, very still and clear in the crisp of the June
morning.
The vision left an indelible impression, and gave new
vigor to the search which was again resumed. The
mine was undoubtedly a reality; he had seen it. And
it was as undubitably ordained that he was to find it.
The question was simply, was it to be effected through
chance or a concentration of effort on his part? To a
man like him of prearranged action always there was
but one reply, and that was, through system of course.
" He sought early and late again, and once more to
no purpose. Then one day came a thought. With arms
folded upon his breast, and dejected of spirit, he was re
clining against a rock on the trail, that winds from the
Gap to the Chiquita. It was the end of June and all
nature stood in the luscious ripeness of midsummer.
Suddenly the wonderful truth dawned upon him. He
remembered that in that one glimmer into the future
which had been vouchsafed him the black-oaks upon the
mountain s slope ; the wild cherry of the thickets ; all the
alders and buttonwoods on the creek-banks ; nay the very
sumac in the canyon below, where the lioness had come to
her death, had stood arrayed in the vari-colored glories of
autumn. With mind awakened to the new wisdom he
slowly returned to his cabin. In that one moment he had
become a fatalist. Chance and I may add that then al
ready the significance of the term was undergoing a
change for him, was after all to be the arbiter of his
fortune.
141
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
" His policy was now one of waiting. Through the
long summer days he read much; pondered; performed
upon his- flute; studied the forest, the mountain and the
.stream. He made friends with the birds, the squirrels,
the chipmunks ; and with such success that all entered
fearlessly as he sat at his meals, to be fed by his hands,
or to nibble daintily at the proffered food upon the table.
Once he caught sight of a half-grown grizzly surveying
with uplifted muzzle the human habitation from the up
per end of the forest opening; a moment later resum
ing his leisurely way as Carrington hallooed at him. At
times again he would drop to the Chiquita with fly and
rod to beat the stream for trout; generally to return,
tired and worn, but with a generous string, in the dusk
of the evening. He was at peace with all the world.
" Nay. There was one exception. The lion whose
haunt he had disturbed with his presence would give him
no peace. Each summer it migrated, each fall to re
turn. It was plainly to be war to the end. And the poor
burro stood in mortal dread, and came each evening to
the cabin to tremble under its eaves. It made the heart
stand still to hear its cry almost human in its cadence,
in the distant depths of the forest when night had fal
len, and to note its gradual approach. How well he re
membered mistaking it one night for a human being
astray in the woods, and had answered from the brink
of the precipice beyond the lake, where the moonlight
fell over the silent, depthless canyon of the Chiquita.
At times it became so malevolent that he had been
forced to build a fire in self-protection. It was away
now the summer, but would be sure to return with the
first turning leaf.
"And again came a thought. Was this animal in any
142
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
way to be instrumental in the locating 1 of the lost mine?
Was it in some inexplicable way the same which he had
followed in his vision? It seemed indeed unlikely, and
yet strange things happen. At any rate the brute held
a new interest for him from that hour forth."
143
CHAPTER XV.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE AFTER-UFE.
"AND from here, with your permission," continued
Waring, " I will quote you from the writings direct.
We are down to the more personal part of our story,
and my so doing will avoid much useless repetition. I
have selected, you will find, only such parts as are rel
evant, and which hold an interest because of that rel
evancy, if for no other reason.
"At this point I find an entry which purports to
throw some light upon the conditions prevailing in the
after-life. It may sound wild and chimerical to you,
but I found it interesting reading enough, and so will
you, I am sure. Shall I read it?"
We silently acquiesced, and Waring read :
Throughout this period Rose is my almost constant
companion and never a day passes but I find that I
have absorbed something of wisdom from the com
panionship. Many and varied are the themes that come
up for discussion between us ! children, home, friends ;
our own happy past; more often, however, the future,
now no longer the uncertain for me. The future.
144
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
Wonderful word ! Language holds nothing more preg
nant with meaning.
As to where we meet I am somewhat in doubt. Does
Rose come to earth, or do I flee to spirit-land? My
position is most unique. Our environs at times are
such an intermingling of the one and the other that I
do not often know whether I am in the celestial sphere
or still within the earth s attraction. Possibly we vacil
late between.
For instance, I find trees and flowers, beautiful
flowers, great gardens of them; and trees, tall and
idyllic, such as we come upon occasionally on the can
vasses of some imaginative master of the brush. And
lawns, broad, sweeping ones, without hedge or break,
that fade away into the blue of distance, or that of
some shimmering sea dotted with sails of idling craft.
These are all of earth, and yet so unlike. For there is
here a greater perfection; everything is more ideal;
there is less of the stiffness, of the imperfection, the
dwarfing and distortion of earth, where there is always
some obstacle to an unrestricted growth. Birds of
sweet song and gay plumage, delighting at once both
the eye and the ear, hover above among the boughs;
while beneath deer sport and rabbits gambol, and all
the nobler animals that have, because of some kindly
trait in their natures, endeared themselves to mankind, are
much in evidence. Children I find at play at every point,
and the sound of their laughter and merrymaking fills
the air.
And such homes, such magnificent temples of learn
ing, such wonderful cities as I have seen ! In the by
gone years I have had visions of such, little dreaming
then that the true poet is ever a prophet, and that there
145
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
is not a single picture of his imagining that is an ad
vance upon existing conditions but will some day find
its realization in the life beyond death. Cities with broad,
and seemingly interminable boulevards, and open
squares where matchless marbles dot the sward, and
fountains play in a sparkle to confuse the mind; cities
of marble and alabaster, dreamlike in the massiveness of
their edifices, and scintillating as in the light of day in
the soft self-effulgence of the place ; cities gay with life
and color, and music, the life of the crowd, composed
of men who are men not in form only but in character
as well, and of women who are all heart and womanliness
and not mere puppets of paint and powder and hollow
sham, finding a common love in an intercourse with
less and less of friction in it. It is all beyond rendering
in words.
There are no marts of trade, only beautiful homes
where souls dwell in a certain content; not the cold,
stary, repellant mansions of our large cities that speak
of greed, pomp and selfishness in every stone, but
buildings cheery and inviting in appearance, the re
flex in short of the character that prompted their up
building. Note that I am describing but a small section
of the land, the section wherein Rose and her com
panions have their abode, and that every conceivable
condition necessary to the happiness comparative al
ways as you will plainly see, of any and every indi-
vidiual can, and eventually will, be found by the indi
vidual affected : that is to say, oceans are there for roam-
ers of the sea ; great mountain-chains to meet the loves
of the Tyrolese, the Himalayans, the Andeans ; sandy
deserts, brown, bare, and vague in their interpretation of
their mission to man, for the Nubian and the Saharan ;
146
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
winding water-ways, rock-bluffed, for the Patagonian
and the Aleut ; and so on through the long category, each
according to his desires.
All of which seemed strange to me, brought up in the
orthodox faith, and for some time I sought in vain for
the reason. But as usual in these matters of doubt,
Rose came to my rescue with the explanation that all
visible life was the result of mental effort, and that the
consciousness of it in man was wholly a matter of sen
sation. Rob man of the function of a single of the or
gans of the objective senses and you curtail his con
sciousness of life just so much. Rob him of all and
he is dead to the outer world, or what we call the un
conscious state. But an inner consciousness lives per-
renial, the consciousness of the soul.
This consciousness, whether outer or inner, is an ef
fect due to causes eternal in their nature. When a tree
grows up, matures, dies ; when a flower springs from the
sod, blooms, seeds, and fades away, an effect rises and
disappears within the limits of the objective sense, but
the cause remains, to extend into an after-world, there
to work upon material ever growing finer, yet which,
strange to say, acts upon our equally refining organs in
impressions that rise in the old familiar forms we know.
This, however, does not mean that a tree is forever a
tree, except in name perhaps, or the true and tried house
dog forever a dog. Nature in the law of evolution has
provided for the contrary. The graceful elm, the sil
ver birch of to-day are not the stalky fern or palm of the
carboniferous period. Nor is the tree nameless to me,
which I see arise upon the other side, near like the
birch or the elm I speak of. They are things of a grace
and beauty beyond words. What the ultimate may be
lies hidden in the far, far future.
147
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
Nor does it mean, again, that the environs there are
composed entirely of types of life that have their origin
or parallels on earth, for the after-world teems with a
life characteristically its own. For me to attempt to de
scribe it would, of course, prove useless. For as I have
said the consciousness of life lies in impressions, these
impressions, again being the result of sensations borne to
the brain through the function of one or more of the
media for the purpose, the organs of sense. Now, if this
life lies as in this case it does, beyond the capacity of
the organic sense, and the inner sense has not yet found
development to the point of clairvoyance in which case
you would be able to see with the soul s organ, it of
necessity lies for the time beyond your comprehension.
And then the spiritual light which so noticeably ir
radiates the countenances of all Rose ; my darling
mother ; the coterie of friends, to each member of which
strange coincidence, or is it coincidence? I remem
ber now having felt myself particularly attached during
their sojourn here. I commented upon it this very morn
ing. Rose smiled as she assured me of their happiness
a happiness beyond words a happiness, she said in
finitely beyond anything possible on earth, where there
are restrictions at no time to be completely shaken off.
There they were free.
But happy as they were, she continued, their beatitude
was still comparative only, a very beginning, as it were.
I echoed her words in surprise. But Rose only repeated
her assurances. Nothing was perfect but God. Strange
as it may sound, there was a very eternity of planes
above, each in their order as superior to the one next
below as their s was superior to ours. Through all these
gradations were we compelled to pass in the gradual un-
148
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
folding of the human character, which made up the sum
of the work of redemption. For God lay within.
I have said every gradation : it would have been more
correct to have said, every gradation above the one to
which you will find yourself translated upon your release
from the body. " For man," she said, " is like the thistle
down of the fields, that ripened and released by the sun
and winds, floats here and there, some near the meadow-
surface, some high in air. Only where they are the
sports of the elements, the soul is more under the im
mediate surveillance and tutelage of Law."
Then we do not all reach the same goal ? " I asked.
" By no means."
"Why?"
" Men are not all alike, not even born alike, and
neither are their souls. Some are of better mold than
others ; so with their souls. Some are blessed with
parents with common-sense, who start them well upon
their pilgrimage while still on earth. Others, to the
third and fourth generation, have the sins of their
fathers visited upon them. These are doomed to a
period of mortal turpitude an agony worse than any any
orthodox hell was ever conceived to hold. For God
punishes even more refinedly than man would. It is
hell in truth, the only hell. Imagine a worse punish
ment than to be left with only your viler thoughts,
and the memories of actions now or soon to be re
gretted, and breathing the atmosphere common to a
myriad of others, not one of whom is better thart your
self."
" That breathes of injustice to me," I said.
" It is on its face only, my friend. Man is, to a cer
tain measure, or in a certain way at least, a free agent.
149
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
If, in a life spent at the cost of the best there is in him,
his conscience speaks and he heeds it not, it is but a
just retribution that overtakes him. Suffering is the
price of all retrogression."
" But is it always retrogression ? " I asked.
" Invariably where suffering follows. It may not have
been a step of yours, but somewhere in the long chain
of past generations a falling away from the right and
that is God, has taken place, the moral law broken."
A moment s silence came between us.
" I noted," I said then, " that in your first reply there
was something of a qualifying character."
" Yes. For, what may seem strange, there is another
section which does not suffer, immersed as it is in this
same hell, so resourceful of poignancy to others. It is
made up of the souls of those who have not yet attained
to wisdom or felt of higher things. So far has this sec
tion developed and no further: in it the spiritual is still
latent. It breathes but its normal atmosphere. You find
its exemplification on earth, where one finds light and
happiness and another darkness and discontent."
