The Little Fig-tree Stories

by Mary Hallock Foote

It was one of these hunters’, miners’, cowboys’, packers’, ranchmen’s trails the fishing-party followed on its way up the river. Through the cañon they wound along the base of the lava bluffs; then entered a crooked fold of the hills called Sheep Gulch, passing through willow thickets, rattling over the pebbles of a summer-dried stream, losing the breeze and getting more than they wanted of the sun. Sheep Gulch is one of the haunts of grouse, wood-doves, and “cotton-tails” (as the little gray rabbits are called to distinguish them from the tall leaping “jack-rabbits” of the sage-brush plains, which are like the English hare).

Above Turner’s horse-ranch, Sheep Gulch divides into two branches; up one of these goes the old Idaho City road. Where the gulch divides there is a disused cabin, (which Jack remembered afterward because there they saw some grouse which they didn’t get,) and there they left the trail for the old stage-road. As they climbed the little divide which separates the waters (when there are any) of Sheep Gulch from those of Moore’s Creek, they were met by a fresh breeze which cooled their hot faces and seemed to welcome them to the hills. The hills were all around them now,—the beautiful mountain pastures, golden with their wind-sown harvest of wild, strong-stemmed grasses. As the grass becomes scarce on the lower ranges the herds of cattle climb to the higher, along the spiral trails they make in grazing, taking always, like good surveyors, the easiest upward grade.

In the fall the cattle-men send out their cowboys, or “riders,” to drive the herds down from these highest ranges, where snow falls early, and to collect them in some valley chosen for the autumn “round-up.”

At Giles’s ranch, on the divide, the party halted to cinch up and to ask a drink all around from the spring which every traveler who has tasted it remembers.

The women of the household—a slender, dark-haired daughter and a stout, fair, flushed mother with a year-old baby—were busy, baby and all, in an outdoor kitchen, a delightful-looking place, part light and part shadow, and full of all manner of tools and rude conveniences that told of cheerful, busy living and making the best of things. They were preparing for the coming, next week, of the threshers,—a yearly event of consequence at a ranch,—fifteen men with horses for their machines and saddle-horses besides, all to be fed and lodged at the ranch. In the corral behind the big new barn, there were stacks of yellow and stacks of green, and between them a hay press, painted pink, which one could see as far as one could see Giles’s. Altogether it was lovely at Giles’s; but they were building a new house,—which, of course, they had a perfect right to do. But whoever stops there next year will find them all snugly roofed and gabled and painted white; and it is to be feared the outdoor kitchen, with its dim corners full of “truck” and its lights and shadows, will be seen no more.

The old stage-road went gayly along a bit of high plain, and then, without the slightest hesitation or circumlocution, dropped off into the cañon of Moore’s Creek. These reckless old pioneer roads give one a vivid idea of the race for possession of a new mining-camp, and of the pluck it took to win. At the “freeze-out” stage-passengers probably got out and walked, and the driver “rough-locked” the wheels; but the horsemen of that new country doubtless took a fresh hitch on their cinches and went jouncing down the breakneck grade, with countenances as calm as those of the illustrious riders of bronze and marble horses we see in the public squares, unless they were tired of the saddle and walked down to rest themselves,—never their horses.

Jack’s short legs were getting numb with pressing the saddle, and he was glad to walk, and to linger on his way down the wild descent into the cañon. It was the middle of September; Moore’s Creek had not more than enough water left to float the “Chinaman’s drive” of cord-wood, cut higher up on its banks. Its waters, moreover, were turbid with muddy tailings emptied into them from the sluice-boxes of the placer-miners who had been working all summer on the bars. Above Moore’s Creek the water of the river is clear as that of a trout-stream and iridescent with reflections from sky and shore; but after its union with that ill-fated stream it is obliged to carry the poor creek’s burden, and its own bright waters thenceforth wear the stain of labor. A breath of coolness, as of sunless rocks and damp, spicy shade, came up to them from the cañon; and a noise of waters, mingled with queer, discordant cries. It was dinner-time at the Chinamen’s camp and word was being passed up stream, from man to man, calling the wood-drivers to leave their work. They were not the sleek-braided, white-bloused, silk-sashed Chinese of the house-servant variety. They had wild black hair, rugged, not fat, sleepy faces, and little clothing except the boots,—store boots, in which a Chinaman is queerer than in anything except a store hat. They struggled with the jam of cord-wood as if it were some sort of water-prey they had hunted down, and were now meeting at bay, spearing, thrusting, hooking with their long boat-hooks, skipping from rock to rock in midstream, hoarse with shouting.

The party had now left the stage-road and turned down the pack-trail along the creek toward its junction with the river. The pack-trail here crosses the creek by a bridge high above the stream; the bridge was good enough, but it was a question whether Mrs. O’Dowd, with her known prejudices, could be induced to go over it. It was quickly decided to get a “good ready,” as Jack said, and hustle the old lady down the trail between two of the horses and crowd her on the bridge before she had time to make up that remarkable mind of hers. This simple plan was carried out with enthusiasm on the part of all but Mrs. O’D. herself.

Soon after leaving Giles’s, they had met a wagon-load of people townward bound from Gillespie’s, the beautiful river ranch above Moore’s Creek. Mr. Gilmour had stopped them to inquire if a pack-animal and two riding animals, mules or horses, could be sent from the ranch up to the fishing-camp, on a day set for the journey home; for the mules from Turner’s were to go back that same day, to start the next day but one, as part of a pack-train bound for Atlanta.

The people in the wagon “couldn’t say.” Most of the horses were out on the range; those at the ranch were being used for hauling peaches to town, fording Moore’s Creek and the river, and scaling the “freeze-out.” But Mr. Gillespie himself was at home; the travelers had better stop on the way up and find out.