With his letter of introduction extended, he introduced his name, and was met with that cordial, open-handed, open-hearted welcome which the stranger ever gets in California.
To Mr. Morrison, the agent—a splendid young man—Mr. W—— opened his business, asking if he knew a Mr. Harry Porchet, who was mining on the uppermost claim on Feather River.
“I know all of him that any one can know,” said Mr. Morrison. “He is a very singular young man—ever sad and melancholy, strictly temperate, not even touching wine, using no tobacco, seeking no company. I tried to get him to stay a few days at my home; and once, when he came to deposit his gold, as he does every three months, induced him to take tea with me, where I thought my Sister Annie, one of the most gifted girls on this coast, and a fine conversationalist, might draw him out of his melancholy mood. But it was no use. He was polite and gentlemanly, but he would not thaw, as we say out here.”
“I must find him,” said Mr. W——, with a sigh; for he felt as if he was sealing his own fate as a single man forever, if he found this young man all that he was represented to be, and called him out from the shadow of his gloomy exile into the sunlight of Georgiana Lonsdale’s presence.
“I will get you mules and a guide, for there is no other means of travel when you get into the mountains up Feather River,” said Mr. Morrison; “and, as you cannot start with everything ready, camping fit-out and all, before morning, take tea with me to-night.”
Mr. W—— consented, and when that evening he met the sister of the young banker and express agent, saw and viewed her wonderful beauty, and heard her sing songs of her own composition, accompanied on piano and guitar, he thought that if young Porchet could be so blind to those attractions, he was indeed true to the love he left behind him.
The next morning Mr. W——, with an old mountain man for a guide, on a sure-footed mule, with two others in the train carrying provisions and stores, started on the perilous journey.
All day, creeping slowly along narrow trails, now on a ledge barely wide enough for the mule-path, overhanging the wild rushing river a thousand feet below—then pressing through chaparral so thick the animals could just get ahead—now shivering just below the snow range on a wind-swept ridge, then pitching down into a mining gulch full of busy men all grimy with yellow dirt—on they went the entire day long, halting but an hour at noon to give the mules a little barley and themselves a scanty lunch.
That night they camped in a grove of tall sugar pines, a little way back from the river, and over the camp-fire Mr. W—— listened to thrilling stories of what California life was in ’49, when every one who came was mad with the greed for gold—when vice and crime ran hand in hand, life only held by the pistol-grip or knife point, and property held more by might than right.
Early next day they were on the move up stream, now obliged to follow the river bank as near as possible, for the snowy range of the Sierra Nevada rose high above their heads.