" Have you anything in the way of a remedy to
offer ? " I asked, sadness at my heart.
" Only a return to the right, to God," came the un
hesitating reply.
"And as this depends upon the individual, and an un
qualified concert of action in man is at no time possible,
the return of the race as a race, can never be more than
partial. In other words, a condition wholly purged of
sin is not possible to earth as long as man is the creature
he is."
" The race as a whole does not need redemption. It
is the individual. And as regards the partial return you
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
speak of, the success of every such effort lies as much
with you as with every other being on earth."
" How do you mean ? of what does it consist," I
asked.
"Of the simple performance of your duty to God and
man."
" But the injustice still remains. Perhaps it is because
I do not understand. Why should one be made to suffer
and the other not ? Why do we not all start alike ? "
" We do."
" But you have just led me to infer to the contrary."
" You are right ; you do not understand. As contem
poraries it may be said we do not start alike. Take
yourself and a savage from the wilds of Africa for in
stance. You are both men ; yet beyond this you are no
more alike than are a bit of charcoal and a diamond the
same. You are men in different stages of development,
physically, mentally, morally, spiritually, and every other
way. They are both carbon; the one crude, the other
refined.
" But for all this difference there was a time some
where in the far past when mankind, as so many units,
started from one common point, though ages apart ; hence
in one sense it may be said that all started alike. But
let me explain more fully, for I see that you are sorely
puzzled.
" To begin with, the conditions essential to the appear
ance of man upon earth were not the work of a moment
as we are asked to believe. Many long ages were con
sumed in the attainment of that point, where from some
thing lower man mounted to that stage of perfection
where God in reviewing his work pronounced it good
and crowned it with immortality. And having reached
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
it, it was the work of other ages to bring about the dis
appearance of that period of mystery.
" Between its dawn and close man appeared upon earth,
not in the single pair of the Eden story, but in many
pairs, and in various parts of the earth, the conditions
becoming universal, and not in a day, but many centu
ries, possibly even ages, apart, for the mills of the
gods grind slowly, and lastly with all the physical pe
culiarities which to-day distinguish the various races.
" For man is not an after-thought, not the mere whim
of an hour, but the product for which all the earthly
forces never blind, have been working through the
long cycles of the past. Nor was he the comparatively
finished product of to-day. Far from it. The very low
est strata of society at the present time, probably, marks
the flood of that era of half-spontaneity.
"At this point then, you see, we all started alike.
There was no royal road then, nor is there before God
any now. Justice pure and simple was then and is now
being meted out to all alike. But the first product,
borne unconsciously upon the tide of natural progress,
was ages ahead in the general development before the
last of that natural growth appeared. Nature s pro
cesses, marked by human standards, as I have said,
work slowly, and it is very probable that the last to ap
pear was but little if any in advance in point of devel
opment to the first man to tread the earth. However
this might be, there was a difference, be it large or
small; and to this start the start of the first-born, >
is due the greater difference we find in men to-day.
" I might add that should man ever, through some
totally inconceivable and wholly improbable catastrophe,
disappear from the face of the earth and not a seed of
152
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
him remain, your globe would forever remain man-free.
For the conditions that made his evolution possible no
longer exist, and can under no circumstances be re
peated or revived. Leaving all minor conditions out of
the question, the earth as an earth and a unit would
prevent it. For the earth of to-day is by no means the
earth of cycles past. It has lost much while yet in
appreciable to human sense and calculation, in volume,
and in axial and orbital velocity; adding belt upon belt
to itself in the process of matter of an ever-increasing
fineness, and lengthening your day and year. Life would
of course follow any readjustment of forces, but it would
be a life of a higher type than any now existent with you,
and would border more upon our own. But then all
this is pure theory and can never be realized in fact, for
die unforeseen never happens to God. He, of course, has
complete control."
153
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE EXTENDED SENSE.
(AGAIN Waring came to a pause, for a few moments
fumbling among the leaves of the book he held as if
in search of a page of special interest. Having found
it, and without looking up, he continued the reading.)
" You have memories of earth ? " I remarked tenta
tively this morning.
" We have, such as you have of your childhood ; pic
tures losing themselves in the mists of time. Why not?
But," reading my thought, " there is for us no more
reason for desiring to remember the earth-life than there
is for you to remember your boyhood days. Many are
glad enough to forget them. The man or woman who
makes life a success in the broader sense of the word is
usually not one to regret the past, though he may
look upon it with fondness. So with us. He alone who
would recall, if possible, a course pursued does that. The
eyes of the successful are always to the front, feeling
that life s solution lies there, that the future, in other
words, is the vital part of existence."
" Then you do not know ? "
" Yes, and yet again, no," Rose answered. "Hav-
154
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
ing passed Death s portal we are at least assured of an
after-life. But the great why of it all still lies en
shrouded in mystery."
"For evermore, do you think?"
" No, but, as upon earth, to be gradually penetrated
as human understanding and individual character devel
ops. That secret is an absolute point in the Master
Mind, only to be solved ages hence for you and me, when
we have attained to that perfection which will permit us
to stand in His presence with impunity."
" With impunity ? " I echoed, surprised at her words.
" Have all our lessons then been in vain ? Is God not
the source of all that is kindly and good ? "
" He is. God is love. Whatever betides remember
that. Should question arise, never doubt Him, but, for
the answer, probe deeper within yourself. It is his
thoughtful care that provides for every relationship of
life ; carbon for the plant ; oxygen for man ; and yet
a subtler fluid for our own existence. For we breathe.
Yet reverse the order of Law, give oxygen to the plant
and ether to the man and you turn what is good under
one set the natural, of conditions into the rankest of
evils. So with His environments. They are of an order
so high and rare that no spirit can breathe them until
fitted therefor by a probation covering ages."
" Then are those environments material ? "
" In the broader sense of the future, yes. For it is
matter, spirit matter, which is after all but a qualify
ing term. It is the essence of matter; matter in its
sublimest forms, the quintessence of all that here appeals
to you as color, music, perfume, contact, taste."
" What are we to understand by this ? " I asked.
She laughed, the sweetest of music to me.
155
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
" I fear little or nothing where so few really under
stand the properties of spirit matter even in its closest
relationship to matter as you of earth understand it. We
only know that the flight of matter is toward the spiri
tual, the unseen; that the earth, and at a certain stage
of their formation all the stars of the Universe, owing
to central forces within, is constantly throwing off fine
particles of matter, which immediately above its face
constitutes the atmosphere of man, and at various heights
above the planes and atmospheres of many higher orders
of beings; that in short matter has the power of assum
ing as many varied forms without as it has within the
limits of the physical senses, the simplest and rarest of
which is the highest. And as intuitively we know that
He is the Unit from whence all departs and to whom
all returns, you should, with very little effort, be able to
grasp my meaning."
" It is wonderful," I acquiesced in admiration.
" You will wonder even more once you have crossed
into this borderland of ours. And your first subject of
wonder will be, I know, the striking similarity in many
ways of the life we lead to the one on earth. We breathe ;
we clothe; we walk, where distances are short; we
laugh ; we sing ; we do many things very many in fact,
that you do."
" So I have perceived from time to time. But are our
senses, being objective, dropped at death?"
" Not so. The organs are, but their functions are at
once taken up by another set much more comprehensive
in every way, and which are carried in embryo as it were
through the physical life. There is no stoppage at any
moment. In fact the senses with which we are here en
dowed are but extensions of those you enjoy, made to
cover a new and broader field."
156
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
I was silent, doubtful.
"Would you have evidence of what I say of its
truth ? " she asked with a smile, noting my emotion.
I gave a silent assent. Rose held out her hand to me.
I took it with a sentiment of awe.
At the contact I felt that keen thrill surge through me
once more which I so well remembered experiencing on
the occasion of my first intromission some time previous.
For a few brief moments nothing of an unusual nature
transpired, and I was beginning to wonder what the out
come would be when a gentle but decided increase of
pressure of the hand on the part of Rose seemed to bring
about the desired condition. For a few seconds my
mind stood in a state of bewilderment. Then clearness
came.
" Now note," she half-commanded, yet kindly, just as
a mother would craving her child s attention.
I looked.
" I see nothing unusual," I said.
" Good. Your sense then is what you would call nor
mal?"
" In every way. But that is no proof."
Again came that delighted laugh.
" No. But now."
There came another slight pressure in the contact of
hands. With her other she pointed below us.
Then I started. For the ground beneath seemed slowly
to fade away; not entirely, but leaving it of a transpar
ency and apparent fragility which made me shrink in
voluntarily within myself. In that moment my sense had
assumed a strange accession of power.
" Do not fear," I was assured ; " you stand on firm
ground. You can prove it by stamping your foot."
157
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
I did so, still with trepidation.
Assured by the act more than her words I gave my at
tention now completely over to the enjoyment of the thus
suddenly acquired faculty. The loose, fibrous earth, I
noticed, offered little or no impediment to its exercise,
but I saw at once that solids were not all alike ; that, in
other words, while all were transparent, they were all
more or less so according, I opined, to their density and
specific gravity: showing that the sense there follows
the same general law which here restricts the physical
one.
For a moment I misinterpreted the demonstration.
" No, they have not changed," I was told as surprise
arose to my mind once more. " The change is wholly
within yourself."
By a slight direction of the will on the part of Rose
my attention was once more rivetted to the ground.
I now saw that it, beneath my feet, was honeycombed
with the passages of many underground streams, which
then, greatly shrunken, still scurried from a thousand
and one directions to mingle in one central current,
which in the freshet season must assume large propor
tions indeed, if one may judge from the size of the chan
nel it has worn for itself. Originally, I decided as the
result of a more general survey, immense boulders had
filled in this granite concave, worn smooth by glacial
attrition, half a mountainside having first blocked the
narrowing outlet of the defile. Upon this smaller rocks
had been deposited, filling in the interstices ; an accretio n
of yet smaller forming a third layer and a kind of soil,
upon which in the course of time shrubs and trees had
grown to heaven, the entire process probably consum
ing thousands of years in the formation.
158
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
I followed with a curious and interested eye the long,
snakelike roots of the pines and oaks which supported
in a network of snarls and intertwinings the mat of the
forest floor and all its beauty ; and admired, while I mar
velled at the intelligence shown, the adroit manner in
which every vantage point had been seized upon for the
purpose of building for the greatest resisting strength.
It is God s way, in the carrying out of his inscrutable
purpose, to thus build, and then destroy, in a rebuilding.
As I looked I saw a boulder, depressed by the weight
put upon it, splinter with a crash, and a readjustment
of the upper crust take place, a by no means reassuring
experience. I remember now having heard just such
muffled detonations before and wondering at the cause.
Sudden fear rose to my mind, and thoughts of the
danger that threatened my cabin and myself. I shud
dered once more, and sought, with ludicrous result, I
know, to tread buoyantly.
" Do not despair," I was assured ; " you at least are
safe."
A new enigma.
" I do not understand. Why I ? " I asked, preparing
for another revelation.
For a moment Rose hesitated.
" Do not ask me now : that will be explained later.
The time of disclosure is not quite ripe."
She released my hand, and slowly my surroundings
assumed their natural conditions, or rather, to be more
exact, my unaided sense reasserted itself.
" Now tell me," Rose asked, "was there throughout
aught unnatural in the experience you underwent ? "
" In no sense that I could ascertain. Apart from an
159
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
attendant feeling of surprise all was as natural as could
be."
