“Child, my old eyes have watched it spread for nearly ninety years--the power of gold, and of the men who came to seek it, The influence of gold controlled by the human intellect. I am old and tired and soon I shall sleep, but the old see clearly, too clearly, that which they are leaving, and that to which they pass.” “'Thus, facing the stars, we go out amongst them into darkness',” I quoted, softly. “Not to darkness, but to eternal light, to rise again from the Mother Lode to mingle in the busy lives of men.” “'Who maketh His messengers with two, and three, and four pairs of wings'.” “Exactly. To be born again, and yet again. The real mother-vein of gold was imbued in the men shaped by the life of the frontier. It was the cornerstone of great fortunes, of families, of enterprises, of achievements which are peculiarly California's own. “It was the clearing house and open sesame of the vast trade of the Orient which is just coming into being; the foundation for the bridge of gold which shall reach across the seas; a fit monument to posterity which shall be erected with all the lightness and grace and stability of the present cultured generations, born with their feet in the flowers grown from the mother-gold of decent manhood and glorious womanhood--the precious metals of the spirit, unalloyed and unafraid. “They are the true Mother Lode, the bourne of the seekers of gold, greater, far, than the crazed brains of the old prospectors had the power to conceive. A further-reaching, broader arc than the most wondrous rainbow of their imaginings born of dreams, and built of hunger and despair.” “So shall we find, at last, the Mother Lode, the virginity of the essence of creation, the beginning and the end. The curve of the circle which is unchanging, insoluble, omniscient; which shall return to that which created it; which is all; which is God!” “'49” “We have worked our claims, We have spent our gold, Our barks are astrand on the bars; We are battered and old, Yet at night we behold Outcroppings of gold in the stars. Where the rabbits play, Where the quail all day Pipe on the chaparral hill; A few more days, And the last of us lays His pick aside and is still. We are wreck and stray, We are cast away, Poor battered old hulks and spars! But we hope and pray, On the judgment Day, We shall strike it, up in the stars. --Joaquin Miller. Contents One Sunday in Stinson's Bar The Tom Bell Stronghold The Hanging of Charlie Price Rattlesnake Dick Indian Vengeance Grizzly Bob of Snake Gulch Curley Coppers the Jack The Race of the Shoestring Gamblers The Dragon and the Tomahawk The Barstow Lynching One Sunday in Stinson's Bar I