On the hottest summer day (and the temperature, like everything Californian, was generous—114 degrees in the shade being not at all unusual) they would strip themselves of all but their war paint and feathers, build a fire in a cave, and dance around it. These convolutions began slowly and rhythmically, gradually getting faster and faster, until, at the height of the ecstasy, with wild war whoops they would dash into the water of the McCloud River, whose average temperature was forty degrees. One day, during work, a crowbar was needed. George Campbell, a Yankee whom I had heard was married to an Indian woman, came to me and asked if I would walk up to his home in the woods, a matter of nine miles, and fetch one down, telling me I could take my time and have breakfast with his family. I should have remembered one or two of George’s characteristics and been wary. He used to come in to meals, look his hands all over, and say: “Well, what won’t rub off won’t eat off.” Also, I remember one day noticing him scratch his thigh. I asked, “Got a flea?” He answered: “Flea? Think I’m a Digger Injun? No, it’s a louse.” However, I disregarded these small pleasantries and went for the crowbar. There on one side of the tepee was a dead fire, and in it sat the Indian grandmother, ninety years old, entirely naked, and spilling the ashes over her ugly, brown shriveled legs. Some distance away was the wife, rather good-looking, cooking salmon at another fire. When it was done she rubbed it up into meal which made a sort of pemmican when dry. In the large bowl, into which she put this when ground, sat a naked and very dirty baby, quietly amusing himself in the midst of the family dinner! I took my crowbar and departed breakfastless. Henry Casey, a young architect from Richardson’s office in New York, was the cause of my going to the north of California. We met in San Francisco, where he was building some houses, and as the doctor had ordered him to lead an outdoor life, we planned to make a camp in the wilds. I went up in the spring and he joined me in August. Casey was suffering from tuberculosis, and the rough life and high altitude were supposed to be his only salvation. We were two foolish tenderfoot boys, and our amateur attempts were dramatic and almost disastrous—for Casey.