Old Misery/Author's note

The following condensation of an explanatory article accompanying the serialization of Old Misery in Adventure Magazine may throw some interesting sidelights on the story:

“I planned to have the action begin in the spring and terminate before the plains travel was closed by winter. I selected the year 1854 and made three starts without having the result impress me as a series of facts. I wanted the vicious element represented by the survivors of Murieta's band. I shifted the time to 1853 and permitted Murieta to appear once and in a mask. In the first version the hero was to put up at the “International Hotel,” Jackson Street, between Montgomery and Kearny, but the “International” was not opened until the spring of '54, and even then was not completed. For '53 I selected the Rassette House, but had to time the Frisco scene to escape the fire of May second, which destroyed the hotel. But so long as that hotel did burn I used the fire to mask Joe Gilbert's flight. Every eating-house, street and store mentioned in the '54 version had to be checked up and often changed once I shifted the time back one year. This was necessary not only for San Francisco, but for the whole territory covered in the course of the story. Quartz mining was booming in '54, whereas confidence in it was just being restored in '53. Originally I had the telegraph aiding in the search for Gilbert, but this wouldn't do for '53.

“Floods as well as fires had to be carefully plotted. The hero must not arrive in Sacramento when the place was awash. But in landing him on a dry levee invited the risk of having him burned up in Frisco. After safely threading my way through these two cities there remained Marysville and Nevada City. There was ever the risk of staging a dramatic incident when the town or city was on fire or under water. Then again the “cities” of '52 were deserted in '53; and prosperous centers of '53 were in the discard in '54. I am indebted to W. A. Chalfant, historian of Inyo County, California, for data concerning Joaquin Murieta Carrillo as originally appearing in the old Overland Monthly. The description of the El Dorado gambling saloon may be found in Annals of San Francisco, an invaluable source for all that pertains to the city up to the spring of '54. Lola Montez, actress, was in Grass Valley in '54. Perhaps I anticipated her arrival by a year in placing her there in '53. She married a well-to-do miner and absorbed his fortune. Death or divorce separated them and she annexed another. Male chroniclers of those times speak of her as “the notorious Lola Montez,” but I assume she had to look after Number One and played the game no more selfishly than did her admirers. “Yuba Bill” was a well-known stage-driver on the Nevada City line. Whether he was there in '53 I do not know. If he wasn't, then my “Yuba Bill” was another chap of the same name.

“I have exaggerated none in mentioning the gold-discovering devices, often invented and sold in good faith and eagerly snapped up by greenhorns. Diving suits and other aids even more weird and quaint were on the market.

“Among native Californians there were many who believed that the Yankees brought a change for the worse in climate. It was also commonly believed that a drunken sailor ranked a Dutchman and a negro for luck in finding gold; while veteran prospectors in the early years firmly believed in the existence of a mother-lode, the birthplace of all gold. Readers of the story in serial form have written me, regretting Ana Benites did not make greater advance in her wooing. But Ana was a member of Murieta's band, according to Bancroft, and it was on her testimony that Benito Lopez and Cipriano Sandoval were convicted and hung for the murder of General J. H. Bean, assassinated in the fall of '52. The Benites girl swore Sandoval confessed. The accused insisted on his innocence. Lopez confessed to several murders, but not to the killing of Bean. Five years after the double execution, Bean's assassin, rich, influential, unsuspected, confessed to the crime while at the point of death (Bancroft's Pop. Tribunals, Vol. I, p. 491).

“Tom Tobin was a well-known mountain man. He tracked down and killed the last of the Espinosa murderers in the Sangre De Cristo range, Colorado, in '64.” The Author.