Silence fell in the hospital ward. Jim's eyes were far away, evidently in that strange and distant land where he had made his find. Then he turned a piercing glance on the mine-owner, who returned it frankly.
The old prospector cleared his throat and swallowed hard. For a moment he seemed about to speak, and then stopped himself. At last his features settled into decision.
"Send for Clem to come here to-morrow," he said, "I'll tell the yarn."
CHAPTER VII
THE FORTY-NINERS
Several days elapsed before Jim took up his story, Owens preferring to wait until the prospector grew stronger. The mine-owner was shrewd enough to see that if he did not show too much haste, Jim would be less suspicious.
When the time arrived, Jim was up and dressed, though the doctor would only allow him out of doors for a few minutes at a time. The prospector had evidently been thinking out the beginning of his story, for, when his visitors arrived, he opened without preface.
"There's a lot o' wild yarns been told about the findin' o' gold in Californy," he began. "I've heard some, an' wild an' woolly they was; an' I've read some in books, an' they was wilder yet; an' I've seen some in the movies, an' they was a crime!
"Not but what them days wasn't tough! They was! The crowds what hit the minin' camps o' the Sierras in the fifties was out for gold an' nothin' else, an' they didn't much care how they got it. Father, he was a forty-niner himself, an' he was a rough un if anything got in his way. But he had more sense'n most, an', without any book-l'arnin' to speak of, he knew a heap about gold. If he'd been alive when I made my strike, old as he was, he'd ha' gone there, an' he'd ha' got there, too.
"I come o' Mormon stock, I do. My grand-pap, he made the trail to Salt Lake City wi' Brigham Young. Grandma, she used a rifle to defend the home camp, when the Illinois and Indiana folk came to massacre the women an' children, after the men were gone. Judgin' from what I've heard about her shootin', there wasn't many bullets wasted. Some o' these days, when you ain't got nothin' better to do, I'll tell you the story o' my grand-pap. He come to be one o' the Danites, later.[4]