ogether the framework of a
sawmill, working on it at odd times when the ranch itself did not demand
attention. It was built of massive hewn timbers, raised into place with
great difficulty. They had no machinery as yet, but would get that later
out of their first farming profits.

"There ain't no hurry about it anyway," explained Pine, "for as yet
there ain't no demand for lumber yereabouts."

"I should say not!" exploded Johnny with a derisive shriek of laughter,
"unless you're going to sell it to the elks and coyotes!"

Pine turned toward him seriously.

"This is all good land yere," said he, "and they'll want lumber."

"It looks mighty good to me," said Yank.

"Well, why don't you settle?" urged Pine.

"And me with fifteen hundred good dollars?" replied Yank. "It ain't such
an everlasting fortune; but it'll git me a place back home; and I've had
my fun. This country is too far off. I'm going back home."

To this sentiment Johnny and I heartily agreed. It is a curious fact
that not one man in ten thousand even contemplated the possibility of
making California his permanent home. It was a place in which to get as
rich as he could, and then to leave.

Nevertheless we left our backwoods friends reluctantly; and at the top
of the hill we stopped our two horses to look back on the valley. It
lay, with its brown, freshly upturned earth, its scattered broad oaks,
its low wood-crowned knolls, as though asleep in the shimmering warm
floods of golden sunshine. Through the still air we heard plainly the
beat of an axe, and the low, drowsy clucking of hens. A peaceful and
grateful feeling of settled permanence, to which the restless temporary
life of mining camps had long left us strangers, filled us with the
vague stirrings of envy.

The feeling soon passed. We marched cheerfully away, our hopes busy with
what we would do when we reached New York. Johnny and I had accumulated
very fair sums of money, in spite of our loss at the hands of the
robbers, what with the takings at Hangman's Gulch, what was left from
the robbery, and Italian Bar. These sums did not constitute an enormous
fortune, to be sure. There was nothing spectacular in our winnings; but
they totalled about five times the amount we could have made at home;
and they represented a very fair little stake with which to start life.
We were young.

We found Sacramento under water. A sluggish, brown flood filled the town
and spread far abroad over the flat cou