" That is to say then that the impressions received
reached the sensorium through exactly the same chan
nels, as far at least as you are able to say, through which
pass the impressions of your everyday life? "
" Yes."
"And since you recognized it as such even that feeling
of surprise can not have been out of the ordinary. Now
let me add that this is but one of many, or at least one
of several, directions in which you will find this one
sense enlarged."
I remained silent, unable to follow her meaning.
" Telescopically and microscopically for instance," she
continued.
" I do not understand you."
" How dull you are," she laughed lightly. " I mean
that the soul s, or the spirit-eye is so organized that by
a slight volitional effort it can be made to, in a greatly
enlarged scope while still within certain elastic bounds,
penetrate interstellar space; or by another adjustment
delve into that other world, equally incomprehensible,
the microscopic. There lies a world undreamed of by
the many. In his pride and ignorance man has asserted
since the days of Adam that the visible to the naked eye
marked the boundary of the material life, where the
truth is, proven in this later day, that we have failed so
far to find the point where the visible ends, just as we
have on the other hand failed to mark the limit of the
created heavens. Everywhere life teems. The micro
scopic world is in fact as limitless as the other."
It was a new direction. I was lost in wonder and re
mained silent.
160
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
* In fact the Universe is one grand whole," she con
tinued, "and what makes it appear made up of parts is
only the finite nature of our senses."
" Then there is a limit to the spiritual sense ? I thought
the line of demarcation I noted a moment ago was due
to the fact that I was not wholly freed from earth and its
ties."
That fact certainly had its bearings. But as you say
there is a certain limit. As an instance I cite the fact
that to us the plane of matter, spirit-matter remember
to you upon which we have our existence or being is al
most as opaque as is your plane to your sense."
"And yet I can not see it? "
" If the will was all that was necessary you would. But
an organ is essential to the conveying of an impression
whatever its nature, and that organ is wisely restricted
in its powers. Our plane lies simply just without the
boundary of the physical organ. That is what I am try
ing to make plain. And now mark you what I say. Just
as the invention of the telescope and the microscope has
made plain its shortcomings in at least two directions,
so some day, when human effort is directed spiritward, an
instrument will be devised which will prove to you of
earth the truth of what T say in this, a third direction.
" But the microscope has to do with material life," I
corrected.
" Oh, the perversity of man. There is no other. It
was spirit-matter, or the spiritual, so long as it had no ex
istence for man, that is, you might say, until the ap
pearance of the microscope. Then it became material.
When that prospective instrument I speak of becomes
a fact it will demonstrate to you our sphere to be as
much a natural and material a one. Material and I
161
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
cannot impress this upon you too often, is but a com
parative term. It includes all substances in some way
palpable to the senses, and without regard to their
density or any other property but those of a certain
opacity or power of resistance. When I say senses, I
speak advisedly, for I would include my own. And
they being the more far-reaching, I think that they
should mark the truth or untruth of what I say."
This was said with a smile and a triumphant arching
of the brows.
" But as it is," she continued a moment later, " neither
are more than temporary. With new fields come new
sensations, to understand which will require organs
more sensitive and more expansive than those either
you or I possess at the present moment. Wonderful
as they are they may be compared as mere makeshifts
with the organs of the future."
" That should mean another death, or a series of
deaths."
" No. In the uses for which they were intended the
physical organs show themselves capable of adjustment
to any demand put upon them; which is great when we
figure from the dull beginning of infancy, to experienced
old age. So with ours. They are even more elastic, as I
have just shown you in one direction, and some time ago
in another. Our future has nothing to do with expansion
of body, or, beyond a certain degree, of soul, but solely
with growth of intellect and the unfoldment of moral
character. In that development, it is true, there is a
slight throwing off continually of the coarser parts of
us, an unconscious process, the analogy of which you
find on earth in the unconscious expansion of the boy
into the man, but it is a change involving no change
162
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
of organism. No; there is but one death, the death
of earth. We simply pass, as we are successively fit
ted, consciously from one grade to another with char
acter as our password."
" You are at perfect liberty then ? " I asked.
" We are. The choice of all that goes to make up
our existence certainly lies with us."
" Then why do you not pass on?" I asked, surprised.
" For many reasons. Can you remember the joy we
felt when we were children together and life was
young, roaming the fields flooded with the varying
beauty of the spring, the summer and the fall? That
experience we repeat here on another and nobler scale.
I am in the midst of that enjoyment now. I am like
a traveller in a new country where much is novel and
interesting. Then my loves hold me here; and a sense
of duty I have."
" Loves ? duty ? Duty to whom ? "
"My kind."
"Ah, I understand. I see you engaged often in mis
sionary work."
" Yes."
" But I find you always at work among your own
countrymen and women. How is that? On earth we
go among the heathen."
She laughed lightly.
" That is where you of earth err. Charity should al
ways begin at home. It is a work assigned us, you
know," she continued more seriously, " from higher
planes in the work of the general redemption."
" I begin to understand. And your allusion to your
loves ? "
" Means that love with us is the attracting and co-
163
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
alescing force as it is with you. I remain here because
the attractions bid me. I love the flowers here, the
trees, the brooks, the people."
" But where the choice to higher things the solution
of the mysteries which here enshroud us, are yours,
I marvel that you loiter on the way."
" Man upon earth loiters three score years. Why
should we haste. We have an eternity before us. It
is not even asked of us. Besides there are other
reasons. I have already made plain that sudden and
inadvisable transmissions from a lower to a higher level
are not possible. Then I repeat love rules. You must
first learn to love, to long for something in some higher
section before you can feel the desire to pass on. Until
that desire comes we are powerless. That is why pro
gress with us is as much a matter of time as with you.
But do not think us unprogressive, for that would be far
from the truth. Little by little we feel the attraction
to higher things seizing upon our natures and calling us
to the front, away from the gods of our younger
days. You know that the loves of our youth are not
those of our maturer years."
" Except my love for you, my Rose."
"And that is because our loves have kept apace."
*********
And so time passes.
164
CHAPTER XVII.
THE CHASE OF THE MOUNTAIN LION.
DREAMS. Mere vaporings? Or have they relation to
our past or future? Have they relation to our life at all,
or are they of a world entirely apart? That, however,
can not be. The Universe is one. And, while phantas-
mic, dreams are still effects, and as effects live only
through causes. To concede the existence then of causes
extraneous to those upon which our universe is based
is to concede the existence of a power in rivalry to our
God s, a contingency we can not conceive to be, hence
eschew the idea in toto.
What relationship then with our life? That some .
the more beautiful and ideal, may have connection with
our future may well be imagined. But how about those
bordering on the phantasmagoric those where the ele
mental life life without the controlling factors of
reason and conscience, has its being and finds the time
to carry out its diabolical scheming. They can only
have to do with the past, the world s past, since the
earth to-day brings forth no life in the least resembling
that in them depicted. Has the spirit indeed the faculty
of recalling all the vast, interminable past? even to
165
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
that point where the first thought of creation finds birth
in the Master Brain?
Is there in truth a past? is there a future? or is
there but a now? I begin to doubt. In the round of
the eternal we must concede the existence still of that
primary law that presides over the birth of worlds ; for
to do otherwise would be to admit the beginning of an
end, and the enthronement of the finite. And that the
law which on the other hand oversees the extinction of
worlds also prevails we too must admit, as our astronomy
abounds in instances where suns have disappeared from
our ken wrapped in a mystery that can only be ex
plained in the surmise that they have returned to the
elemental form. No, no. The laws of the Most High
are eternal. There is naught but a present. Beyond the
gates of Death the mystery of life, we will find, lies re
vealed from the beginning, lies mapped out to the end,
and what we know as change lies really in the indi
vidual in his contact with those laws, and to that un
accounted property we call growth.
Usually there is a chain of intelligent action running
like a golden thread through every dream that is normal,
whatever may be said of the sanity or reverse of its
setting. And mine was normal, that is to say it was
not brought about or influenced so far as I am able to
say by any indisposition of body. I had been out all
morning upon the mountain in a search for deer, and
fatigued in body but perfectly clear and bright of mind,
was napping the late afternoon away seated in the door
way, my head pillowed against the rude frame. The
dream that came to me I can not describe : nor does it
matter. I will not even say that this time it bore any in
telligent relevancy, such as, for instance, where the
166
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
spiritual thread, broken in the awakening, is taken up
by the material life in a strange continuance. And yet
again it must have, for it was this very thing that took
place. I only remember and happily it is all we re
quire, that, as it progressed, in the turmoil of an action
I can not interpret, there came to me a faint and distant
cry, a cry not as a thing apart, but as a part of the filmy
tissue of my dream, a cry that repeated itself with such
swelling insistence that gradually it drew apart and be
came a thing distinct, and so full of a vindictiveness,
and a horror to ice the blood, that I awoke.
Life, taken in all its ramifications, is certainly a curious
thing. In that first moment of awakening I thought I
had dozed but a moment. Then I realized that I must
have soundly slept for more than two hours. The sun
had set, and even across the canyon the reflected flush
of sunset had cooled into the gray of the coming night.
It was in fact twilight, and the shadows of evening were
fast filling the depths of the woods. Not a sound dis
turbed the quiet; the tall pines stood spectral-like in the
uncertain blend of light and dusk. Yet it seemed to me
that the crags had not yet ended the re-echoing of that
last thrilling cry of my dream. The very silence was
palpitant with its burden. The cold shiver of an unname-
able fear seized upon me.
My ass had drawn near, and now, with a harshness
that grated upon my high strung nerves, filled the forest
with a prolonged bray. To me it seemed an answer,
and to be vibrant with a terror which for the moment
I could not understand. Then again came the cry of
my dreaming, shrill, blood-curdling, filling the canyon
with its horror. In a moment I had recognized it, and
I laughed quietly to myself. It was the lion returned.
167
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
It was still some distance away, down the canyon
below the shelving rock. I took up my rifle and went
to the brink to reconnoiter. For half an hour its weird
cries were repeated at intervals of a few minutes, and
ever at gradually approaching distances. Then they
worked away to the left, where as gradually they were
lost in the distance there. With a sigh of relief I re
turned slowly to the cabin in the blur of the woods.
I built a little fire by the corner nearest the doorway
to cheer me, for I was not completely over that first
spasm of fear. Then for an hour I hung over it in a
profound reverie, adding a stick every now and then in
an absent-minded way as the fire burned down and the
encroaching darkness suggested to me the need. Then
I rose, stretched myself with a lazy feeling of pleasure,
and was about to enter my cabin for the night, when
startlingly near this time, and from the upper end of the
glade, the cry was repeated.
The unexpected sound made my hair stand on end.
For a moment I stood rooted to the ground, unable to
move hand or foot. Then I hastily replenished the fire
once more, seized a burning brand and started another
on the corner diagonally back of the first. When these
flared up, and the sparks fled in show r ers among the
branches overhead, they filled the flat with an unbroken
circle of lurid light wherein the trunks of the pines cast
dancing shadows and the granite boulders stood impres
sive in their massiveness. For a time the glare was dis
concerting, and the shrieks of the animal ceased. But it
was for a short time only. Gaining courage with the
passing of time and my seeming impotence, it again ap
proached, and its shadowy form was ever and anon to be
seen circling in the murk of the further forest.
168
The Lost Aline of the Mono.
Never has it shown such venom. It appeared as if its
one purpose was to arouse in me a feeling of rancor in the
hope that at some time of its greatest fury I would be
led into an indiscretion. But reason held unruffled sway
in my brain throughout, and every indiscreet display of
the slinking body only ended in its becoming the mark
of my rifle. And in my mind, too, I was resolving all
the while on the morrow to put an end for all time to
the animal s threatened depredations.
