This lasted the incredible period of four days! Nobody then knew anything about measuring rainfall; but, judging by later experience, I should say we must have had close to seven inches. There was not much we could do, except to get wetter and wetter, although we made shift to double up at night, and to use the extra blankets thus released to make a sort of double roof. This helped some.
The morning of the fifth day broke dazzlingly clear. The sky looked burnished as a blue jewel; the sunlight glittered like shimmering metal; distant objects stood out plain-cut, without atmosphere. For the first time we felt encouraged to dare that awful mud, and so slopped over to town.
We found the place fairly drowned out. No one, in his first year, thought of building for the weather. Barnes’s hotel, the Empire and the Bella Union had come through without shipping a drop, for they had been erected by men with experience in the California climate; but almost everybody else had been leaked upon a-plenty. And the deep dust of the travel-worn overland road had turned into a morass beyond belief or description.
Our first intimation of a definite seasonal change came from our old friend Danny Randall, who hailed us at once when he saw us picking our way gingerly along the edge 377 of the street. In answer to his summons we entered the Bella Union.
“I hope you boys weren’t quite drowned out,” he greeted us. “You don’t look particularly careworn.”
We exchanged the appropriate comments; then Danny came at once to business.
“Now I’m going to pay off you three boys,” he told the express messengers, “and I want to know what you want. I can give you the dust, or I can give you an order on a San Francisco firm, just as you choose.”
“Express business busted?” asked Johnny.
“It’s quit for the season,” Danny Randall told him, “like everything else. In two weeks at most there won’t be a score of men left in Italian Bar.” He observed our astonished incredulity, smiled, and continued: “You boys came from the East, where it rains and gets over it. But out here it doesn’t get over it. Have you been down to look at the river? No? Well, you’d better take a look. There’ll be no more bar mining done there for a while. And what’s a mining camp without mining? Go talk to the men of ’48. They’ll tell you. The season is over, boys, until next spring; and you may just as well make up your minds to hike out now as later. What are you laughing at?” he asked Johnny.
“I was just thinking of our big Vigilante organization,” he chuckled.