ered for his outfit.

"The more excited ones an' those with the least money an' sense,
started right off on foot, though it was all of a hundred an' fifty
miles to Sutter's Mill, an' no trail, sixty o' these miles across a
desert without water. No one ever did know how many o' that bunch
ended up by feedin' the turkey buzzards.

"On the 14th an' 15th, a whole fleet o' launches an' small boats
started out across San Francisco Sound an' Pablo Bay an' up the
Sacramento River, every boat loaded to the gunwales. They said there
was 2,000 men on the way.

"That wasn't jest a rush, it was a stampede. Not ten men in the entire
crowd knew the first durn thing about prospectin'. They had some fool
idee that pannin' gold was like pickin' flowers, all you had to do was
to find it. Any one what knew better could ha' told 'em, but there
wasn't any one to tell 'em, an' likely, they wouldn't ha' listened if
he had. What's the use o' talkin' to a crazy man? An' a gold-rush is a
bunch o' lunatics. I know! I've been that way myself, more'n once.

"Out Salt Lake City way, the winter had been bad. We Mormons had gone
to Utah to avoid bein' citizens o' the United States, an' the
government had took in Utah as soon as we made it worth takin'. My
grand-pap an' my father were sore at that, an' they decided to start
off with a party for Californy, which was still Spanish.

"Right around the 1st o' May, they reached the Sacramento River an'
heard about gold bein' found. They took it as a sign that Providence
was protectin' 'em, an' settled right down there to pan out the
stream. Travelin', as the Mormons always did, with a proper leader,
they pitched an organized camp. Trained to the last notch by their
wanderin's in the wilderness, there wasn't a tenderfoot or an idle man
in the bunch, an', workin' steadily, they begun to clean up pretty
good.

"Jest a month later come the first wave o' the rush from 'Frisco. They
struck the placers, their mouths fairly waterin' for gold, only to
find the Mormons there already. That was a bit too much! After all
their trouble an' misery, all the expense, all the deaths, they come
to find all the claims along the strike staked out by Mormons.

"Durin' this time, Californy had been taken over by the United States.
The 'Frisco bunch knew they'd be protected by law for anything they
did against the Mormons, an', after a short pow-wow, they tried to
rush the camp.

"But my grand-pap, an' some more o' the le