My marksmanship also had its deterrent effect. I
noted with satisfaction that after each shot the circles
described were always enlarging ones, and that all its
movements were of a more guarded nature ; and when
one shot better than the rest brought a sharp growl, part
of pain, but more of surprise and sullenness at the un
looked-for nature of the attack, I saw it no more. Fif
teen minutes later its cry came to me once more from
far up the gulch, where it was repeated a number of
times, when all was still. I now labored to bring in some
of the larger wood so that my fires should not die down
while I slept. Then for another brief period I hung
about, half-dreading the beast s return. But all remained
quiet and I entered the cabin, carefully fastened the door,
and sought my night s repose.
*********
Early this morning it is the mellow autumn, rifle in
hand I took up the chase. I had no difficulty in finding
the trail of the brute. Its last fading cries had come
to me from afar up the wooded gulch between the two
domes to the north and west. It is a bit of my immediate
surroundings which has never had my attention until to
day as its general appearance had proclaimed it as im-
169
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
passable. Nor is this impression much belied by actual
fact, for boulder and shrub hem easy progress on every
side. But it evidently was the natural channel of ingress
into the nook of the brute for a wellworn trail worms
itself through the brush from over the saddle and the
country beyond.
This I followed very carefully, on all fours most of
the time, and always on the alert for a sudden appear
ance of the animal. Arrived on the other side I dropped
relieved to the open, wooded bench some distance below.
It was upon a part of the mountain altogether new to
me. A chain of dry meadows fringed with hazel swung
down from the left and intercepted my path. Across this
chain I passed. Here I lost the trail, the open nature of
the country making it unnecessary for the animal to con
tinue upon a fixed path. I paused for a moment in in
decision to look about me. The forest was grand, sombre,
silent in the early morning light, the dark pine trunks
rising straight to heaven, the green immobile canopy
overhead. But below, the underbrush the few gnarled,
beechen-stemmed aspens on the meadow, the hazel, the
vast oaks here and there interspersed, were gay with
color. A jay broke the silence which reigned like the
spirit of prayer about, and a squirrel nibbled audibly at
a cone far up among the branches of a pine. Then like
a flash an idea came to me. It was in the nature of re
velation. I looked about me with a peculiar searching.
Had the hour come? Yea, surely; for the scene was
growing strangely familiar. It seemed to me as
if I had been over all that ground before. Half-instinct-
ively I turned to my right. Yes; it was by yon group
of sugarpines . As if in corroboration a lithe, tawny
body moved among the underbrush, then sprang crouch-
170
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
ingly upon the trunk of a fallen pine, which lay its length
a short distance before me. Without the least hesitation
I raised my rifle and fired, giving no thought whatever
to the possible consequence. My aim was good; with a
snarl the animal half-turned and with a bound disap
peared. With every sense now preternaturally awake I
followed . Yes; there was the defile down which it had
disappeared in my dream, with its covert of dogwood
and alder in autumn garb. With a sudden and unflinch
ing faith in the result I sprang in excited pursuit.
As I fully expected, some distance down came in that
side ravine to form the acute angle which I remembered,
and up which the lioness had turned if my dream was
to come true. A moment, then a turn, and there stood
the overhanging wall of rock with its shadowy alcove,
tenanted a moment later by the treacherous beast; the
wilderness of brush and boulder, the overtopping pines ;
to my left beyond, the Jackass, just as I remembered
seeing it.
In my bewilderment my heart almost ceased its beat
ing, and I might have been pardoned if at that moment
I had forgotten all else in my eagerness to reach that
spot, the focal point of all my thoughts and labors for
the past four or five years. But the truth which is often
stranger than fiction, is that all thought of the mine
for the moment was strangely absent from my mind.
The ardor with which my object has been pursued has
paled much of late. A change has come over me in many
ways, but chiefly in mind and spirit. Much thought
have I given to the discourses I have had with Rose,
to the wonderful conditions obtaining in the afterworld ;
and the thought now uppermost, together with a dazed
feeling of wonder, was the unerring manner in which
171
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
the scenes of my intromission of months back were
being realized. I have never heard its parallel. For one
moment only was I brought sharply to myself, and to a
sense of the danger I was incurring. That was when the
animal made its stand, and turned upon me with that
formidable display of its ivories, giving vent to a blood-
curling cry that echoed and re-echoed along the moun
tain-side. With a little more care given my aim I
again raised my rifle and fired, this time the shot that
brought the noble feline to the ground. Without a sound
it dropped, quivered for a moment and then was still.
Then I relapsed into my previous state of mental tor
por ... I flayed the lioness with the feelings of a man
doing a duty perfunctorily, the task of another which
somehow had been imposed upon me. It was not until
I was resting from my labor upon a rock near by that a
semblance of clearness came to me. Then, half-mechan-
ically, and in an effort to locate myself, I ran my
thoughts, link by link, over the odd chain of events as
I remembered them in that clairvoyant hour months ago,
to the moment of my flaying the animal and my later
reclining on the rock. It was a necessary step to the
complete restoration of myself to my wonted compo
sure. What had followed ? Ah, yes ; I remembered.
I turned, still half-bewildered, rose, and stepped to the
cliff, my last shadow of doubt and mystification dissi
pating.
172
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE DISCOVERY OF THE MINE.
ALL has come true. There stood the long-lost mine,
a wall of dessicated quartz, half hid in a tangle of shrub
bery. I have not been played false in a single par
ticular. To me it seems rich beyond reckoning. Its
full extent I can but conjecture owing to a maze of
tumbled boulders, and the rank growth of brushwood
which covers the steep slopes which here shelve sharply
from both sides to the gully which drains the place, and
in which a trickle of water keeps the grasses green, and
nourishes a few late flowers. As die swirl of secret
excitement following upon my discovery subsided, and
I gradually came once more to control myself, I grew
observant. I noticed then what had struck me months
before that it was a loose wall which somehow in some
far geologic age has become transfixed in the narrow
gateway of the gulch, and that it formed what toys we
are in the hands of the higher powers, the coping so to
speak, of the nook, over the rim of which is had that
entrancing view of the distant mountains.
173
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
I actually laughed aloud at this irony of fate. For
four long years had I searched so faithfully, so with
out complaint; for four long years had I lived within
a bow s shot of my goal. Are our paths indeed ordained ?
And now that I have found it what is it to me ? I feel
no jubilation of spirit such as I had pictured to myself
many times in the days when the fever of search was
strong upon me, nay, not even the most ordinary satis
faction. Is it that the half-conscious growth which is the
result of my subconscious communions has raised me to
a plane above the reach of that common love which is the
root of all evil ? I have even come to wonder by what a
fatality I have come to spend so many years upon a pro
ject of so fleeting a nature.
Such were my thoughts as slowly and somewhat de
jectedly, with pelt slung across my shoulder, and rifle
in hand, I returned in the high glory of noon to the se
clusion of my cabin.
With to-day has come a change of mood, and with the
change another train of thought. It is one of those peri
odic changes or reactions of which I have made mention
earlier in these pages. For the nonce the visionary has
disappeared in the man of the world. I am giving the
matter saner thought, more leisurely consideration, am
weighing all the pros and cons of the situation. To-day
I can not but see the powerful advantage the possession
of all this vast wealth, now within my grasp, will give me.
After all wealth in itself is no serious objection, in
174
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
itself holds no harm. It is only when the loves of man
appear in connection that the propensity for good or
evil comes to the surface. It all depends upon the in
dividual and the use to which it is put. But there shall
be no doubt in the world as concerns me; and in the
event of my speedy demise and I feel it within me
that I am not here for long-, and the passing- of my
fortune to my children, I will still vouch for its use in
a good purpose. Some grand project for the general
uplift of humanity its exact nature I leave for future
decision, shall be the result of its expenditure.
But I am growing old and unfit for this world. My
health is being generally undermined; I know a
knowledge that has been mine now for some time,
that I have become subject to a weak heart and may
at any moment be called away to that other world.
What if it should be before I can share the knowledge of
my discovery with my children, and through them
with the world? I am assured to the contrary by Rose
and her companions, but a nervous fear possesses me
nevertheless. The task of the moment is plainly evident
to ensure to the future as far as is possible the location
of this fabled mine. It seems woefully insufficient in
view of the sequestered nature of my abode and the
tenuous chance of some stranger falling upon it, but
it is the best at my command.
In the cool of my cabin, where the stray sunbeams
through the chinks of the roof form a twilight of se-
175
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
ductive beauty, and the tranquility is invaded at times
by the buzzing of a yellow- jacket, or the softer flutter
ing of a butterfly in its passage in through the door and
out through the chimney, I am drawing up an elaborate
map of the vicinity. I am taking no chances. Every
point of any prominence at all, all the little streams
and half-blind trails, find a place upon it. At the
same time I am writing up data in confirmation. When
these are completed I will roll them together, tie them
with a ribbon which somewhere I found among my pos
sessions, and place them beyond the reach of any damp
or marauding vermin in a metal tube I have secured.
Should the worst come I still have faith in the powers
and love of my Rose.
Home again. A month has passed since the date of
my last entry. A week or ten days after the date of
that entry came the first storms of winter and I re
turned to the plains. On the way out I stopped over
night at the clearing to share with my old shake-mak
ing friend the knowledge of the good fortune which
has overtaken me, first pledging him to absolute secrecy.
Arrived here I have confided the documents recently
completed to the safe-keeping of Ida, particularly im
pressing upon her their value and importance.
The spring once more is here, and as the time for
my periodic return to the mountain draws near it is
with the growing feeling that it is to be for the last
time; a feeling that finds its origin more in the nature
176
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
of a premonition than in any knowledge I have of a
more stable character. The long winter nights I have
passed in relating to Ida all the wonderful story of my
life in the nook; a story which she, being younger in
experience, and therefore more skeptical, has accepted
with some mental reservations. But the tale has grown
upon her; a greater faith has come; and when I shared
with her to-day also this emotion presaging our last
good-bye, there came to her too, as in a flash, this dread
which ere the year is out is to culminate in certainty.
With the warm tears of love in her eyes, and her young
heart torn with an anguish that a father alone can
fathom, she beseeches me to remain with her. Useless
pleading: with the appearance of the first snowflower
upon that eastern slope I must, I will be there.
Once more the mountains, the eternal mountains !
How I love them ! Nature is just awakening, at times
seems uncertain of the hour, relapses for days at a time
back to winter sleep, then to awake with a greater cer
titude and life. The days are gray and chill; but fuel
is plentiful; the chimney broad; the fire cheery, and life
again full of interest. Great fields of snow still encloak
the mountain above; but about me the grasses are up,
the brush is throwing out fresh shoots, and my burro
finds good pasture.
I feel somehow that the threads of my life are focus-
fng themselves for an important event. Have they to do
177
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
with those preparations I see being made upon the other
side of that veil, the passing of which we call death, and
which rather mystify me?
178
CHAPTER XIX.
IN WHICH THE HERMIT S END IS ANNOUNCED.
FOR there beneath the trees that rise about the abode
of Rose and its fronting parterres of flowers has ap
peared a mysterious and unoccupied couch, pillowed,
and soft with downy coverings. Just when it first ap
peared I have no recollection, but probably some little
time before I became impressed by the strange insist
ence of its presence. It is a shaded spot, and a breeze
warms and yet cools it pleasantly. Birds sing above,
and there is the soft splash of fountains. Cordials rest
upon a table close by, and fruits and viands, such as
have, since my earliest schooldays, always been associ
ated in my mind; with thoughts of the revelries of the
gods of the ancients. Occasionally in my clairvoyant
flights I come upon Rose seated by it with a smile of ex
pectancy upon her face ; sometimes with a few friends
in attendance but more often alone. For there privacy
is sought, and held sacred, just as here.
