CHAPTER XIII
The End of the Trail
The gold that with the sunlight lies
In bursting heaps at dawn,
The silver spilling from the skies
At night to walk upon,
The diamonds gleaming in the dew
He never saw, he never knew.
He got some gold, dug from the mud,
Some silver, crushed from stones,
The gold was red with dead men's blood,
The silver black with groans;
And when he died he moaned aloud,
"There'll be no pocket in my shroud."
Joaquin Miller.
John Keeler, returned from his travels, became Palmer's trusted messenger to Hintzen, to whom the old man sent a copy of his will. Keeler was provided with another copy to deposit at the court-house in Downieville, county seat of Sierra County. For although Robert Palmer disliked courts and lawyers, he deemed it wise to file a copy of his will at the court-house. This he could do without telling Hintzen, so he instructed Keeler, after having seen that gentleman at Forest City, to continue over the mountains to Downieville, as if on private business.
Honest John Keeler, after a year spent in tracking criminals, had little liking for this new mission. It seemed as if his old friend thought all men rogues. Such a sweeping condemnation would include himself, and he resented the insinuation. However, the old man was still feeble. So Keeler set out on foot across the mountains.
It had been some time since he had been as far as Chipp's Flat. There he sought out the old cannon, long since dismounted, and sitting down upon it he thought of the changes wrought in that neighborhood within his recollection. In Civil War times, eighteen years before, miners of Chipp's Flat and vicinity had enlisted in the Union Army. There had been a full company of a hundred men, and the cannon had been a part of their equipment. But the cannon had not left that California mountain-side; and the soldiers themselves had got no further East than Arizona, for in those days there was no transcontinental railroad. Now that there was one, Chipp's Flat had no need of it. Save for two or three scattered houses the mining town had disappeared. The mountain ridge had been mined through from Minnesota, and now that the gold-bearing gravel had been exhausted, Chipp's Flat, except in name, had gone out of existence.
The next thing of interest was the dirty blue water of Kanaka Creek, and the clatter of the stamping mills on the other side of it; for Keeler was not much used to quartz mining. The name "quartz mining" seemed misleading, for the wash from the crushed rock was distinctly blue. It was evident that these quartz mines were paying well, as Alleghany had every appearance of a live mining town. Keeler stopped at the hotel there for dinner. It seemed strange that intelligent men should so lose their heads. Great quantities of liquor were being consumed at the hotel bar, poker games were in full blast, and there was a cemetery handy.