By the Great Horn Spoon!: Chapters 9–13

He had made a list of the gold camps the miners had bandied about and now he studied the names.

“Stuff and nonsense,” Praiseworthy smiled, shaving himself at the cabin mirror. “The steward tells me they’re Digger Indians. Quite tame. They dig for roots and acorns and are a menace to nothing but wasps and grasshoppers—which they consider a delicacy.”

“Stuff and nonsense,” Praiseworthy smiled, shaving himself at the cabin mirror. “The steward tells me they’re Digger Indians. Quite tame. They dig for roots and acorns and are a menace to nothing but wasps and grasshoppers—which they consider a delicacy.”

Jack was squeezed in beside Praiseworthy and a red-faced man wearing a string tie. He was quick to introduce himself as an undertaker.

“Don’t see how a man can sleep on this road,” Jonas T. Fletcher laughed. “Maybe he’s dead. Ain’t that a fine-looking jipijapa hat he’s got? Musta bought that in Panama. I come across the plains, myself. Clear from Missouri.”
Jonas T. Fletcher droned on.

The villain’s scarred eye was set at a squint. “Rio was too hot for me, you might say. So I lit out for Panama. Crossed the Isthmus by bongo boat and muleback—a whole parade of folks is getting to the Pacific that way. And looks like I beat you to California at that.”

But another big fellow was emptying Praiseworthy’s carpetbag in the dirt—shirts, cufflinks, hair brush. “Why, look here,” the ruffian chuckled. “A picture. A regular beauty, ain’t she?”

Praiseworthy, unaccustomed to mere shirtsleeves, stood in the dust like a leopard suddenly deprived of his spots.

Praiseworthy, unaccustomed to mere shirtsleeves, stood in the dust like a leopard suddenly deprived of his spots.

Praiseworthy’s patience was a marvel—and an exasperation.

“You and the boy want bread with your grub?” asked the waiter. He was a big fellow in floppy boots.

“We don’t take kindly to thievery in these parts,” growled the miner, stepping forward. “A man steals around here, we lop off his ears. That’s miners’ law.”

“A butler, a butler,” mused Pitch-pine Billy. He drank his coffee down, steam and all. “You any relative to Hemp Butler over at Muletown?”
“The name is Praiseworthy—not Butler, sir.”

He laughed and stroked his beard. “Of course, the other thirty days you got to stand around shootin’ off squatters and claim jumpers.”

The coffee stung and burned and tasted poisonous. He forced down another mouthful. He was afraid the miner would take back the name if he didn’t drain the can. He tried another swig but it wouldn’t go down.

Finally Pitch-pine Billy was no longer plunging the umbrella, but working with a deft, gentle, washing movement.

Praiseworthy crimped an eye and smiled at the hospitable miner. “I think I can get the hang of it, sir.”

Jack’s feet ached from hours in the ice cold mountain stream, but he was too elated to care.

“And a mule? He said we’d need a mule or a burro to go prospecting.”
“A mountain canary, for sure,” said Praiseworthy.

As they came along the street, the men who sat-and-whittled stopped whittling.

He was pointed out to new immigrants as someone of consequence, and Jack basked in reflected glory.

Praiseworthy put the letter in his shirt pocket. He shook his head. “We’ve no time for such speculations. First, those vultures no doubt ripped open Cut-Eye Higgins’s coat and discovered the map. Second, they may already have located the mine by now.”

There were sailors who had deserted their ships to run off to the mines, and soldiers who had left their garrisons at Monterey and San Francisco.

The auctioneer mounted a barrel at the rear of the tent. He was a paunchy man in an open vest and a plug hat.

“Once we hit bedrock there’s no tellin’ the riches down there,” the miner declared.

The Long Tom was a wooden sluice box set in the stream.

The following morning a delegation of three men appeared on Pitch-pine Billy’s claim.

“Bullwhip,” said the undertaker. “You’ve got to uphold the fair name of Hangtown.”

“Bullwhip,” he snorted, “you’ve gone and lost your reason. Before the fifteenth day of next month shows up—you better make out your last will and testament!”

Jack weighed it in his hand and tossed the pouch to Praiseworthy. “That ought to get us a burro,” he grinned.
“And maybe a gun,” Praiseworthy said, taking the heft of it. He tossed the pouch back.