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II FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF SILVERADO The sun shone out of a
cloudless sky. Close at
the zenith rode the belated moon, still clearly visible, and, along one
margin,
even bright. The wind blew a gale from the north; the trees roared; the
corn
and the deep grass in the valley fled in whitening surges; the dust
towered
into the air along the road and dispersed like the smoke of battle. It
was clear
in our teeth from the first, and for all the windings of the road it
managed to
keep clear in our teeth until the end. For some two miles we
rattled through the valley,
skirting the eastern foothills; then we struck off to the right,
through
haugh-land, and presently, crossing a dry water-course, entered the
Toll road,
or, to be more local, entered on "the grade." The road mounts the near
shoulder of Mount Saint Helena, bound northward into Lake County. In
one place
it skirts along the edge of a narrow and deep canyon, filled with
trees, and I
was glad, indeed, not to be driven at this point by the dashing Foss.
Kelmar,
with his unvarying smile, jogging to the motion of the trap, drove for
all the
world like a good, plain, country clergyman at home; and I profess I
blessed him
unawares for his timidity. Vineyards and deep
meadows, islanded and framed
with thicket, gave place more and more as we ascended to woods of oak
and
madrona, dotted with enormous pines. It was these pines, as they shot
above the
lower wood, that produced that pencilling of single trees I had so
often
remarked from the valley. Thence, looking up and from however far, each
fir stands
separate against the sky no bigger than an eyelash; and all together
lend a
quaint, fringed aspect to the hills. The oak is no baby; even the
madrona, upon
these spurs of Mount Saint Helena, comes to a fine bulk and ranks with
forest
trees; but the pines look down upon the rest for underwood. As Mount
Saint
Helena among her foothills, so these dark giants out-top their
fellow-vegetables.
Alas! if they had left the redwoods, the pines, in turn, would have
been
dwarfed. But the redwoods, fallen from their high estate, are serving
as family
bedsteads, or yet more humbly as field fences, along all Napa Valley. A rough smack of resin
was in the air, and a
crystal mountain purity. It came pouring over these green slopes by the
oceanful. The woods sang aloud, and gave largely of their healthful
breath.
Gladness seemed to inhabit these upper zones, and we had left
indifference behind
us in the valley. "I to the hills will lift mine eyes!" There are
days in a life when thus to climb out of the lowlands, seems like
scaling
heaven. As we continued to
ascend, the wind fell upon
us with increasing strength. It was a wonder how the two stout horses
managed
to pull us up that steep incline and still face the athletic opposition
of the
wind, or how their great eyes were able to endure the dust. Ten minutes
after
we went by, a tree fell, blocking the road; and even before us leaves
were thickly
strewn, and boughs had fallen, large enough to make the passage
difficult. But now
we were hard by the summit. The road crosses the ridge, just in the
nick that
Kelmar showed me from below, and then, without pause, plunges down a
deep,
thickly-wooded glen on the farther side. At the highest point a trail
strikes
up the main hill to the leftward; and that leads to Silverado. A
hundred yards beyond,
and in a kind of elbow of the glen, stands the Toll House Hotel. We
came up the
one side, were caught upon the summit by the whole weight of the wind
as it
poured over into Napa Valley, and a minute after had drawn up in
shelter, but
all buffetted and breathless, at the Toll House door. A water-tank, and
stables, and a gray house of
two storeys, with gable ends and a verandah, are jammed hard against
the
hillside, just where a stream has cut for itself a narrow canyon,
filled with
pines. The pines go right up overhead; a little more and the stream
might have
played, like a fire-hose, on the Toll House roof. In front the ground
drops as sharply
as it rises behind. There is just room for the road and a sort of
promontory of
croquet ground, and then you can lean over the edge and look deep below
you
through the wood. I said croquet around, not green; for the surface was
of
brown, beaten earth. The toll-bar itself was the only other note of
originality:
a long beam, turning on a post, and kept slightly horizontal by a
counterweight
of stones. Regularly about sundown this rude barrier was swung, like a
derrick,
across the road and made fast, I think, to a tree upon the farther
side. On our arrival there
followed a gay scene in the
bar. I was presented to Mr. Corwin, the landlord; to Mr. Jennings, the
engineer, who lives there for his health; to Mr. Hoddy, a most pleasant
little
gentleman, once a member of the Ohio legislature, again the editor of a
local
paper, and now, with undiminished dignity, keeping the Toll House bar.
I had a
number of drinks and cigars bestowed on me, and enjoyed a famous
opportunity of
seeing Kelmar in his glory, friendly, radiant, smiling, steadily edging
one of
the ship's kettles on the reluctant Corwin. Corwin, plainly aghast,
resisted gallantly,
and for that bout victory crowned his arms. At last we set forth for
Silverado on foot. Kelmar
and his jolly Jew girls were full of the sentiment of Sunday outings,
breathed
geniality and vagueness, and suffered a little vile boy from the hotel
to lead
them here and there about the woods. For three people all so old, so
bulky in
body, and belonging to a race so venerable, they could not but surprise
us by their
extreme and almost imbecile youthfulness of spirit. They were only
going to
stay ten minutes at the Toll House; had they not twenty long miles of
road
before them on the other side? Stay to dinner? Not they! Put up the
horses?
