Out of Doors—California and Oregon

by J. A. Graves

During the campaign in which Gen. George B. McClellan ran for the Presidency against Abraham Lincoln, the Democrats of Northern California had a great celebration which lasted two or three days. Among other things was a barbecue at the race track, two or three miles out of town. Great pits were dug which were filled with oak stumps and logs, and burned for about twenty-four hours before the cooking began. These logs were reduced to a perfect bed of live coals. Over these, old-fashioned Southern negroes, of whom there were many in the neighborhood, cooked quarters of beef, whole sheep, pigs, chickens, ducks, turkeys and geese. There were at least five thousand people on the ground. My blacksmith friend, Allison, was firing a salute with an old cannon. He fired the cannon after it was loaded, with an iron rod, one end of which was kept heated in a small fire. I attended to the fire for him. After the discharge the gun was wiped out with a wet swab. The powder was done up in red flannel cartridges. Allison, with heavy, buckskin gloves on his hands, would hold his thumb over the vent or tube of the cannon. Two men, first slitting the lower end of the cartridge, would ram it into the gun. During each loading process I straddled the gun, looking towards Allison. After a number of discharges, the heat burned a hole through the glove that Allison was using, and his thumb, coming in contact with the hot metal, was withdrawn for an instant, while the assistants were sending home a charge. There was an immediate premature explosion. I was sitting astride the gun, and felt it rise up and buck like a horse. Allison's eyes were nearly ruined, and his face filled with powder, the marks of which stayed with him the rest of his life. The two assistants were horribly mutilated, but neither of them was killed. For a time I thought I never would hear again. My ears simply shut up and refused to open for some time.

It would seem that this disaster should have been sufficient for one day, but it was not. That night there was to have been public speaking in front of the Western Hotel, by many prominent politicians. Opposite the hotel was a two-story brick building, with a veranda built around it. All of the offices on the second floor opened on this veranda. It was crowded with people. The weight became excessive. The iron posts next to the sidewalk, which sustained the veranda, slid out, and the platform swung down like a table leaf, spilling everybody onto the sidewalk. Eight or nine people were killed outright, and many more very severely injured.

When about twelve years of age I got hold of two greyhounds, sisters, named "Flora" and "Queen." During the winter time I spent much time chasing jackrabbits. In summer time the ground got so hard that the dogs would not run. The ground hurt their feet. But in the winter we had great sport. There was an immense open plain east of our property, miles long and miles wide, and level as a floor. There was a dry weed, without leaves and of a reddish color, which grew in patches all over this plain. These weed patches were the hiding places of the jackrabbits. The game was exciting and stirred one's sporting blood. I found a great difference in the speed of jackrabbits—as much in fact as in the speed of blooded horses. Occasionally I would get up one that would actually run away from the dogs, which were a fast pair. I followed the sport so persistently, and paid so little attention to fences when they interfered with my going, that I got the appellation in the neighborhood of "that d Ñ d Graves boy."

When we got up a hare, away we went after the dogs, just as fast as our horses would carry us. The sport was hard on horseflesh, so much so that my father finally forbade me running any of our horses after the hounds. There lived in our neighborhood a man who owned, and who had put upon the track some of the fastest horses in the State. At this time he had retired and raised horses for the fun of it. He also had some good hounds. He enjoyed the sport as much as I did. Having plenty of good horses, he furnished me with as many as I needed. We spent many days in trying to determine which of us had the best dogs. Incidentally, we wrecked some promising thoroughbreds. The question of the superiority of our dogs was never settled. We always left the door open for one more race.

Our place was the haven of all the boys of my acquaintance. When I was attending school at Marysville some boy came home with me nearly every Friday night. We would work at whatever was being done on the place Saturday forenoon, but the afternoon was ours. With the old gun we took to the pasture, hunted for game, for birds' nests and even turtles' nests. The mud turtle, common to all California waters, laid an astounding number of very hard shelled, oblong, white eggs, considerably larger than a pigeon's egg. They deposited them in the sand on the shores of the slough, covering them up, leaving them for the sun to hatch. They always left some tell-tale marks by which we discovered the nest. Often we got several hundred eggs in an afternoon. They were very rich, and of good flavor.

