"Do you reckon we can make Sacramento City tew-night?" here broke in one of the men anxiously. "We was a calculatin' that we might." "Yes," answered Thure, "if you are willing to travel late; but you'll have to hustle to do it." "Then we'll hustle," declared the man, who appeared to be the captain of the little company. "Everybody who wants tew git to Sacramento City tew-night git a-goin'," he shouted. "Th' gold stories'll keep till we git thar," and he hurried away to his own wagon, which was in the van; and soon, with much loud shouting and the cracking of the long lashes of whips, the little train of wagons was again in motion. Thure and Bud fell in at once by the side of the leader, who, learning that they were familiar with the trail to Sacramento City, had asked them to act as guides. All the wagons were drawn by big raw-boned and long-legged mules; and the two boys soon found that they had to use their whips freely on their sturdy little pack-horses in order to hold their places in the train. All day long they pressed steadily forward, as fast as mule legs could drag the heavy wagons; and, a little before night, they struck the northern trail from San Francisco to Sacramento City, now a well-traveled road. Here, for the first time, Thure and Bud began to get something of an idea of what the rush to the gold-mines was like. There were some twenty-five wagons, a hundred or more horsemen, and many men on foot in sight of their eyes, when their wagons swung around a small hill and on to the trail, now hardened into a road by the thousands of wheels and hoofs that had recently passed over it; and all were hurrying forward, as if they were fearful they would be too late to reap any of the golden harvest. "Great buffaloes!" and Tim Perkins turned anxiously to Thure, by whose side he was riding, "dew you reckon all them folks are bound for the diggin's?" "Yes," answered Thure. "Can't you see that everyone is armed with a pick and shovel and gold-pan? Why, even the men on foot are lugging picks and shovels and gold-pans on their backs!" "An'," continued Tim, the anxious look on his face deepening, "dew you reckon they've bin a-tearin' over th' trail tew th' diggin's like this for long; or is this jest a stampede we have struck?" "A ship has probably landed at San Francisco lately," Thure replied; "and these are some of the gold-seekers who came in it. But I don't think from what I have heard that what we are seeing is an unusual sight along this trail. They've been rushing to the mines like a herd of stampeding cattle for months."