Never. Let us attach them to the verandah by a wisp of straw rope, such
as
would not have held a person's hat on that blustering day. And with all
these
protestations of hurry, they proved irresponsible like children. Kelmar
himself, shrewd old Russian Jew, with a smirk that seemed just to have
concluded
a bargain to its satisfaction, entrusted himself and us devoutly to
that boy. Yet
the boy was patently fallacious; and for that matter a most
unsympathetic
urchin, raised apparently on gingerbread. He was bent on his own
pleasure,
nothing else; and Kelmar followed him to his ruin, with the same shrewd
smirk.
If the boy said there was "a hole there in the hill" — a hole, pure
and simple, neither more nor less — Kelmar and his Jew girls would
follow him a
hundred yards to look complacently down that hole. For two hours we
looked for houses;
and for two hours they followed us, smelling trees, picking flowers,
foisting
false botany on the unwary. Had we taken five, with that vile lad to
head them
off on idle divagations, for five they would have smiled and stumbled
through
the woods. However, we came forth at
length, and as by
accident, upon a lawn, sparse planted like an orchard, but with forest
instead
of fruit trees. That was the site of Silverado mining town. A piece of
ground
was levelled up, where Kelmar's store had been; and facing that we saw
Rufe
Hanson's house, still bearing on its front the legend Silverado Hotel.
Not another
sign of habitation. Silverado town had all been carted from the scene;
one of
the houses was now the schoolhouse far down the road; one was gone
here, one
there, but all were gone away. It was now a sylvan solitude, and the
silence
was unbroken but by the great, vague voice of the wind. Some days
before our visit,
a grizzly bear had been sporting round the Hansons' chicken-house. Mrs. Hanson was at home
alone, we found. Rufe
had been out after a "bar," had risen late, and was now gone, it did
not clearly appear whither. Perhaps he had had wind of Kelmar's coming,
and was
now ensconced among the underwood or watching us from the shoulder of
the
mountain. We, hearing there were no houses to be had, were for
immediately
giving up all hopes of Silverado. But this, somehow, was not to
Kelmar's fancy.
He first proposed that we should "camp someveres around, ain't it?"
waving his hand cheerily as though to weave a spell; and when that was
firmly
rejected, he decided that we must take up house with the Hansons. Mrs.
Hanson
had been, from the first, flustered, subdued, and a little pale; but
from this
proposition she recoiled with haggard indignation. So did we, who would
have
preferred, in a manner of speaking, death. But Kelmar was not to be put
by. He
edged Mrs. Hanson into a corner, where for a long time he threatened
her with
his forefinger, like a character in Dickens; and the poor woman, driven
to her entrenchments,
at last remembered with a shriek that there were still some houses at
the tunnel. Thither we went; the
Jews, who should already
have been miles into Lake County, still cheerily accompanying us. For
about a furlong
we followed a good road along the hillside through the forest, until
suddenly
that road widened out and came abruptly to an end. A canyon, woody
below, red,
rocky, and naked overhead, was here walled across by a dump of rolling
stones,
dangerously steep, and from twenty to thirty feet in height. A rusty
iron chute
on wooden legs came flying, like a monstrous gargoyle, across the
parapet. It was
down this that they poured the precious ore; and below here the carts
stood to
wait their lading, and carry it mill-ward down the mountain. The whole canyon was so
entirely blocked, as if
by some rude guerilla fortification, that we could only mount by
lengths of
wooden ladder, fixed in the hillside. These led us round the farther
corner of
the dump; and when they were at an end, we still persevered over loose
rubble
and wading deep in poison oak, till we struck a triangular platform,
filling up
the whole glen, and shut in on either hand by bold projections of the
mountain.