179
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
This morning the mystery was made light.
I found Rose as usual seated by the couch with that
far-away look in her eyes that I have seen there so
much of late, two young sprites sporting a short distance
away.
" You are expecting a friend ? " I asked.
" I am expecting a spirit from earth," she answered
me simply.
I can not understand the unseen connections of this
life, what something it was that prompted me to the
next question.
" Might it be possible that we are acquainted? But
of course, since your friends were always my friends."
Rose smiled.
"You do."
She regarded me with the tenderest love and pity in
her eyes.
I paled, for suddenly it flashed upon me that it was
myself for whom she was waiting.
" With all you have seen and all you have heard of
the conditions prevailing in our world do you still fear
death ? " she asked, noting the perturbation upon my
countenance.
I hesitated a moment before replying, a moment
given up to a searching self-scrutiny. Its result I con
fess proved far from flattering.
" Can man ever wholly shake it off ? " I answered her.
" I fear," I continued in great humility, " that I am at
best but human and have in me still that feeling of un
certainty which everywhere seems to attend thoughts
of death."
" Because of convictions half formed, because of the
want of the true faith."
180
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
" Yet I feel," I continued with a sublimer air, " that
I can be brave when my hour comes."
" Nobly spoken. My friend, your hour has come."
" I do not understand," I fenced vaguely.
" I mean that your days on earth are numbered. We
have the knowledge from the higher powers."
Doubtful I remained silent.
" Powers," she continued with a gentle insistence,
"whose penetration of the future is deeper, and whose
wisdom, because of a broader experience, is profounder
than our own."
It seemed incredible, and further doubt rose in my
mind.
"When, then, do I die?"
" I can not say."
I breathed relieved in spite of myself.
" You will die suddenly."
"And know of it days, weeks, possibly months ahead ?"
I asked amazed.
" Without this fore-knowledge it would be sudden,
sudden because unexpected."
" But how can anything unlooked-for be foretold ?
an accident ? "
" There are no accidents. Everything is the result of
law, and therefore, in a manner foreordained."
I shook my head, still in doubt.
" Listen," said Rose. " Note this ant here upon your
table in its everyday pursuit of food. Does it know, do
you think, of the death which impends as you raise your
hand to crush it? No. To its fellows, however, grant
ing for a moment that they have the intelligence to ap
preciate the fact, its death would appear sudden. It
was unnatural, out of the ordinary. Yet you, being of
181
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
a higher type of intelligence, and with a greater hold
on life because of that intelligence, know of it minutes,
hours, if you will, beforehand."
I shrugged my shoulders in silent perplexity.
" That is what you call fate."
" And foreordination ? Are we then thus the play of
the higher powers ? "
" God in his infinite wisdom has ordained that they be
beneficent ones."
"And yet they crush ? "
" Nay, you mistake ; not the higher. The desire to
inflict pain or suffering is altogether foreign to them.
They would elevate. The impulse to crush bespeaks
the lower orders, the purely animal."
"If that then is fate, what is providence?"
" Fate and providence," she smiled, "are a mere in
terchange of words with their meaning dependent upon
the individual affected. An act is both fateful and pro
vidential always at one and the same time. In other
words, there is a silver lining to every cloud. To il
lustrate we will again take up this colony from which
we just now drew our analogy. Here, you see, is a
member tussling with a seed far too large for it to
handle with comfort. And here comes another not so
fortunate foraging for something it might bear away to
the general store. We rob the first to place our booty
in the path of the other. Now note the bearing of the
act upon the individual. It was an act of providence
to one, a disaster to the other."
" It was robbery."
" It was, from man s point of view. And as such it
might even have been regarded among them had one of
their own kind, or some agency within the scope of their
comprehension, seized upon the prize."
182
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
" But, you argue, where a power of which they know
naught, and in a manner the operation of which they
do not understand, intervenes, it is either Fate or Pro
vidence.
" Just so."
" Does it matter ? "
" Not in the least, for God controls the situation and
works His will in either case; and however doubtful
we may be at times, always for the general good. God
is above all things impersonal, and in this impersonality
lies His power to see clearly and justly. He loves you ."
" But He loves my enemy as well."
" Yes. And the fact that he may be a saint and you
a sinner makes no difference. He loves all things ;
not for the perfection to which they have been brought,
but for what lies in them, the power of being moulded
into something higher and better, in other words, their
perfectibility."
" I can imagine," I said in a sort of rapture, "an artist
whose ardor is such that he finds an almost equal pleas
ure in the contemplation of his pigments, and the power
for beauty latent within them, as in the finished work it
self."
" Man s perception, on the other hand," she continued
after a moment s pause, " is never wholly free of bias,
however, he may pride himself to the contrary. The ego
ivill manifest itself consciously or unconsciously, and
however much repressed. Man is too inherently self-
conscious to ever rid himself enough of the thought of
self to get a true perspective on life. Therein, lies the
root of all earthly evil. When the first of the human
race, in those far days before history began, voiced the
realization that it, the race, was the highest pinnacle to
183
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
which, in point of perfection, the materially organized
on earth had been brought, man was the creature ab
solutely of the natural senses. Of the higher the spiri
tual life, he had no inkling. For him such a life
had no existence. So far had his powers of perception
reached and no further. It required a further develop
ment before it could hope to enter into a comprehensible
communion with God. For, understand, every phase
of development, whether general or individual, carries
with it its limitations, its own sphere of consciousness
and peculiar range of thought; and the suggestion that
came to him that he was the centre the object of all
the lavish care we find displayed on every hand, the
one for whom all this splendor of earth and sky was cre
ated, but marked the arc of flight to which man s fancy
at the time was capable of soaring. Viewed from the
changed and changing view-point of to-day that thought
appears the soul of selfishness, and the effect of its cen
turies-long repeating is still deep-seated in man. It has
taken a thousand wars to loosen its hold upon him. Still,
it was God s way, a way the tortuousness of which we
do not understand.
" But to-day nobler and broader aspirations control us.
You of earth are gradually coming to shed the callous
ness that results from continued self-centered thought,
coming more and more, in the spirit of altruism, to
think, more and more to act for your fellowman. And
with this broadening of the view of your relationship
with the greater life of the Universe is slowly dawning,
in the nature of a conclusion, the truth that, while the
education, the growth, and the elevation of the soul may
be, nay, no doubt is, the object of this earth-life, it is
after all but a fragment and a very small fragment, of
the grand, the whole truth.
184
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
" For the key that is to open to him the secret of ex
istence in its entirety man must leave earth and self to
soar among the stars. There will he find it and not here.
The constant viewing and reviewing of a drop of water
or a grain of sand can never furnish him with an ad
equate idea of the overpowering magnitude and beauty
of mountain or sea. Man is that drop of ocean, earth
is that grain of sand, in the measureless scheme of the
Universe. The will must teach the soul to fly. Man, in
spirit must hie to the cloudless ether of some height of
fancy far from the blinding influences of his petty strifes,
and there, in the serenity of the primal life, give free
scope to every heaven-born faculty within him, if he would
obtain some idea bordering on the truth. For while the
way to Him lies within, God still lives without, and you
must learn to seek for him afar as well as near at hand.
Not necessarily in some star, unless it be the pivotal one
about which the inconceivably great mechanism of
the Universe may be conceived to revolve. The mighty
darks of space may prove quite as potent. And when you
have found Him, as never question you will if you but
seek aright, the riddle of the ages will stand revealed to
you. For you will have found the sensorium of the
world; the one absolute point in all the Universe; the
generating point of all energy ; the abiding place of truth
and love ; the heaven, in short, of all your desires."
"And yet with all your wisdom," I resumed a few mo
ments later, "you can not say just when I am to die?"
" I can not," was Rose s simple answer.
"Why not? Can you tell me that ?"
" I can. Life in the body, you know, is sustained by a
nervous energy often taken for the life itself, which in
the perfect subject reaches into every atom of his being.
185
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
Where it does not, ailment is the consequence, and if not
quickly overcome and the machinery set to rights death
in its first approaches has been heralded. It may be years
to the culmination, nevertheless that moment where the
nervous force is on the wane marks the turning point of
the tide and the approach of the inevitable.
" The problem then simply resolves itself into this.
How long can a piece of mechanism such as the human
frame, a portion of it now comprising faulty parts, bear
up before those faulty parts transmit their difficulties to
every other part and the whole come to a standstill. It
is a nice calculation, you must concede, one too com
plex for human comprehension as at present developed,
involving fields of experience not known to you or us
except as possible of existence. But it so happens that
this very point is a subject for elucidation in a sphere a
few points removed from ours and it is from there comes
all our certain knowledge in the matter. As the time
approaches, of course, and the indications of the final dis
solution come more within the range of its special knowl
edge, each of the intervening grades, in the order of their
perfection, will know of it, just as you in your broader
experience may know of an impending event long before
an inexperienced child may. When the light enters my
own sphere, I too shall know, hours, possibly even days,
before you in the ordinary run of things could know."
"And when that time arrives you will apprise me ? "
" I will."
186
CHAPTER XX.
ROSE TAKES A HAND IN THE WORLD S AFFAIRS.
FAITHFUL to the promise she made me a few days
ago Rose this morning approached me on the subject
then under discussion, saying:
" Your time has come."
" I know it," I answered briefly, and with something of
the air of a martyr. " My heart has protested in the
exercise of its functions for some days past."
"It may cease in its duty at any moment, my dear,
and we have preparations to make."
I echoed her words.
" Preparations ? For what, Rose ? Tell me quickly,
sweetheart, for a panic of fear is overmastering me."
As strangely enough was the fact. For in a moment,
and altogether without warning, I was seized with an
uncontrollable trembling akin to the palsy, attended by a
perspiration that broke from every pore of my body in
cold exudations.
" Nay, why should it ? " She laid a finger gently
upon me. " Compose yourself to think, my friend.
Death is not a thing to be shunned, but on the contrary
a thing to be courted. It is not a thing of horror, but a
187
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
thing of beauty, the birth into a new life, the eternal
life, which in its further reaches and higher states holds
for you and me and all mankind an era wherein we are
blessed with creative energy, the peer of God himself.
The earth-life is but the embryonic period of the soul and
nothing more."
She was sublime ; and I ? how petty we are at times.
" But, am I to lie here and rot? " I asked with a dis
content that was half-forced, " the prey of marauding
animals ? "
She looked at me in silence for a moment, pain, sur
prise, and a great pity in the depths of her eyes as she
came to know my irresolution.
" I said that we must prepare," she returned then even
more gently if that were possible than before. " I have
read your thoughts for weeks past a noble fight be
tween the earthly and the divine in you. I beg to assure
you you will not."
" But how ? I am alone. I have every faith in you,
dear heart ; but how ? "
Rose smiled, a smile so sweet and compassionate,
and withal so reassuring, that gradually I came to lose
my fear and grew composed.
" Listen," she began. " On the edge of the hills,
where the last brown ridge slopes into the level im
mensity of the plain, with his mother and only sister,
lives a young man who is well-favored in many ways.
His aims, while only general at present, are above the
ordinary. A good executive, he is still a youth more
purely intellectual, with desires standing for betterment
in all things."
" His name ? " I asked, curious at the strange turn the
conversation was taking.
"Roger Waring."
188
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
Somewhere I had heard the name.
