! Up the side they all toiled, the men lean and
brown and whiskered, the two women fully as distressful looking, with
their hair faded, and their skin tight over their cheek-bones. The
majority of the men were clad in old deer-skins and moccasins, and
carried only hand-baggage of bundles.

The passengers of the _California_, crowding curiously, respectfully
gave way.

"Well, holy smoke!" exclaimed Mr. Grigsby, at sight of one of the men.
"Is that you, Bentley?"

"Hello, Sam," wearily responded the man. "It's what's left of me."

"Where'd you come from?"

"From the States, by way of the Gila trail across the desert. Nigh
starved to death, too."

"You look it," commented Mr. Grigsby. "Is this all your party?"

"No. Part of us branched off for Los Angeles, on this side of the
Colorado Desert; part of us never got through, and some are buried and
some aren't. The rest of us struck for the sea, by the San Diego fork,
as fast as we could. And I tell you, this steamer looks mighty good!"

"Pshaw!" murmured Mr. Grigsby, while Charley felt a great wave of
sympathy for Mr. Bentley and all. And the Fremonter added: "I suppose
you're bound for the gold fields, like everybody else."

"Yes," answered the tattered emigrant. "But all the gold in Californy
can't pay me for what I've gone through. Hunger and thirst and heat
and cold and Injuns--we met 'em. It's a terrible trail, Sam, as I
reckon you know. And queer enough, those two women--those two wives in
the party--stood it without a whimper. Gentlemen," he spoke to the
crowd, "those are the heroes."

"You bet," responded several voices. "And there are more women like
'em."

The emigrant Bentley passed on, following his fellows. Mr. Grigsby had
known him in trapper days. They had hunted beaver together.

No one made any objection to taking these additional passengers aboard.
Anyway, now it was only a few days to San Francisco. The new gold
seekers all had harrowing stories to tell. As Mr. Bentley had said,
the most of them had traveled from the Missouri River, in Arkansas and
Missouri, by a southern route across New Mexico which included what is
to-day Arizona, from Santa Fe striking west for the Gila River. It was
a parched and barren country, rife with the Apaches and Navajos and
Yumas and other fierce tribes, who stole their horses and cattle and
harassed their camps. Skeletons of men and animals, from other
parties, lined the trail; and there w