Only in front the place was open like the proscenium of a theatre, and
we
looked forth into a great realm of air, and down upon treetops and
hilltops,
and far and near on wild and varied country. The place still stood as
on the
day it was deserted: a line of iron rails with a bifurcation; a truck
in
working order; a world of lumber, old wood, old iron; a blacksmith's
forge on
one side, half buried in the leaves of dwarf madronas; and on the
other, an old
brown wooden house. Fanny and I dashed at the
house. It consisted
of three rooms, and was so plastered against the hill, that one room
was right
atop of another, that the upper floor was more than twice as large as
the
lower, and that all three apartments must be entered from a different
side and
level. Not a window-sash remained. The door of the lower
room was smashed, and one
panel hung in splinters. We entered that, and found a fair amount of
rubbish:
sand and gravel that had been sifted in there by the mountain winds;
straw,
sticks, and stones; a table, a barrel; a plate-rack on the wall; two
home-made
bootjacks, signs of miners and their boots; and a pair of papers pinned
on the boarding,
headed respectively "Funnel No. 1," and "Funnel No. 2," but
with the tails torn away. The window, sashless of course, was choked
with the
green and sweetly smelling foliage of a bay; and through a chink in the
floor,
a spray of poison oak had shot up and was handsomely prospering in the
interior. It was my first care to cut away that poison oak, Fanny
standing by
at a respectful distance. That was our first improvement by which we
took
possession. The room immediately
above could only be entered
by a plank propped against the threshold, along which the intruder must
foot it
gingerly, clutching for support to sprays of poison oak, the proper
product of
the country. Herein was, on either hand, a triple tier of beds, where
miners
had once lain; and the other gable was pierced b}a sashless window and
a doorless
doorway opening on the air of heaven, five feet above the ground. As
for the
third room, which entered squarely from the ground level, but higher up
the
hill and further up the canyon, it contained only rubbish and the
uprights for
another triple tier of beds. The whole building was
overhung by a bold, lion-like,
red rock. Poison oak, sweet bay trees, calcanthus, brush, and
chaparral, grew freely
but sparsely all about it. In front, in the strong sunshine, the
platform lay
overstrewn with busy litter, as though the labours of the mine might
begin
again to-morrow in the morning. Following back into the
canyon, among the mass
of rotting plant and through the flowering bushes, we came to a great
crazy
staging, with a wry windlass on the top; and clambering up, we could
look into
an open shaft, leading edgeways down into the bowels of the mountain,
trickling
with water, and lit by some stray sun-gleams, whence I know not. In
that quiet
place the still, far-away tinkle of the water-drops was loudly audible.
Close
by, another shaft led edgeways up into the superincumbent shoulder of
the hill.
It lay partly open; and sixty or a hundred feet above our head, we
could see
the strata propped apart by solid wooden wedges, and a pine, half
undermined,
precariously nodding on the verge. Here also a rugged, horizontal
tunnel ran straight
into the unsunned bowels of the rock. This secure angle in the
mountain's flank
was, even on this wild day, as still as my lady's chamber. But in the
tunnel a
cold, wet draught tempestuously blew. Nor have I ever known that place
otherwise than cold and windy. Such was our first
prospect of Juan
Silverado. I own I had looked for something different: a clique of
neighbourly
houses on a village green, we shall say, all empty to be sure, but
swept and
varnished; a trout stream brawling by; great elms or chestnuts, humming
with
bees and nested in by song-birds; and the mountains standing round
about, as at
Jerusalem. Here, mountain and house and the old tools of industry were
all
alike rusty and down-falling. The hill was here wedged up, and there
poured forth
its bowels in a spout of broken mineral; man with his picks and powder,
and
nature with her own great blasting tools of sun and rain, labouring
together at
the ruin of that proud mountain. The view up the canyon was a glimpse
of
devastation; dry red minerals sliding together, here and there a crag,
here and
there dwarf thicket clinging in the general glissade, and over all a
broken
outline trenching on the blue of heaven. Downwards indeed, from our
rock eyrie,
we beheld the greener side of nature; and the bearing of the pines and
the
sweet smell of bays and nutmegs commended themselves gratefully to our
senses. One
way and another, now the die was cast. Silverado be it! After we had got back to
the Toll House, the
Jews were not long of striking forward. But I observed that one of the
Hanson
lads came down, before their departure, and returned with a ship's
kettle.
Happy Hansons! Nor was it until after Kelmar was gone, if I remember
rightly,
that Rule put in an appearance to arrange the details of our
installation. The latter part of the
day, Fanny and I sat in
the verandah of the Toll House, utterly stunned by the uproar of the
wind among
the trees on the other side of the valley. Sometimes, we would have it
it was
like a sea, but it was not various enough for that; and again, we
thought it
like the roar of a cataract, but it was too changeful for the cataract;
and then
we would decide, speaking in sleepy voices that it could be compared
with
nothing but itself. My mind was entirely preoccupied by the noise. I
hearkened
to it by the hour, gapingly hearkened, and let my cigarette go out.
Sometimes
the wind would make a sally nearer hand, and send a shrill, whistling
crash among
the foliage on our side of the glen; and sometimes a back-draught would
strike into
the elbow where we sat, and cast the gravel and torn leaves into our
faces. But
for the most part, this great, streaming gale passed unweariedly by us
into
Napa Valley, not two hundred yards away, visible by the tossing boughs,
stunningly audible, and yet not moving a hair upon our heads. So it
blew all
night long while I was writing up my journal, and after we were in bed,
under a
cloudless, star-set heaven; and so it was blowing still next morning
when we
rose. It was a laughable
thought to us, what had become
of our cheerful, wandering Hebrews. We could not suppose they had
reached a destination.
The meanest boy could lead them miles out of their way to see a
gopher-hole. Boys,
we felt to be their special danger; none others were of that exact
pitch of
cheerful irrelevancy to exercise a kindred sway upon their minds: but
before
the attractions of a boy their most settled resolutions would be wax.
We
thought we could follow in fancy these three aged Hebrew truants
wandering in and
out on hilltop and in thicket, a demon boy trotting far ahead, their
will-o'-the-wisp conductor; and at last about midnight, the wind still
roaring
in the darkness, we had a vision of all three on their knees upon a
mountain-top around a glow-worm. |