Robert Palmer, Democrat, paid his respects to courts and lawyers. His executors were "to act without bonds, and also to act without interference of any court of law or any Public Administrator whatever." He might better have trusted the courts, as we shall see, for his friends failed him. After thirty years the executors all died; and to this day the will of Robert Palmer is an unsolved mystery. CHAPTER XIII The End of the Trail The gold that with the sunlight lies In bursting heaps at dawn, The silver spilling from the skies At night to walk upon, The diamonds gleaming in the dew He never saw, he never knew. He got some gold, dug from the mud, Some silver, crushed from stones, The gold was red with dead men's blood, The silver black with groans; And when he died he moaned aloud, "There'll be no pocket in my shroud." Joaquin Miller. John Keeler, returned from his travels, became Palmer's trusted messenger to Hintzen, to whom the old man sent a copy of his will. Keeler was provided with another copy to deposit at the court-house in Downieville, county seat of Sierra County. For although Robert Palmer disliked courts and lawyers, he deemed it wise to file a copy of his will at the court-house. This he could do without telling Hintzen, so he instructed Keeler, after having seen that gentleman at Forest City, to continue over the mountains to Downieville, as if on private business. Honest John Keeler, after a year spent in tracking criminals, had little liking for this new mission. It seemed as if his old friend thought all men rogues. Such a sweeping condemnation would include himself, and he resented the insinuation. However, the old man was still feeble. So Keeler set out on foot across the mountains. It had been some time since he had been as far as Chipp's Flat. There he sought out the old cannon, long since dismounted, and sitting down upon it he thought of the changes wrought in that neighborhood within his recollection. In Civil War times, eighteen years before, miners of Chipp's Flat and vicinity had enlisted in the Union Army. There had been a full company of a hundred men, and the cannon had been a part of their equipment. But the cannon had not left that California mountain-side; and the soldiers themselves had got no further East than Arizona, for in those days there was no transcontinental railroad. Now that there was one, Chipp's Flat had no need of it. Save for two or three scattered houses the mining town had disappeared. The mountain ridge had been mined through from Minnesota, and now that the gold-bearing gravel had been exhausted, Chipp's Flat, except in name, had gone out of existence.