The Cave of Gold / A Tale of California in '49

by Everett McNeil

Ham at once appropriated this; and then the two men lowered the body into the grave. A similar belt, also well-filled with gold-dust, was found around the body of Bill Ugger. Ham unbuckled this belt and placed it with the other. Then he and Rex lifted the body of Ugger and carried it to the grave and lowered it down on top of the body of Quinley; and then filled the grave with broken pieces of rocks and dirt, to prevent the wolves from digging up the bodies.

"Th' way of th' transgresser is hard, accordin' tew th' good book," and Ham's eyes rested thoughtfully on that lonely new-made grave. "An' shore th' end of them tew 'pears tew bear out th' good book. Wal, th' dead is dead, an' that's all thar is tew it. Now, for th' livin'," and he turned from the grave and walked up to where Mr. and Mrs. Dickson were standing, the two confiscated gold-belts in his hand.

"Here, Dick, I reckon, is a part of th' gold them skunks got from you," and he handed the two belts to Dickson. "Leastwise we got them from their bodies."

But Mr. and Mrs. Dickson refused to take the gold and insisted that it be placed in the common fund, to be shared by all alike, so Ham turned the two gold-belts over to Mr. Conroyal.

The camp was now placed under the strictest discipline. Ten of the prisoners were compelled to assist in getting the gold from the cave. The others were kept bound and under constant guard, night and day, all except Pedro, who, during the day, was forced to do the cooking and the camp work for all, while at night he was securely bound and returned to his place with the other prisoners.

Thus the work of getting the gold out of the cave went steadily on for five days, every one, even Mrs. Dickson, working to the very limit of his or her endurance. Then came the night of the catastrophe.

The gold, as fast as it was taken out of the cave, was carried, in sacks made from blankets, to the opening in the wall of rock that gave entrance to Crooked Arm Gulch, and from there lowered to the ground with ropes. Each night all the workers returned to the camp under the Big Tree. On this night, the sixth night from the day of the finding of the Cave of Gold, about midnight, there suddenly swept through the air above them one of those rare, for that time of the year, but often very violent, mountain storms.

For an hour the water fell out of the skies, as if poured from an enormous bucket. The wind blew, until it seemed almost to shake the solid mountains themselves, while vivid glares of lightning blinded the eyes and heavy peals of thunder deafened the ears. Then came a lull in the violence of the storm, as if the elements had paused to gather themselves for a last supreme effort, followed almost instantly by a glare of lightning so vivid, that, for the moment, it seemed as if the whole world was ablaze, and a shock of thunder, so appalling, that everyone leaped from his blanket and stood staring with blanched face and frightened eyes around him, not knowing what awful thing was happening. For two or three minutes the dreadful sounds continued, as if mountains were being torn up by the roots and thrown crashing to the earth again, while the ground shook and trembled beneath their feet, as if the earth had the ague. Then, only the roar of the falling rain and the rushing of the wind through the limbs of the Big Tree above their heads, was heard. Fifteen minutes later the rain had ceased, the wind had died down, the clouds had swept by, and the stars were shining again in a clear sky.

The next morning, when our friends, on their way to the Cave of Gold, reached the narrow shelf of rock in Crooked Arm Gulch, from which they had had their first view of the Golden Elbow, an astonishing sight met their eyes.

The great arch, overhanging the entrance to the Cave of Gold, with its millions of tons of superincumbent rocks, had given away, and the whole of that side of the gulch, nearly a thousand feet high and for a couple of hundred feet on either side, had split off and fallen in a great mass of rocks, hundreds of feet high, where the day before had been the entrance to the dead miner's marvelous Cave of Gold.