“No. Only eighteen. Say, you must have almost seen the old days of ’forty-nine.”
“It was in ’fifty. Yes, I was in the gold rush.”
“Did you strike any gold?” asked Adam, eagerly.
“Son, I was a prospector for twenty years. I’ve made an’ lost more than one fortune. Drink an’ faro an’ bad women!... And now I’m a broken-down night watchman at Picacho.”
“I’m sorry,” said Adam, sincerely. “I’ll bet you’ve seen some great old times. Won’t you tell me about them? You see, I’m foot-loose now and sort of wild.”
Merryvale nodded sympathetically. He studied Adam with eyes that were shrewd and penetrating, for all their kindliness. Wherefore Adam talked frankly about himself and his travels West. Merryvale listened with a nod now and then.
“Son, I hate to see the likes of you hittin’ this gold diggin’s,” he said.
“Why? Oh, I can learn to take care of myself. It must be a man’s game. I’ll love the desert.”
“Wal, son, I oughtn’t discourage you,” replied Merryvale. “An’ it ain’t fair for me to think because I went wrong, an’ because I seen so many boys go wrong, thet you’ll do the same.... But this gold diggin’s is a hell of a place for a tough old timer, let alone a boy runnin’ wild.”
And then he began to talk like a man whose memory was a vast treasure store of history and adventure and life. Gold had been discovered at Picacho in 1864. In 1872 the mill was erected near the river, and the ore was mined five miles up the canyon and hauled down on a narrow-gauge railroad. The machinery and construction for this great enterprise, together with all supplies, were brought by San Francisco steamers round into the Gulf of California, loaded on smaller steamers, and carried up the Colorado River to Picacho. These steamers also hauled supplies to Yuma and Ehrenberg, where they were freighted by wagon trains into the interior. At the present time, 1878, the mine was paying well and there were between five and six hundred men employed. The camp was always full of adventurers and gamblers, together with a few bad women whose capacity for making trouble magnified their number.