" Waring," I repeated. " The name is familiar ; I
have come upon it before. But where ? "
" In the Flats. Do you not remember, my dear, one
morning some years back a young man assisting you in
the readjustment of your pack?"
" I do, I remember the incident well. But why this
portentious interest in him ? "
"He loves Ida."
" I had not even heard that they had met," I said in
surprise.
They have, only casually, it is true, but none the
less definitely. They met in the City where, you know,
she is completing her studies. There was only a glance
of eyes meeting, a mingling of the personalities passing,
but his heart kindled and love sprang aflame, and to that
love he lives true to this moment."
"And Ida ? What does our daughter say ? "
" Poor girl," Rose smiled ; " she suspects nothing. But
in her secret thoughts I am joyed to find his image rises
with a fateful persistency."
" Have they met since ? This is news to me and in
terests most keenly."
" They have not. They are strangers to each other
and do not know how to bring about another meeting.
Blind to the possible he indeed lives in the hope that
Providence will interfere, with the result that they meet
again. It is a frail thing to build on ; and but for the
proverbial fact that the young heart bounds high in
hope always, he must have given up in despair long
ago."
"And you propose to bring about this meeting?" I
asked after a moment s pause.
189
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
" I do."
"But how?"
" Listen once more. This young man has a friend
in the City of whom he thinks particularly much. They
were classmates once."
A brief pause ensued.
" This friend of our friend is Paul Carrington."
" Paul Carrington?" I asked in utter surprise; " my
nephew ? my brother s boy ? "
" Yes. And Paul in his rather cold way reciprocates
the thought so showered upon him."
" Go on, go on ; I am still mortal, and impatient."
" In his heart of hearts Roger is seeking to perpetuate
this brotherly regard in a love-match between Paul and
his only sister, Naomi."
"Ah, I perceive."
" He has invited Paul to the ranch with much per
sistence. But Paul is a much-occupied man, and to the
present time has been unable to accede to his wishes."
There was another pause, of bated interest to me.
" Roger loves these mountains as few mortals do. It
is the one shrine before which he bows his knee to pour
forth all the ardor of his young soul in an adoration
of the Most High. And when extending his friendly
invitations to Paul an excursion into them was always
a conspicuous feature in the entertainment he held in
prospect. And, of even more vital importance to our
end s, the Basin has always been the goal of goals to
him. It is the site of his earliest peregrinations here,
hence its subtle attraction for him apart from its natural
charm. So that, once his wish with regard to Paul s
visit to the ranch is realized, I feel that they will hie
190
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
them thither as surely as turns the needle to the pole."
" The question then remains only how to bring them
to this little, secret nook in the mountain," I said, anti
cipating the thread of her story.
" Yes ; and having read your thoughts in this matter
for some time past I have laid out a plan of action."
" How good of you. And your plan?"
" Has at least the merit of simplicity. I have but,
through the utilization of that universal language,
suggestion, to impress upon Paul the expediency of ac
cepting at this time Waring s invitation, and all is done."
" So easily ? " I laughed. " I am afraid you will have
to explain to me more fully."
" Circumstances, it so happens, are most favorable to
my plan. With Paul once upon the ranch I fear noth
ing. Naomi is beautiful, good as beautiful, and with
just enough of intellect to make her charming. She is
just the woman Paul most admires. So with this re
taining force in play at the ranch Roger will experience
no trouble in persuading him to the trip into the moun
tains, if, indeed, he finds persuasion necessary at all;
which I very much doubt as Paul has had visions of rest
in green fields and shady woods for some time. He
has been very diligent in his work of late, too diligent
in fact. And then Waring has a most admirable coad
jutor in the person of his friend Sutcliff. Once in the
Basin I have but to suggest the climb of the moun
tain."
" Which I fear will be no easy task," I interrupted.
" Fear nothing. Another suggestion and it is done.
To ensure our success, however, we will have to appeal
strongly upon the sensational. Anything short may
pass unnoticed. The unusual, you know, holds piquancy
191
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
and charm for the human mind always. Now, upon
the mountain-top facing the Basin stands a monster pine,
now dead for many years. It is part of my plan that
on the morning of their arrival in the Basin you fire this
tree."
" I follow you readily. My mind is unusually clear
this morning."
" I will apprise you of their coming. They will
noon on the flats of the Deerhorn, the Ferrals are even
now projecting the pitching of their camp there."
" The Ferrals ? " I repeated in surprise. " What can
they possibly have to do with us ? "
Rose smiled.
" You will begin to see shortly that intelligence rules
this world, that nothing is really the outcome of
chance. We follow Law in every action of our lives,
be it what we call voluntary or otherwise. They will
prove the retaining force at the meadows, from whence
only is had that imposing view of the Butte. Otherwise
Waring s friend in his eagerness will pass on through
to the Cherry-Creek Meadows."
" I see."
"At the Meadows there will be a short strife of
opinion. When our signal first rises to heaven, every
member will give expression to an interpretation of its
purpose; but it will remain for Waring the most sus
ceptible to my influence, to carry the day."
"And man prides himself on being a free agent," I
ejaculated, breathless at this new version of life.
" Man is one with God, the head. He directs in all
things."
" But," said I, aghast, " do you not realize that in
thus depriving man of the belief that he is a free agent,
192
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
responsible for his every action to God and man, you
are depriving him of that responsibility ? "
"I do ; and more. It is a responsibility that lies
lightly. And can I help what is? But after all it is
immaterial. The man or woman doing right follows
an inborn principle, or at least a very pronounced be
lief, and an expression of belief, if wrong, will in
no wise influence either. God has guarded every
byway, you see. On the other hand unsupported
theory, even if it prove right, never made a true
Christian. Before good can come God must stand
within. A man may join the church, but unless the vital
point, the fundamental principle of his character has
evolved from the purely physical and intellectual
which are but a step from the animal, to that higher
plane, the spiritual, which is the true human plane, he
is as far from the Absolute as he was while he stood
without. That change must come ; it is natural, and
there will be no mistaking it when it does, that inner
realization that there breathes a world beyond. So you
see any opinion I may entertain or you, upon the sub
ject has really no vital bearing.
" But, for the sake of the discussion, I believe that
upon this subject man is in general mistaken. What
does he really know of the nature of evil? its constitu
tion, or the purpose of its existence? I hold that God
never errs, can not in the very nature of things, be
ing the All-in-all. Even abortions, dropping for the
moment to the material, or what pass as such, wherever
found, must have their purpose. Evil is not a chance
or irresponsible product, but exists as much for a fixed
end, and that end the higher exaltation of good, as the
very principle of good itself.
193
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
" But unlike the principle of good, which is fixed
and absolute in God, that of evil is not. As we near the
good we are conscious of an approach, we can feel the
distance lessening, the chasm between filling in as it
were; but when we look back, even from our highest
point of rectitude, we find that evil has kept apace,
that we are still immersed in an atmosphere of it, an at
mosphere we now begin to realize we can never hope to
fully escape from. It extends, comparative always, re
member, beyond the earth state ; it prevails amongst us
in the border-land; it pervades the sections higher up.
It is, in short, a necessary concomitant quality to the
scheme of our moral growth.
" Then so many content themselves with applying the
lotion to the scrofula, forgetting that the seat of disease
lies far down in the impurities of the blood. Sin is an
effect whose cause lies not in nature without but in
man s nature within ; is an emanation of self in other
words, we each inhaling and what is far worse. ex
haling an atmosphere of it peculiar to ourselves. For
evil is a moral obliquity due to a dwarfed and undevel
oped soul.
"And. you know, it is the root of disease that the
surgeon worthy the name seeks at all times to remove.
What is the root in this case ? It is plainly evident : sel
fishness, hatred, suspicion, falsehood, dishonesty, envy,
everything demeaning and worthy our profoundest
contempt ; an array of negatives it should pain a think
ing man to survey; a host of parasites that enslave the
soul and vitiate its life.
" Now, let us for a moment imagine them supplanted
by their opposites, the qualities upon which the soul may
feed, and grow and wax to that perfection which is akin
194
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
to God. Those opposites are, benevolence, love, faith,
truth, honesty, loyalty, charity, certainly a shining host.
And mark the result. Sin vanishes as darkness does
before the dawn.
" The road of escape is plain enough. It is up to man,
through the medium of his duty to God and man, to get
out upon it. In so far are we at least free agents. That
path lies not in a change of physical environment, nor in
a social readjustment, but in a moral regeneration. We
must cultivate in ourselves and our children these all-
powerful positives. No permanent banishment of evil
can result in any other way. Legal or social prohibition
only serve to dam the tide that later floods the land in
a moral reaction. Not but that regulation may be ne
cessary: the mistake is in considering it all-sufficient.
195
CHAPTER XXL
THE LAST DAY.
MY last day. I note that I write the words with my
usual tranquility of mind. There is no transfiguration;
only an elation a little more acute than any I have ever
felt. Is it that I do not realize what the expression
means to me? that I must write the words again and
again before I can hope to realize it? The thought of it
all seems so unreal, so like some fantastic dream, that
I can never seem to quite grasp it. And then again it is
all so ingrained in the web of my being, is so real, that it
seems to have been part of my life since time first began.
My last day. The feeling is not one of resignation
with which I view the future. It is not resignation we
feel at the close of one bright day, and with the certainty
before us that the morrow will bring another even more
fair. It is hope. The culprit about to meet his doom
may feel resignation as his hour draws near; it is all he
is capable of, moral paralytic that he is. I question even
whether the simple faith of the martyrs brought to them
more that resignation in that last hour at the stake or
within the sanded oval of the arena. Faith, if only blind
196
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
faith and not a wisdom that is half intuitive, must fail
it seems to me at the last moment. Knowledge alone
can have the power to bring more.
My last day. I know we all have one, some early in
life, computing in our puny, artificial way from com
parative standards, some late. But was there ever man
situated as I am ? with the fact of his end known to him,
and the hour of that end approaching, approaching,
approaching? slowly, it is true, but with an inevitable-
ness under no circumstances to be evaded? To most
to most, I say? to all that last day comes unheralded,
comes when least expected. It may be to-day, it may
be one or a score of years hence. We never know. And
well it is that we do not.
And yet God s wisdom in this has been questioned,
as his wisdom is being questioned at every turn of our
lives. How much easier, they say, would it be to do our
duty with the certainty of a reward in an after-life. Why
this darkness? why this blindness? True. But how
for the soul? What do we know of the future? what
it may hold for the need of the strength to repress, the
strength to control, the strength to persevere?
And with all our philosophy it is but a half-truth
after all. For God does not hide. " Seek and ye shall
find," it is said. To the pure and spiritually clean
the only cleanliness that is next to godliness, there
comes a condition possible to them alone. It is the
divine light breaking through the clear crystal, to illumine
and beautify with its iridescence. It brings with it a
broader relationship with the powers that be. They see
further, they see deeper; they hear the whispers of
things dead before; they feel a presence of whose ex
istence they once stood in doubt; they taste of joys of
197
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
which, before they reached this plane of development,
they knew not of.
Ah, the beauty of this life, ah, the error of our ways !
With the waters of life on every hand we yet perish
of thirst. Awake, oh man ! Awake to what is possible
to you on earth !
Last night was sublime. I walked in an atmosphere
that was half divine. There was a storm; the rain
poured, the lightning flashed above as never before.
