aders, who were right handy
with their rifles, were standin' at the ready. They'd fought their way
across the plains, when the redskins were swarmin', an' they weren't
the kind to take back water before a crowd o' tenderfeet. The 'Frisco
men, city chaps a lot o' them, begun to waver, an' asked a parley.

"The Mormon leader, he told 'em, cold, what they'd get if they come
any farther, an' hinted, pretty broad, that there was more cold lead
around those diggin's than there was gold. But he told 'em, too, that
there was a lot o' the other placers around wi' no one washin' 'em.
The others grumbled but got out. Luckily, there was gold enough for
all, at first. Later on, there was a sure-enough fight over a sluice,
and the bullets went thick. The Mormons knew how to shoot, an' there
was fifty o' the Gentiles dead when they broke back. Our folks were
let alone on the Sacramento, after that.

"Durin' this month, John Bidwell struck it rich on the Feather River,
75 miles away from Sutter's Mill, and Pearson B. Reading on the Clear
River, 100 miles further on. The news scattered the 'Frisco crowd,
many a man leavin' a good claim in hopes to find a better. Others went
prospectin' on their own. By the end o' the year, along the whole
western slope o' the Sierra Nevada, from Pitt River to the Tuolumne,
there wasn't a stream or a creek or a dry ravine that didn't have some
one prospectin' or pannin' on it.

"Most o' those that got on to the diggin's in the first two months
made money an' made it fast. A few struck bonanzas and took out a
thousand dollars a day. Quite a lot got good pickin's an' cleaned up
at the rate of a hundred a day. The rest were doin' good if they
cleaned up twenty, an' that was jest about enough to live on, at
minin'-camp prices. I've seen potatoes sell at five dollars apiece to
be eaten raw, when the scurvy was ragin', an' three men were killed
in a fight over the buyin' of a fresh cabbage.

"Those was tough times, even for the first lot that come from 'Frisco.
There was no sort o' law an' order in the camps, no sanitation an' no
doctors. Typhoid an' dysentery got a good hold by the end o' June. You
could get the reek o' fever an' disease a mile away.

"Men too sick to walk crawled out to their claims an' died there,
scary lest some claim-jumper should seize their claims. Hope stuck
with 'em to the last. Scores fell dead into the stream, wi' the pan
still in their hands. One time, when they come to carry