The “Company” died its peaceful death where I brought up when the horse was demanded of me in Eureka Valley, some 8,000 feet above the sea level, at Dave Hays’ mountain ranch and tavern on the Sonora and Mono road. This was a new road built by the counties of Stanislaus, Tuolumne and Mono to rival the Placerville route, then crowded with teams carrying merchandise to Virginia City. The Mono road cost three years of labor, and was a fine piece of work. It ran along steep mountain sides, was walled in many places fifteen or twenty feet in height for hundreds of yards, crossed creeks and rivers on a number of substantial bridges, and proved, like many another enterprise undertaken in California, a failure. In Eureka Valley I spent the winter of 1864-65. I had the company of two men, Dave Hays and Jack Welch, both good mountaineers, good hunters, good miners, ranchmen, hotel-keepers, good men and true at anything they chose to turn their hands to. Both are deserving of a fair share of immortal fame. Hays had most of his toes frozen off at the second joint a winter or two afterward, as he had become over-confident and thought he could risk anything in the mountains. He was belated one winter night crossing the “Mountain Brow,” distant some forty miles east of Eureka Valley. Over the “Brow” swept the coldest of winds, and Hays betook himself for shelter to a sort of cave, and when he emerged in the morning he was as good as toeless. In point of weather the Sierra summits are fearfully deceitful. You may cross and find it as fair as an October day in New England. In two hours a storm may come up, the air be filled with fine minute particles of snow blown from the surrounding peaks, and these striking against you like millions on millions of fine needle-points will carry the heat from your body much faster than the body can generate it. I was once nearly frozen to death in one of these snow-driving gales when less than three miles from our house. Hays built the house we lived in and it would have been a credit to any architect. It was fifty feet in length by eighteen in width, and made of logs, squared and dovetailed at the ends. It was intended for a “road house.” Hays was landlord, cook, chambermaid, and barkeeper. I have known him to cook a supper for a dozen guests and when they were bestowed in their blankets, there being no flour for breakfast, he would jump on horseback and ride to Niagara creek, twelve miles distant, supply himself and ride back to cook the breakfast.