Upon arriving in town the facts were reported and an expedition started immediately to capture the thieves, but too late, as the marauders were on their way to Lower California, led by the noted bandit Joaquin, it was supposed.
A two-wheeled, covered cart, drawn by a very diminutive yoke of oxen, which passed through the town at this time created much amusement. It was under the management of a stately Pike County dame. She was about fifty years of age, with long ringlets dangling from the sides of her head, and was dressed in the latest and most approved style of bloomer costume. As this stately dame marched with a dignified and majestic tread alongside of her team, carrying upon her shoulder the usual regulation Missouri ox gad, she presented a fine appearance, and as old Mike (a venerable Greek) remarked:
“Be jabers, thin, she reminds me of a Spartan mither with her chariot, do yez see, searching upon the faild of battle for the bodies of her brave b’ys!”
It was, however, a fair illustration of what it is even possible for a woman to accomplish when she takes a notion.
The road across the Sierra Nevada range of mountains, over which the emigrants were obliged to travel, in order to pass through Hangtown, was called the old Tremont trail, and was a very rough road; crossing deep cañons and rocky points, but a man by the name of Jack Johnson who was accustomed to mountain travel and famous for opening new trails and “cut offs,” succeeded in the fall of ’49, or spring of ’50 rather, in finding a much better, as well as a shorter trail, which the emigration of following years took advantage of. It was used for many years, and universally known as the “Johnson Cut off,” and, by the way, it was supposed to save about thirty miles of travel.
Some eighteen or twenty years subsequent to the finding of this trail, Mr. Johnson had occasion to stop over night in Placerville, at the Cary House, and occupied a room in the second story. He was tired and restless, and awakening in the night, not knowing where he was, and seeing before him what he supposed was an open door, which was in fact a French window opening to the floor, he walked out of this window, falling to the ground below, and breaking an arm in the fall. An old timer who was present, the next day with a piece of chalk wrote upon a board, placing the latter against the building beneath the window:
THE JOHNSON CUT OFF.
But the old timer was many years behind the time for such a joke to be understood and appreciated; for nearly twenty years had passed, and the history of “Johnson’s Cut off” had long since been forgotten, or remembered only as a tradition; and all those who saw the sign, with a couple of exceptions, asked what it meant. Becoming conscious at length that even here, too, time was putting in its work, with a sad heart he removed the board from its position, remarking to another old timer near him:
“Dan! the time alas, is drawing near when the boy will inquire of his father: