About an hour later, when I arrived at Foster’s Bar, I found him sitting in a store with some half-dozen miners, to whom he had been recounting how he had seen a man concealed in the bushes off the trail. He expressed himself as having been “awful skeered,” and said that he had his pistol out, and was thinking of shooting all the time he was speaking to me. I told him I had mine lying by my side, and would have returned the compliment, when, by way of showing me what sort of a chance I should have stood, he stuck up a card on a tree at about twenty paces, and put six balls into it one after another out of his heavy navy revolver. I confessed I could not beat such shooting as that, and was very well pleased that he had not taken it into his head to make a target of me.
It seemed that he was an express carrier, and as his partner had been robbed but a few days before, very near the place of our meeting, his suspicions of me were not at all unreasonable.
I was very desirous of seeing a friend of mine who was mining at a place about twenty miles off, so, having hired a mule for the journey, I set off early next morning, intending to return the same night. My way was through a part of the country very little traveled, and the trails were consequently very indistinct, but I got full directions how to find my way, where to leave the main trail, which side to take at a place where the trail forked, where I should cross another, and so on; also where I should pass an old cabin, a forked pine tree, and other objects, by which I might know that I was on the right road.
The man who gave me my directions said he hardly expected that I would be able to keep the right trail. I had some doubts about it myself, but I was determined to try at all events, and for seven or eight miles I got along very well, knowing I was right by the landmarks which I had passed.
The numbers of Indian trails, however, branching off to right and left were very confusing, being not a bit less indistinct than the trail I was endeavoring to follow. At last I felt certain that I had gone wrong, but as I fancied I was not going far out of the right direction, I kept on, and shortly afterwards came upon a small camp called Toole’s Diggings. I was told here that I had only come five miles out of my way; and after dining and getting some fresh directions, I set out again. Having ridden for nearly an hour, I came to an Indian camp, situated by the side of a small stream in a very dense part of the forest. At first I could see no one but some children amusing themselves with a swing hung from a branch of an oak tree, but as I was going past, a number of Indians came running out from their brush huts. They were friendly Indians, and had picked up a few words of English from loafing about the camps of the miners. The usual style of salutation to them is, “How d’ye do?” to which they reply in the same words; but if you repeat the question, as if you really wanted to know the state of their health, they invariably answer “fuss-rate.” Accordingly, having ascertained that they were all “fuss-rate,” I mixed up a little broken English, some mongrel Spanish, and a word or two of Indian, and made inquiries as to my way. In much the same sort of language they directed me how to go; and though they seemed disposed to prolong the conversation, I very quickly bade them adieu and moved on, not being at all partial to such company.
I followed the dim trail up hill and down dale for several hours without seeing a human being, and I felt quite satisfied that I was again off my road, but I pushed on in hopes of reaching some sort of habitation before dark. At last, in traveling up the side of a small creek, just as the sun was taking leave of us, I caught sight of a log cabin among the pine trees. It seemed to have been quite recently built, so I was pretty sure it was inhabited, and on riding up I found two men in it, from whom I learned that I was still five miles from my destination. They recommended me to stop the night with them, as it was nearly dark, and the trail was hard enough to find by daylight.
I saw no help for it; so, after staking out the mule where he could pick some green stuff, I joined my hosts, who were just sitting down to supper. It was not a very elaborate affair—nothing but tea and ham. They apologized for the meagerness of the turn-out, and especially for the want of bread, saying that they had been away for a couple of days, and on their return found that the Indians had taken the opportunity to steal all their flour.
We made the most of what we had, however, and putting a huge log on the fire, we lighted our pipes, and my entertainers, producing two violins, favored me with a selection of nigger melodies.
They had been mining lately at the place which I had been trying to reach all day, and in the course of conversation I found that I had had all my trouble for nothing, as the man whom I was in search of had a few days before left the diggings for San Francisco.
The next morning I returned to Foster’s Bar, my friends putting me on a much shorter trail than the roundabout road I had traveled the day before.