Page:Life Amongst the Modocs.djvu/359

 heads, we

plunged away in the swift, sweet morning air, and as we climbed a hill and left the town behind, I looked across my shoulder, and threw a bitter curse and threat ....

But the prison only was burned. The town, Shasta city, stands almost a ruin. The great men who made it great in early days have gone away. Chinamen and negroes possess the once crowded streets, bats flit in and out through broken panes, and birds build nests in houses that are falling to decay. The city of twenty years ago looks as though it had felt the touch of centuries.

How grandly the eternal old snow peak lifted his front before us ! How gloriously the sunlight rolled and flashed about his brow before its rays got down into the pines that lay along our road.

We plunged into the Sacramento river at full speed, and swam to the other side.

When you swim a river with a horse, you must not touch the rein; that may draw his nose into the water, and drown you both. You drop the rein, clutch the mane, and float free of his back, even using your own limbs, if strong enough, to aid your horse in the passage. You wind a sash tightly about your head or hat, and thrust your pistols in the folds. Keep your head above water, and you are ready to fight the moment you touch land on the other side.

As the first rays of the sun shot across the mighty ramparts to the east, we climbed the rock