p--But, I must let the story itself tell you all that resulted from
these unexpected and seemingly unimportant happenings.

CHAPTER II

DEATH OF THE MINER

California and 1849! Magical combination of Place and Date! The Land of
Gold and the Time of Gold! The Date and the Place of the opening of
Nature's richest treasure-house! Gold--free for all who would stoop and
pick or dig it out of the rocks and the dirt! The beginning of the most
wonderful exodus of gold-mad men in the history of the world! "Gold!
Gold!! GOLD!!! CALIFORNIA GOLD!" The nations of the world heard the cry;
and the most enterprising and daring and venturesome--the wicked as well
as the good--of the nations of the world started straightway for
California. Towns and cities sprang up, like mushrooms, in a night,
where the day before the grizzly bear had hunted. In a year a wilderness
became a populous state. A marvelous work to accomplish, even for an
Anglo-Saxon-American nation; but, get down your histories of California,
boys, and you will learn that we did accomplish that very thing--built a
great state out of a wilderness in some twelve months of time!

Of course, Thure and Bud (Bud with the grizzly's hide had soon overtaken
Thure), as they rode along over the soft grass of the Sacramento Valley,
on this clear July afternoon of the eventful year of 1849, did not
realize that all these wonderful things were happening or were about to
happen in their loved California. They knew that a great gold discovery
had been made in the region of the American River some forty miles
northeast of Sutter's Fort. Indeed, for the last year, all California
had gone gold-mad over this same discovery; and now every able-bodied
man in the country, who could possibly get there, was at the mines.
Stores, ranches, ships, pulpits, all businesses and all professions had
been deserted for the alluring smiles of the yellow god, gold, until it
might be truthfully said, that in all California there was but one
business and that one business was gold-digging.

The devastating gold-fever had swept over the Conroyal and the Randolph
ranchos; and had left, of all the grown-up males, only Thure and Bud,
who, not yet being of age, had been compelled to stay, much against
their wills, to care for the women folks and the ranchos, while their
fathers and brothers and all the able-bodied help had rushed off, like
madmen, to the mines; and only their loyalty to their loved mothers