Forty-one Thieves: A Tale of CaliforniaHall, Angelo
General
Forty-one Thieves: A Tale of California
Hall, Angelo
California -- Fiction; Murder -- Fiction; Robbery -- Fiction
Gaily bedight
A gallant knight,
In sunshine and in shadow,
Had journeyed long,
Singing a song,
In search of Eldorado.
But he grew old--
This knight so bold--
And o'er his heart a shadow
Fell as he found
No spot of ground
That looked like Eldorado.
And, as his strength
Failed him at length,
He met a pilgrim shadow--
"Shadow," said he,
"Where can it be--
This land of Eldorado?"
"Over the Mountains
Of the Moon,
Down the Valley of the Shadow,
Ride, boldly ride,"
The shade replied,
"If you seek for Eldorado!"
Edgar Allan Poe.
Robert Palmer's diggings on Fillmore Hill are still plainly seen from
the stage road on the other side of the canon of the Middle Yuba; but he
who has the hardihood to cross the canon will find the mine worked out,
the water-ditch dry, and the old man's house pulled down. The basement
of the house still affords shelter to adventurers who come to dig for
Palmer's hidden treasure. There is no other treasure on that barren
hill-top, for the Woolsey boys, to whom the old man deeded his mine,
worked out the paying gravel long ago.
At the bottom of the canon, and just across the cold, rushing river, is
a clump of rose bushes, which mark the spot where the Woolsey brothers
lived with their mother and old Sherwood, their step-father. Beyond the
rose bushes, in the edge of a meadow, are three lonely graves, covered
by the branches of alders, unmarked save for flat field stones, and
unknown except to a few ranchmen who drive their cattle up the river for
summer pasturage. The first burial was that of one "Scotty," a ranchman.
In 1915 there was living at the Soldiers' Home in the Napa Valley an
octogenarian, last surviving member of the Keystone Club, who had helped
to dig Scotty's grave. In the middle grave by the Middle Yuba lies the
body of Robert Palmer. The third grave is that of Sherwood. No doubt
these Californians rest as peacefully as those whose mortal remains have
been gathered into the cemetery at Downieville. Mother Earth has
received her children back into her bosom, and day and night the river
chants their requiem.
In September, ten weeks after Henry Francis's visit, Palmer put his
house in order, and with Sammy, the cat and his dog Bruce, sought
protection at Sherwood's. For Sherwood he had little respect; and he
thought Mrs. Sherwood a silly woman to have brought her boys to such a
home. But the boys were now grown men, friendly, generous, and strong.
The old man had no better neighbors.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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