All of these different streams of inflowing gold-seekers were too far south for Thure and Bud to strike until they were nearly to Sacramento City, except that from Oregon, flowing from the north; and they hardly expected to find this stream still flowing, since those regions were supposed to have been already drained of all their gold-seeking inhabitants. But, hardly had they ridden an hour on their way that morning, when, on coming to the top of a low ridge of hills and looking down into the valley beyond, they saw half a dozen white-topped wagons, accompanied by a number of men, some on horseback and some afoot, a couple of miles ahead of them and about to pass over another ridge of hills.
"Hurrah!" yelled Thure, at sight of the wagons and the men. "I'll bet a coon skin that they are bound for Sacramento City and the gold-diggings, too. Come, let's hurry up our horses and see if we can't overtake them. I'll feel a lot safer when we're in with that crowd," and his keen eyes glanced swiftly over the valley in front of them. "There are too many places along this trail, where them skunks could hide and shoot us without our getting a shot back at them, to suit me. But they will hardly venture to take a shot at us, while we are with a crowd of armed men like that. Hurrah! Come on!" and, striking his pack-horse with his whip, Thure hurried on down the hill.
A couple of hours later the two boys overtook the slower-moving train of wagons; and were given a hearty welcome by the gaunt, roughly dressed and rougher-looking men, who, as they had surmised, were bound for the gold-mines.
Thure, as they joined the little company of prospective miners, turned and looked backward, just in time to see two horsemen appear on the brow of a distant hill, halt their horses and sit staring in their direction for a couple of minutes; and then, wheeling their horses about disappear down the other side of the hill.
"Queer!" thought Thure. "I should think they'd be only too glad to join us, unless," and his heart gave a jump at the thought, "unless they were Brokennose and Pockface following on our trail! I wonder—"
But here the men of the wagon-train, gathering excitedly about him and all eagerly asking questions, drove all further thoughts of the two solitary horsemen out of his head.
There were fifteen men, two women, and three children—a girl of fourteen and two boys thirteen years old—in the company; and all had come from the great wilderness to the north, whither they had gone from the States some three years before. They had been traveling for many days southward, through a wilderness inhabited only by wild beasts and Indians, without seeing a human being, except a few Indians, although they had passed a number of deserted ranchos on their way down the Sacramento Valley, until Thure and Bud rode into their midst. All the men were armed with long-barreled rifles, huge knives, and some of them, in addition, carried a pistol or a revolver. They were dressed for the most part in deerskins and their hair and beards had grown so long, that only their bright eyes and bronzed noses and gleaming white teeth, when they smiled or opened their mouths, were visible. All the other features of their faces were hidden behind matted locks of hair. The faces of the women and the children had been browned by the sun, until they were nearly of the color of Indians, and their clothing was soiled and worn; but all were clear-eyed and looked as if they did not know what a bodily ache or pain was.
Thure and Bud were too familiar with this type of wilderness manhood to be worried in the least over their rough looks and dress. They knew something of the real men that usually dwelt within these rough exteriors—the men who hewed the way for civilization through the wilderness, the men of the rifle, the trap, and the ax, strong and sturdy and as gnarled and knotted as the oaks of their own forests, yet as true to a friend or to the right as they saw it, as the balls in their rifles were to their sights—and neither boy hesitated an instant to accept their invitation to "jog along" with them to Sacramento City.
For a few minutes the whole company halted and crowded excitedly around Thure and Bud. They had heard no news of the world outside of their little company for many days; and they were especially anxious to hear the latest news from the diggings.
"Sure th' gold ain't petered out yit?" queried one of the men anxiously.