It was Captain Crim who spoke. He had ridden into the town for the express purpose of recommending me to Governor Roop, with whom he was an old acquaintance. It would be useless, as well as a gross piece of vanity, were I here to relate all my late leader said of me. It will be enough to state here, his words were more than enough. The Governor gave him his ready assurance that I should want for nothing, until my former health and energy were completely restored.
Then, turning to me, he bade me follow him. On arriving at the only hotel in the place, he told the landlord to give me the best room in the house, and allow me to remain as long as I desired. The account was to be charged to himself.
It would be impossible for me to keep my engagement in San Francisco, on the tenth of the coming September. Indeed, I had requested Captain Crim, before quitting the train, to explain this to McGuire. As for my dear little wife, to whom I had written so hopefully from St. Joseph, what could I now say to her? I dared not write. In spite of Crim's kindness, and the even greater kindness of the Governor to a perfect stranger, that afternoon and evening were passed by me in a condition of extreme depression.
With the next morning, a happier state of mind came. For the first time in many weeks, I had slept in a decent bed. It was certainly not a palatial hotel, yet my breakfast was a better one, as well as more approximating to civilization, than any I had recently enjoyed. The sun shone through the curtainless windows in an inspiring way. The movement of the life around me was different from that which I had recently experienced. In fact, all, for the time, seemed new. The complete change had already comparatively reinvigorated me.
From this moment I began rapidly to recover my health, and in a few weeks was able to look around for such employment as the place could afford.
Nothing available could be found.
During this period, I had frequently met with miners and conversed with them. The chances and struggles of their life had a considerable attraction for me. At last I decided upon "prospecting" for gold. Success in this appeared to offer me the only possibility I could see of repaying Governor Roop what I had cost him (his kindness to me it would be impossible to repay) and leaving the ranche, like an honest man. After spending some two weeks with little or no success, I, at length, established what I believed to be a good claim in Light's Cañon.
Honestly, I may say that I went to work with a will. Fortune, however, was long in coming. For many weeks, I made merely enough from my claim to whet my appetite for more.
Perseverance however generally pays. At last I made more than enough to pay my debts. A few days after accomplishing this, I had cancelled my debt to him who had so kindly befriended me. Then, as the winter had begun somewhat earlier than usual, with many thanks to the Governor, I located in Susanville, where I decided to remain until the spring.
The truth is, I had already tasted the keenest excitement I had yet found in life, because it is the most fluctuating and uncertain. The chances in gold-prospecting and gold-digging are so variable, that I defy any young man who has once tempted them, readily to put them from him. The poor devil who has been at it for months, and gained merely enough to sustain his existence, may, in a single afternoon, find his toil munificently rewarded. Like the gambler, he stakes. It is not money, so much as life and work. A single hour may possibly give him a thousand-fold the value of that which he, perchance, considers an almost worthless stake.