And when the storm was over and above the tumbled
clouds marshalled over the dark Minarets the moon
shone across the void beyond the shelving rock upon
which I stood, my soul rose in a very uplift of thanks
giving to God for the blessedness of life. There was a
calm the calm of a mysterious life it was to me,
about the woods, silent in the light, silent in the darks
of passing clouds, such as I have never felt before. The
secret of the Future is about to be bared to me. I
seemed strangely full of life. I drowsed not. Not be
cause of a dread of what the future may hold: that is
a settled question. I was surcharged with the element
of life. The pulses of earth are dying within, baring
the field to the higher and finer instincts that come from
above. It was long after the middle of the night before
I slept.
And this morning! What mortal dares attempt to
describe it? It broke bright and clear, and without a
cloud. As the dawn advanced, however, little wisps of
198
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
fog appeared in the canyons for a time, half-enshroud
ing the dusky pinegrown bases of the mountains. And
then came the glorious sun, to play upon the fresh,
fragrant forests in a million scintillating points, and in
all the colors of the spectrum. It was like a page from
fairy-land.
With the sun appeared my feathered friends to fill
the warm air about my door with their melody. What
songs are theirs ! Joy and hope, hope and joy, always
and forever. Man alone mourns. And my four-footed
visitants, dainty and span, afraid of the rumple and dis
order in the damp of the earlier morn. Lightly balanced
on the rim of my sugar-bowl, attended by a stranger as
yet shy and a little fearful, little Chip views me askance
as he nibbles at the sweet of its contents questioning the
why of my unusual quiet. Good-bye, little one. Your
companionship has helped while away many an hour that
might otherwise have proved most dreary to me. To
morrow we part. Will it be for ever? Nay, nay; but
for a time. Never fear. Somewhere, somehow, some
time, and in some shape, in the vast seeming void of the
Universe, we shall meet again. The orbits of our lives
have simply run side by side so far, have crossed, and
are about to part. Somewhere and sometime in the
future, just as the planets repeat theirs, yet never wholly
the same, will ours recross. Shall we know each other
then? Yes, surely. Does God know? Then shall we
also, for we are one with him.
Outside all is charm this morning. Overtopping the
cupping shakes of the cabin the buttonwood spreads its
199
The Lost Mine of the Motw.
long boughs in a shower of white bloom against the dusk
of the forest wall. From the creek comes the fragrance
of the bed of wood-violets that reposes there in such shy
modesty, and which has more than once added strength
to the conviction I entertain of the exalted purposes of
this life. In the sunlit, needle-strewn open near the lake
a scattering of lilies nod in the wind. To all I went visit
ing, to each bade a tender farewell, my heart thankful,
my soul appreciating a purpose in their existence in the
greater fullness their life on earth has brought my own.
Yesterday already I removed the brush from the trail
for I had a moment of doubt seize me, not of the out-
come of the prophecy, but as to the hour of its consum
mation. My dumb companion was loth to leave, and in
the end I had to drive him before me over the zig-zag of
sunlit trail well into the Basin, where, I feel he will
fall in with some packtrain on its way to or from
the summits. My heart was deeply stirred, I confess,
and my eyes moistened as I bade my faithful friend of
years adieu ; he following me with his eyes in a stupid,
slow-comprehending way, and voicing his remonstrance
of my desertion of him till I dropped to this side of the
mountain, and eye and ear knew him no more.
I feel myself growing weaker. My heart fails in its
full duty at times, almost coming to a complete stop
now and then, at others beating with a tumultuousness
that I know is not provocative of either peace of mind
or welfare of body. Otherwise the functions of both are
200
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
normal. I read for an hour this morning-; following it
with the inscribing of a note to the party for whose com
ing I am now waiting, writing with an indifference at
first until it came to me what wonder theirs would be
when they came to read, and smiling at the thought that
they might even come to think me light of head. Then I
played upon my flute, with more than my usual power it
must be, for, beautiful as the morning is, with every in
ducement to song in light and air, the birds seemed to
cease in theirs in order to listen to mine. I am resting
quietly now, reserving all my energies for the climb to
the mountain s top and the great pine upon its brow. I
greatly fear that at the last moment my strength will for
sake me, and that I may sink exhausted by the way. But
Rose says nay, and lays a hand upon me, when, lo! a
new life surges through me and urges me onward.
Last night in the calm succeeding the tumult of the
early evening I sought and found communication with
the clearing. It is strange that at times I am taken with
that groundless fear that all our calculations may yet go
awry ; but so used is human nature to consider chance as
a factor in a scheme that knows only Law. Such a mo
ment was it that prompted me then, such a moment wa^
it that prompted me earlier in the day. My faith is not
yet fully established, or say rather the weak points of
my early training have not been fully strengthened and
restored. From my friend I have at no time witheld
anything of importance, and my plea now was, that
should the ends for which both Rose and myself have
worked so faithfully miscarry, and not before, that he
use every endeavor in his power to deliver to Ida, my
20 1
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
daughter, the mine of the Mono, an appeal, I was as
sured, that was not to be made in vain.
I have now but to await the hour. I have done all,
fulfilled Rose s every wish. My grave cool, moist, rest
ful, even inviting, stands ready to receive me. And I
have fired the tree. The climb to the point on the brow
where it stands alone, the hoary, unassuming hero of a
thousand storms, I made with little effort enough,
much less than I had thought for, sustained as I was
by Rose s presence. But now, returned, and left to my
own unaided and enfeebled resources, reaction has come ;
my strength is quickly forsaking me, leaving me very
weak indeed. Yet what matters it, heart, where a few
more hours will end this earthly life.
Imagine my thoughts, imagine the emotions that
surged through me as I stood beneath the gnarled mon
arch and watched the dense, resinous smoke roll above
me in a large white cloud against the blue of the sky ; the
woodland scape a thousand feet below reposing dark in
the calm of the June morning. It was my last day on
earth ; it was to be my last view of that wondrous scene,
tranquil with that great tranquility that has ever held me
in its thrall and named me willing kin in that greater
kinship that includes all nature. There was but one curl
of smoke visible above the points of the pines in that ex
panse of forest and mountain, blue, small, insignificant,
and speaking of human effort in its weakness to accom
plish. There could be no mistaking it, it was on the
verge of the open that marks the meadows of the Deer-
horn. With the glass I had taken with me to descry if
202
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
possible one last vestige of human life before departing
from earth and its ties forever, I made out the forms of
my friends, dark mites upon the green. For friends
they are, though strangers to me, not excepting Paul,
though the same blood courses through both our veins.
I even thought I could note a certain excitement show
up among them, like that occasioned in the colony by
an untoward footfall upon an ant-heap, created no doubt
by the appearance of my mysterious signal. If so, it
was shortlived, for shortly they disappeared beneath the
trees, and I saw but the moving forms of their grazing
animals. As a human entity I have seen the last of my
kind. For to-morrow I am more than human.
And so here I am face to face with the inevitable. Yet
am I tranquil, more so than I ever pictured to myself
was possible. It is night, and I write in the quiet of my
cabin. The moon shines in at the door, and down the
chimney, flecking the ash-covered west wall with the
patches of its light; and the flickering of the burning
logs upon the hearth brings into fantastic play every
lurking shadow of the place. A cricket chirps shrilly
and insistently beneath the bunk, and outside I hear the
occasional lament of a bird disturbed in its nest. What
a life is this ! What an absorbing, eluding mystery !
What a blending of the real with the unreal ! With
our feeble ray of understanding we seek to pierce the
unknown : we strike upon a glimmer of the Truth, only
to have it engulfed the next moment in the shades of
an ever-enlarging mystery.
I must have dozed. It is long past midnight, for the
play of the moonbeams has shifted to the opposite wall
203
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
of the chimney, and through the cracks of the window,
falls in bars of silver upon the table, where my candle
burns mistily. My cricket friend has ceased his song;
the bird without settled to a peaceful slumber. Not a
sound is there to disturb the hallowed quiet. Yes, hark,
there is one other. Like the faint breath of the wind
it comes to my ear, the rustle as of silken garments,
and through the earth-gloom appears Rose, her face
radiant with the light of a wish fulfilled, her hair an
aureole, her blue eyes lakes of a depth that is wonder
ful. Friends of every age, male and female, attend her,
and stand vaguely about, pleasure nay, a welcome,
simple and direct, upon every countenance. The
scene grows clearer, blends into the well-known one of
Rose s abode with its idyllic groves and beautiful flowers,
its silver-throated birds, its play of crystal fountains,
its happy children their laughter for the moment stilled,
its waiting couch. Rose beckons me, but a strange
moment of hesitation seizes me. She bids me laughingly
desist in my writing, and still I hesitate. She
approaches with a smile, and with arms extended. Those
arms, a sudden weakness is upon me I must lay me
down for a moment ; Rose ! Almighty God ! I co .
Waring closed the book and for many moments not a
word was spoken between us, so affected were we.
" His life was one long prayer," was his gentle com
ment then. " We can easily imagine the rest, the single
step to the cot the half-unconscious drawing of the
coverlet, the half-return to consciousness, the spirit s
embrace, the final dissolution, when the extended arms
204
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
fell powerless upon his bosom, there to lay till we found
him. A modern miracle."
Sutcliff thrust a twig into the coals in silence, a mo
ment later lighting his pipe with the flaming end.
"A modern miracle indeed."
205
CHAPTER XXII.
SURPRISE.
How long I slept I do not know, but I remember
awakening with a start and the sense strong upon me
that something stupendous had, or was about to happen.
I sat up in my blankets with every faculty keenly alive.
Outside our fire had not been allowed to die down.
Before retiring for the night we had heaped great
quantities of fuel upon the coals, and this was now
burning brightly and cheerily. By its flickering light as,
subdued, it penetrated the white canvas slopes of our
tent, I saw SutclifFs bed had been vacated, and that
Waring was slumbering easily in his. I heard footsteps
without that I recognized as SutclifFs. I heard also the
uneasy trampling of our horses, and the steady roar of
many waters.
Suddenly I started to my feet. For the mountain had
trembled as if shaken by a mighty hand, and a distant
roar was swelling and fading away over all other sounds.
I rushed from the tent.
I found Sutcliff by the fire standing expectant. Above
us the trampling of the horses grew chaotic. I heard
206
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
also from yet further up the slope a boulder set free by
the unusual vibration come clattering down the moun
tain, loosening a miniature avalanche of stones in its
descent, and continuing its career down an adjacent
ravine.
A change at once decided and agreeable had taken
place in the weather. It was one of those sudden changes
for which there is no apparent cause. It had grown
noticeably milder since the hour of our retiring, a warm
air breathing over the mountain that was very pleasant
to our sense of comfort. The clouds above were break
ing asunder, and a moon in its last quarter stood high
in the east.
"An earthquake ? " I questioned of my companion.
But Sutcliff only shrugged his shoulders.
" I do not know," he returned after a while ; " It is
an experience entirely new to me."
For an hour we hung over the fire, kicking in the butts
and heaping fresh logs upon it as bit by bit it died down
and needed replenishing. Twice there came a renewal
of the trembling, but it was in a much more subdued
form, and accompanied by no sound.
Then, assured by the silence, we re-entered the tent
and crawled beneath our blankets to try for an hour
more of fitful sleep. I do not know what success waited
upon Sutcliff. I only know that the first streak of that
early dawn had appeared in the east before I succeeded
in snatching a period of needed repose.
*********
That next morning, so both Waring and Sutcliff af
firmed, was one of the most perfect they had met with in
all their extensive experience in the mountains. The
clouds had entirely disappeared, disclosing an expanse of
207
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
blue above the sharp, dark points of the pines, smiling,
and of a translucency and depth that were inspiring. In
the crystal clear atmosphere every detail of the landscape
stood out with cameo-like distinctness ; the fringe of
ice-corroded granite above the steep, brush-bound de
clivity to the south, irradiating with the light of the ris
ing sun; the dark bowl of the Basin back of, and below
us, resting in the shadow of the mountain ; and nearer at
hand all the many and varied objects of our more im
mediate surroundings.
