It was a great joy to us to meet these old acquaintances and to feel that we were now not quite so lonely out in that wild country. We all remained in camp at Salmon Falls for several weeks. During this time the boys looked around to see what they had better do. Chas. Ramsey and Calvin James took up a ranch about thirty miles west of Sacramento River on Cash Creek. The five brothers of us decided that the best thing we could do was to take up a ranch also. We went over into the same neighborhood and squatted on a body of land. There was no law prescribing any amount that each man could take, and the grazing land was held largely in common. We had a good bunch of cattle and horses of our own and emigrants were continually offering their teams for sale. Isaac, Zach and Robert had brought considerable money out with them, and James, William and myself had practically all the gold we had cleaned up in mining, so we were in shape to begin the cattle business on a pretty good scale. By the first of December we had a fine herd of cattle, all branded with our particular brand, grazing on the pasture along Cash Creek.
We built a cabin close to the cabin that James and Ramsey had put up, and staked out our ranch. There were five men in the James cabin and seven in ours—six Gibson brothers and Eli Wilson. The whole valley of Cash Creek as well as much of the valley of Sacramento River, was covered with wild oats. Red clover grew wild and there were many other grasses just as good for cattle.
We had plenty of flour, sugar, coffee and such other common groceries as were to be had in the markets at Sacramento. It had cost quite a sum of money to get these provisions—I do not remember just how much, but it was fabulous almost, and the only consolation we got was out of the fact that we didn't have to buy meat. We had our own cattle if we wanted beef, but there was no need even for that when venison was so plentiful.
It must have been sometime during the first of December that we organized a hunt for the purpose of laying in a good supply of meat for the winter. We rigged up ten pack mules, went to the mountains a few miles distant and camped. From this camp we conducted our hunting expedition and in a few days had more than enough venison to last through the winter. We killed elk, deer and antelope enough to load our train. Part of this we took down to Sacramento and traded it for other provisions. We felt that we could get meat any time when we had to have it, but might not be able to get other provisions, and that an extra supply would make us feel more comfortable.
The grazing was fine all through the winter. The climate, as every one knows, is not cold and the one discomfort was the continued rain, but this had its compensations. When the rivers and sloughs filled up with water, the wild ducks and wild geese came in to feed upon the wild oats. We had little to do but look after our cattle and think about what we would like to eat. If we decided in the morning to have duck or goose, some one took the gun, went out and brought back just what we had decided upon. The rivers were full of the finest fish and they were no trouble to catch at all, so when we wanted fish, it was at hand. I have never lived at any place in my life where I felt so sure of provisions as in that cabin during that winter. We had four large greyhounds that had come across the plains with some of the emigrants and we picked them up as company. We trained them to hunt bear—that is the bear soon trained them. It was no trouble to get them to trail bear. They seemed to do this by instinct, but seemed not always to be sure of the kind of animal they were after. I judged this by watching them tackle the bear after they had overtaken it. They would dash in with as much confidence as if he were a jack rabbit or a coyote and showed plainly that they proposed to take him in and annihilate him at once. They would also show a good deal of surprise when the old bear would rise up on his hind feet and box them ten feet away. They soon learned to keep their distance and play with the bear, keeping him standing on his hind feet, watching them until we could come up close enough to get a shot. That always ended it. Sometimes the bear would take to a tree. In either case we always got him. These dogs were great company for us. If we happened not to want any bear meat, we would take the dogs and chase jack-rabbits and coyotes. They were pretty swift dogs, but it was seldom that they could pick up a jack-rabbit, and rarely ever got a coyote on a straight run, but we had as much fun and more probably than if the dogs had been able to pick them up right along.
Thus passed the winter of '50 and '51—as pleasant a period as I recall during my whole life. By the spring and early summer of '51 our cattle were fat and fine and ready to be sold for beef. We peddled them out to the butchers and miners along the Sacramento and American Rivers. They brought us an average of one hundred and fifty dollars a head. By the first of July they were all gone and we began to look for emigrants' cattle to re-stock the ranch. We supposed that emigration across the plains would continue and in order to get first chance at cattle that might be for sale, we loaded up our pack mules, crossed the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and went down Carson River to Humboldt Desert. We were greatly surprised to find only a few straggling emigrant trains coming in and most of these were bent on settlement rather than mining and had brought their families. Of course, they had no cattle to sell. We waited until the latter part of July, and when we became convinced that no cattle were coming we had to determine the next best thing to do.
The grazing of cattle had proved so much more to our liking than digging gold that we wanted to continue in that business, but we couldn't do it without cattle. We thought about the thousands of cattle back in Missouri that might be had for ten or fifteen dollars a head, and decided to return across the plains and during the winter gather up a herd and take it back the following summer. This plan seemed to suit best. Brother William was not in the best of health and didn't feel equal to the task of crossing the plains, so it was agreed that he and Eli Wilson would stay with the ranch and take care of things during the year and that the rest of us would go back.