Four Months Among the Gold-Finders in Alta California: Being the Diary of an Expedition From San Francisco to the Gold DistrictsVizetelly, Henry
History
Four Months Among the Gold-Finders in Alta California: Being the Diary of an Expedition From San Francisco to the Gold Districts
Vizetelly, Henry
California -- Fiction; Gold mines and mining -- Fiction
Securing our steeds, we walked them back in the direction of the spot
where we had left Horry, and, after some trouble, succeeded in finding
the exact place, when, to our horror, we found the poor fellow quite
dead, his body covered with blood, and his head and face dreadfully
disfigured. A closer examination showed us that the poor lad, after
being murdered, had been scalped by the savages. "Yes, yes," said the
old trapper, "sure enough his scalp is dangling in the belt of one of
them devils. G----d! I'll send an ounce of lead through the first
red-skin I meet outside them clearings. We'll have vengeance--we will."
As soon as I was a little recovered from the horror which this scene
naturally caused, I returned with the old trapper to the spot where I
had left Malcolm and Bradshaw, hardly expecting, after what I had just
witnessed, to find either of them alive. I was, however, happy in my
fears not being realized. They were both as I had left them. We carried
the wounded man as well as we could between us back to the place where
the remainder of the party were waiting for us. Here we stayed till
daybreak, silent and dejected. For my own part I could have wept. That
rough sailor lad, though under other circumstances I might have looked
down on him with contempt, and not have cared one straw whether he was
dead or alive, had been one of a little society, every member of which
had grown upon me in the rude life we had lived together in this
wilderness, and I felt that I had lost a friend.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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