A white frost lay upon the meadow, where upon its
verge our horses stood shivering in the gray of the morn
ing. Nevertheless there was a warmth in the air that
made the blood course quick in hope, and made plain to
man and beast that the dilatory summer had at last ar
rived and was securing a foothold in the land. Perhaps
the change of mood was mine, but it seemed to me that
over night the waters had changed the burden of their
song; that instead of suggestions of discomfort, which
had been theirs the day before, they had now inter
twined in their music certain repetent notes, a subtle
dominant as it were that brought visions of breaking
buds on the oaks and laurel about us ; of the fuller
fragrance of bush and flower, and the lush of the green
meadows of the middle-reaches ; and lastly, in the heat
mists of the farthest distance, of yellow fields bending
before the wind, and fruits hanging in purpling clusters
in the long converging lines of the valley vineyards. And
yet, again, I feel that the change was not wholly mine.
In a way that was equine it is true, but none the less
conclusive, our animals, too, seemed to have caught the
infection. For as the sun broke through in long
bars of light, and the air grew more and more
208
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
springlike, there came an ever-increasing disturb
ance from among them ; a challenging neigh for instance,
followed by an acrimonious uplifting of hoofs in play
or reprisal ; a condition of things in fact to which Sut-
cliff found it necessary to call a halt by putting in an
appearance among them, disentangling where he could
the wet, wirelike ropes, and giving a pat of cheer here
and a word of gentle admonition there.
And when after breakfast we took up our rifles and
passed over the saddle to drop into the open of the slide
beyond, where the skunk cabbage stood luxuriously
green, and the laurel bloomed in patches of rose and
white, what a pleasure it was to bask in the warmth and
radiance which there beat upon the slope. It is well for
us, a nation of " dollar-dazzled success-worshippers," as
a recent writer very aptly put it, that the "call of the
wild" is so deeply rooted within us. God indeed works
his ends in many mysterious ways. But for this "call,"
and a periodical return to first principles, we would in
the course of time, Heaven knows, become but so much
machinery, sentiment-proof automatons, and nothing
more. To me it was worth a fortune that morning to be
able to enjoy myself as I did ; and that not only, but to
see the others and more particularly the hearty manner
of Sutcliff, enjoy the varied beauty of mountain and
canyon ; the lavish wealth of color ; the hush of the im
mense silence ; the this last tacitly and half-unconscious-
ly, recognition of the spirit of God permeating un
seen and yet so very palpably every object about us.
Arrived below we were unable to locate the exact spot
where the trail to the deserted cabin of our one-time her
mit friend branched from the main one to the Chiquita.
But having reached as we thought the level of the glade,
209
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
which was a little below the general wall of rock which
here supported the summit, we plunged boldly north
ward into the entanglements of brush and talus, taking
the general direction only for a guide. We had gone no
considerable distance when Sutcliff s eagle eye found
signs of where the brush had been cut and thrown aside
upon our left. Working toward it we in a few minutes
found ourselves upon a dim, sinuous path, marked at its
acute turnings by little mounds of stones.
Upon this we trudged hopefully on for an hour, hop
ing at every turn to be brought face to face with our
goal, and incidentally with our fortunes. We came upon
the spot on the trail where the brush barrier had been
placed that was to prevent, in the years that were, the
straying of the hermit s little beast of burden, and which
he had on that day so considerately removed to
allow of the animal s egress and later wandering through
the Gap into the Basin; its hoof-prints no doubt being
those Len Ferrall had come upon in his jaunt on the morn
ing we first saw the flaming signal from the mountain-
top.
Then a sudden turn brought into view the granite
domes which we so well remembered encompassed the
nook in the mountain. Only a single ridge lay be
tween, and upon its apex Waring, who was in the lead,
came to a sudden halt. An exclamation of extreme sur
prise broke from him. Pausing for a moment before we
too reached the spot where he alone stood, we turned
upon him with questioning eyes. He had half turned
toward us, his features white, and with trembling hand
was directing over the ridge.
" My God, see !"
We scrambled in wild excitement to the top to blanch
and tremble in our turn.
210
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
For, mark you, there was no enchanting nook; no
cabin or lake; no strip of forest-land; none, in short, of
the many beauteous details which the visit of the year
before had so indelibly impressed upon our minds, and
which we had expected to see with the same feeling of
certainty with which we had expected the dawn to follow
the night. All had disappeared. Instead there was gashed
a long, ochrous wound in the mountain-side reaching
from the over-lapping snowdrifts above to far down,
where the mass had slid in a mighty avalanche in the di
rection of the Chiquita below.
The sight was at once terrific and wonderful. Such
a chaotic intermingling of boulder and tree and general
debris I have never seen. Where the little cabin with
all its beauty of overtopping tree had stood this wound
had scarred its broadest, and had scored to the very
bone of the mountain, a granite, overlaid with a clay,
yellow, and of a puttylike consistency. But for the
harsh, immovable domes, whose very roots had been
bared, we should never have recognized this scene of
ruin as the site of our visit of the year before.
The mystery of the disturbance of the night
now stood revealed to us. Loosened by the frost action
of many decades back, by secret, subterranean streams,
and by the law of gravitation, the slope with all it held
had in a moment been hurled into oblivion. The suc
ceeding tremors which we had felt had without doubt
been caused by the parting and dropping away of minor
detachments due to the nature of the first slide. No
question for a single moment arose in our minds. It
was too conclusive. For upon the pines, lying crossed
and re-crossed in inextricable confusion, the needles
were as fresh and green as those upon the standing trees.
211
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
Nay, as we stood upon the brink, silent, bewildered, I
noted that the water, where it had become isolated in
little pools, still stood yellowed and only partially clear;
and that the spring torrent in its middle occasionally
backed as some fresh impediment blocked its way; to a
moment later, as the momentary dam broke asunder,
race with an increased vehemence upon its changed
course.
It would be undertaking a matter of no little difficulty
were I to attempt to describe our feelings as, for the
moment bereft of speech, we stood there. I can not
remember that disappointment to the degree of keenness
at least to make it unduly felt, was a factor at any time,
at least as regarded myself ; for throughout an element
of uncertainty had prevailed which had prevented an
at best vacillating faith from crystallizing into something
more positive, accustomed as I was in my vocation to
the handling of facts and figures. As for Waring, his
earlier reading of my uncle s papers should have and
in a measure did, I believe, prepared him for what was
to come. I believe of our trio Sutcliff perhaps took the
matter most seriously to heart. His faith since seeing
that little heap of ore by the cabin-door was unshaken;
and by nature of a sanguine temperament, as we have
come to know, I fear that he let his imagination run
away with him. But as I have said, the impression of
the moment was overwhelming, and in that one over
mastering one every minor emotion was engulfed.
*********
As I have said in the beginning of my little tale, all
this occurred years ago. Since then many changes have
taken place. Both Waring and myself, for one thing,
have married and have about us a growing group of
212
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
boys and girls. He is still at the ranch, where we visit
him periodically, always an occasion the family looks
forward to with pleasure and delight. After supper
at such times we usually group upon the broad veranda,
where in the moonlight it is but a very natural step for
us to revert to those wonderful days. To see the aston
ished eyes of our boys, and to read the interest in their
voices, as they gather in the singular incidents that go
to make up the story, greatly amuse both Waring and
myself. I ask about our friends; Ballard, the oddity,
Stayton, the Ferralls, the herder, Faggerty, the half-
breed, and lastly, Sutcliff.
And here a strange thing shows up. Sutcliff alone of
all that party has faith in the story of the lost mine to
day. For as time passes and the glamor of that golden
summer and its strange adventure wear away in the
humdrum of our everyday life, both Waring and myself
experience grave doubts as to whether it may not after
all have been the vagaries of a brain diseased, and with
out foundation in fact. Not so with Sutcliff, poor fellow.
Faith has become ingrained in the man. As the years
elapse he grows more and more decided in his views.
He is not the one to doubt the evidence of his senses at
any time, and had he not seen the little dump with his
own eyes and handled a part with his own hands ? That
a painstaking search in the vicinity of the site where the
mine was alleged to have been discovered failed to pro
duce anything in support, in no wise shook him in his
beliefs. In his opinion that fact rather added weight to
the tale since it accorded with what the hermit had sev
eral times dwelled upon, namely the impression that it
was but a fragment from above, bearing upon the bed
rock but not coalescent with it. Then another search
213
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
was made of all that ground lying toward the summit,
that too without result. Then we thought we had him.
But, no; the virus of the gold fever had become too
deepseated. He maintained that the face of nature
changed continually, and in this, of course, he was right.
He claimed that it must have been deposited from auove
in ages prehistoric, when the mountain stood much
nearer heaven. The elements had worn down the moun
tain top till not a vestige of the original deposit had re
mained. This was a new point of view, and gave rise to
yet another. He began to argue that if such was the case
placer veins should be a consequence. He took up the
idea with avidity. It has had possession of him ever
since. He is a most worthy successor to my uncle, I
must say. Every summer he camps upon the Chiquita
to prospect. He has come to know every foot of that
mountain. Down under the shadow of its brows, on the
edge of the woods where a stretch of meadow sweeps to
an open ford of the Chiquita, he has erected a little shake
cabin where any time from June to October he may be
found. If you meditate interviewing him on this matter
of the mine there are several trails by which he can be
reached. All are very interesting. You may for instance
pass up Hooker s Cove, a rather difficult feat over a
rough trail, and having reached its mouth, swing up
the Chiquita to his abode. Another is the well-known
one back of Heron Valley and the old Scarlett Mill.
When you have reached the ruined hut among the tam
arack of the Summit Meadows turn to your right down
between the forks, a comparatively easy though some
what long trail. The first route has this advantage : you
may anticipate your man an hour or two, as he is an ar
dent angler and puts in a goodly portion of his time on
214
The Lost Mine of the Mono.
the stream between French Bar and his cabin with rod
and line. The second has this : you can put in a day very
pleasantly at the lake back of the dam fishing for black
bass ; an agreeable interruption, let me say, to the
tedium of travel over hill-roads at no time such as to
cater to our sense of comfort. Then, again, on the high
est point on that trail, where to the east you have mapped
below you the long, green chain so frequently mentioned
as the Summit Meadows, there is a dark stretch of fir
woods upon the right which the sun only checkers in in
frequent spots. Swing off the trail here and a short dis
tance up the ridge you come to another point of interest,
another artificial lake ; the site where once was sought
the diversion of a portion of the waters of the Chiquita,
to have them mingle with, and swell the volume of the
Fork.
But by far the most interesting is the route we took
upon our last visit. One here meets with all the points
of interest, the deserted mill on the Fork, Gray s the
Deerhorn Meadows, the Butte, and the imposing heights
of Spirit Mountain, and lastly the Gap of the Shuteye
and the trail to the Chiquita. By this route you will
arrive at the cabin late in the afternoon, a most op
portune hour you will discover, as the chances are
greatly in your favor, that you will find a pan of crisp
trout, or a quarter of venison, nicely browning over the
fire, awaiting you, together with an ovenful of white,
wholesome bread, a pot of refreshing tea, a hospitable
host, and over the campfire later an entertaining recital
of the story of the Lost Mine of the Mono.
215
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES
THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
This book is DUE on the last date stamped below
HAY
19*3
195Q
FEB 1 8 1960
NOV 2 1 1960
of CALIFORMEi
PS
321
K668 1