There were many coons and a few wildcats in the pasture woods. With the aid of a dog we had great sport with them. Hard pressed, they would take to the trees, from which we would shoot them. On one occasion we found four little spitfire, baby lynx, which we carried home and later traded to the proprietor of a menagerie. We got some money and two pair of fan-tail pigeons in exchange for them. When quite small they were the most vicious, untamable little varmints imaginable, and as long as we had them our hands were badly scratched by them.

On the bottom land, each year, we had a large and well assorted vegetable garden. It produced much more than we could possibly use. We boys would sell things from the garden for amusement and pin money. During one summer vacation, a boy, one Johnnie Gray, a brother of L. D. C. Gray of this city, was visiting me. We took a load of vegetables to Marysville. After selling it, getting our lunch, paying for the shoeing of our horse (which in those days cost four dollars), and buying some ammunition for the gun, we had $1.50 left. We quarreled as to how we should spend this remnant. Not being able to agree, we started home without buying anything. On the outskirts of Marysville was a brewery. The price of a five-gallon keg of beer was $1.50. We concluded to take a keg home with us. It was an awfully hot summer day, and the brewer was afraid to tap the keg, thinking that the faucet would blow out under the influence of the heat before we got home. He gave us a wooden faucet, and told us how to use it. "Hold it so," he said, showing us, "hit it with a heavy hammer, watch the bung, and when you have driven it in pretty well, then send it home with a hard blow." We were sure we could do it. We drove home, put the beer in the shade by the well, spread a wet cloth over it, and then put our horse away. My parents chided us for throwing our money away on beer. In the cool of the evening we concluded to tap the keg. One of us held the faucet and the other did the driving, but we did not have the success predicted for us by the brewer.

At the critical moment we drove in the bung, but not with sufficient momentum to fasten the faucet. It flew out of our hands into the air, followed by the beer. In about a minute the keg was entirely empty. We were overwhelmingly drenched and drowned by the escaping beer, but never got a single drop of it to drink.

On another occasion some of us children were coming home from Marysville. We were driving an old white horse, named "Jake," who knew us and loved us as only a good horse can. He submitted to our abuses, shared in our pleasure and would not willingly have hurt any of us. We were in a small, one-seated spring wagon. While driving through a lane, moved on by the spirit of deviltry, one of us whipped Jake into a run, and the other one threw the reins over a fence post. The result was as could have been expected by any sane-minded individual. The horse stopped so suddenly that he sat down on the singletree, and broke both the shafts of the wagon. We were hurled out with great force, and got sundry bruises and abrasions. We wired up the shafts and got home as best we could, and, I am sorry to say, we lied right manfully as to the cause of the accident. We told a story of a drunken Mexican on horseback who chased us a considerable distance, and finally lassoed the horse, bringing him to so sudden a stop as to cause the damage. Instead of being punished, as we should have been, we were lauded as heroes of an attempted kidnapping.

One of my uncles made for us a four-wheeled wagon, the hub, spokes and axles being made out of California oak—such a wagon as you can buy in any store today, only a little larger. We made a kite of large dimensions, and covered the frame with cotton from a couple of flour sacks. At certain times of the year, the wind across the Marysville plains blew with great velocity. This kite, in a strong wind, had great pulling capacity. We would go out into the plain, put up the kite, and fasten the string to the tongue of the wagon, three or four of us pile on, and let her go. The speed that we would travel before the wind by this means was marvelous, but we tried the kite trick once too often. We got to going so fast we could not slow down nor successfully guide the wagon. It ran over an old stump, spilled us all out, and kite and wagon sailed away clear across Feather River into Sutter County and we never saw either of them again.