We began to think that the old white man had told the truth, for we would not have been surprised at any time to have been attacked by a band of Mexicans.
While here I saw two persons that I thought to be curiosities. They were of Indian parentage, light complexion and had eyes of a pink color. One was a boy about twenty years old and the other a girl of sixteen, and were brother and sister. It was claimed that they could see well after night, but could not see their way on a bright, sunny day.
These Indians were said to be of the Mojave tribe, that inhabited a portion of the country some six hundred miles east of Monterey, near the Mojave desert. I have since learned that such freaks are called albinos.
The reader will no doubt wonder why we came this round-about away to get to San Francisco. The reason is that in coming a more direct course we would have passed through a country that was infested with wild tribes of Indians; that is, tribes hostile to the whites. There being only two of us the chances were it would have proved a very unhealthy trip for us at that time.
CHAPTER X.
ROBBER GAMBLERS OF SAN FRANCISCO.—ENGAGED BY COL. ELLIOTT AS INDIAN SCOUT.—KILLS AND SCALPS FIVE INDIANS.—PROMOTED TO CHIEF SCOUT.
Arriving at San Francisco we found things very lively, this being about the time of the greatest gold excitement in California. Here was the first city of note that I had been in since leaving St. Louis; here also was the first time I had seen gambling going on on a large scale. There were all kinds of games and all kinds of traps to catch the honest miner and rob him of his money that he had labored hard to dig out of the ground.
That night Jim Beckwith and I took in the sights of the city. We went to the different gambling houses and had just finished our tour and were on our way back to the What Cheer house—that being the hotel at which we put up—the leading hotel in the city then. We were just passing one of the gambling dens, when we saw two men coming out of the door leading a man between them who was crying like a child, and exclaiming: "I am ruined! I am ruined!"
We learned from the two men that he had come to the city that day with eight hundred dollars in gold, had bought a ticket for New York, and it was his intention to sail for that city the following morning. But he had gone out that night to have a farewell spree with his friends, got too much booze, started in gambling, thinking he might double his money by morning; but like thousands of other miners in those days, he "played out of luck," as they termed it, and had lost every cent he had. We walked on down to the hotel, and in a few minutes the three came into the hotel also, the one still crying like a baby. The proprietor only laughed and said it was a common occurrence for men to come to the city with even twenty thousand dollars, gamble it off in less than a week and then return to the mines to make another stake. But he said he had never seen a man before that took it as hard as this one did.
It was all new to me, and a little of it went a long ways.