So much for the horse. Now, for myself.
Here was another change in my life. Circus-rider, pop-corn merchant, actor, detective, enlisted in an emigrant-train, gold-digger, and engaged with stock, I was now a ranger, and about to start in a new avocation. Hitherto, the red men I had come across had been looking after me and mine. Now, I was about to look after them.
The wild, dense forest, the gigantic mountains, the untrodden wilderness, sweeping beneath the sky with its varying swell, the unbroken waste and desert with the savage dwellers in it, whose crimson hands were against all civilization and gory with the uncounted murders of the white man, were now to furnish me with all the delight my nature could crave from a life of constant excitement. If I thought of my home and my friends, hundreds upon hundreds of miles away from me, I fear, at this time, it was with no inconsolable feelings of regret. In truth, I was about to become the veritable pioneer and protector of the scarcely-rooted civilization in which my lot had lately been cast. What chance was there I could over-much think of the past, in the absolute toil and the positive demand for vital activity of the present?
I was now about twenty-four years of age. My frame always promising strength, had become robust and powerful. Nature had gifted me with a sufficiently good constitution, as well as some considerable amount of energy. In addition to this, I possessed self-confidence enough to render me equal to the position in which fortune and adventure had placed me.
By the bye, it may be as well for me here to say a few words respecting Jack Bird, who was commonly called by his acquaintances "the" Captain.
About fifty-five years of age, and rather above the medium height, he possessed a powerful frame. Of dark complexion, and with piercing hazel eyes; he was a Mississipian, or, as he was used to say, he "came from old Massisip." In a word, a native, as he himself told me, of Arkansas, he was a splendid specimen of the class of men raised between civilized life and the extreme frontier of that civilization. Thus he had been made a backwoodsman by nature and predisposition, as well as necessity. With an active and energetic mind, he had carved out for himself in this wild country, a comparative fortune.
Had he been reared in New York State, he might have grown to the proportions of a Vanderbilt.
As, however, he had neither ferries to cross, nor railways to lay out, he occupied himself in traversing mountains, and in creating settlements. Not having legislatures to buy up, his restless energy had occupied itself in the control of savage life. An emigrant to California in 1849, he had engaged at first in mining. Afterwards, he went into stock-raising. It had been in 1857 that he settled on the boundaries of Honey Lake. Here he remained, until the close of the late war. Then, he decided upon returning for a brief period to his old homestead. He was, however, doomed never to reach it. Starting overland by stage, he was slaughtered, with the driver and other of the passengers, by the Indians, and never reached the place of his birth. He was one of the far too numerous victims, thrust forward by the restless progress of the day, in the face of the red savages, who have up to the present time been sheltered under the protecting ægis of our Government. A nobler, kinder-hearted, and franker man, perhaps, I have never met with.
It was somewhat previous to the formation of the Buckskin Rangers, to whose efficiency he had so largely and liberally contributed, that new silver-mines had been discovered, near what is now known as Virginia City, as well as in Gold Hill near Carson City, in Nevada. This discovery had created considerable excitement, and a large number of fortune-seekers were already flocking to the mines. The Indians, however, were quite as active as the searchers after wealth. Scarcely a day passed which was unmarked by the murder of some poor prospector, in that vicinity.
Their scalped remains invariably attested the means by which they had met their death.