Page:The Californian volume 1 issue 1.djvu/27

Rh labor, succeeded only in trebling his burdens by earning sufficient to pay the passage of his wife and three children from St. Jo, Missouri, to the wretched little cabin on the slope of Table Mountain. The appearance and character of this woman clearly indicated to the observing denizens of the camp that the inception of Peterson's misfortunes was not of recent date. She possessed the countenance of a satyr, and a temper as quick and violent as that of a maniac. His children—two boys and a girl— were what are now termed "hoodlums;" robbing sluice boxes was their occupation, and stoning Chinamen their pastime. Had it not been for Peterson's constant and unrelenting ill luck, the condition of his domestic affairs might have been different; but, as it was, frightful scenes of conjugal strife were of almost hourly occurrence at the Peterson "shanty." Mrs. Peterson continually cursed her husband for dragging her into his life of misery, and, with a face flaming with insane rage, screamed her imprecations into his ear from morning until night, whenever her poor victim came within sound of her villainous tongue. A single word of remonstrance, or attempted excuse, on the part of her husband, was sufficient to subject him to an unmerciful beating, administered by strong arms, with the first weapon or missile that came to hand, the miserable wretch submitting as one thoroughly cowed and broken spirited. Nine men out of ten in his place would have drowned their sorrows in drink; but Peterson, with heroic fortitude, fought and struggled against his terrible destiny, alone, unaided, and unfriended, striving with the patience of an insect to retrieve his fortunes, if by any possibility of fate he had any to retrieve.

He turned the river at Red Mountain Bar, at the first bend, below the richest placers in the county, and was rewarded for his labor and expense with a single ounce of gold dust, scraped from a broad crevice in the rocky bottom.

"It was a bend in the river," he dolefully remarked; "as pretty a riffle as ever lay in the bottom of a sluice-box, and ought to a caught the tailings of everything that washed down, from Hawkins's Flat to Don Pedro's Bar. Any other man but me 'd cleaned up fifty thousand dollars in the same place. Blast the luck!"

He tunneled for two years in the face of Table Mountain, and made barely enough to pay for his daily bread, leaving his work at last in utter despair, only to see another miner prosecute it a few feet beyond where he quit, and extract twenty thousand dollars from the blue gravel of the auriferous river-bed.

He prospected for quartz, and discovered a lead, that, notwithstanding his most energetic efforts, failed to pay the price of crushing. He lived to see an English Company purchase the property for three hundred thousand dollars, and, after erecting the most expensive works upon it, clear thousands of dollars per month from the superlatively rich rock. It is, perhaps, unnecessary to state that Peterson was not a gainer by this latter transaction, and could only listen, with a dazed, hopeless expression upon his careworn, hard-lined face, to the brilliant reports of the immense yield of his lead; his lead by right of discovery—the fortune of others by right of relocation and purchase.

During all these vicissitudes of fortune, the woman, who was rendering Peterson's apology for a home a veritable hell on earth, ably sustained the entire family by laboring sixteen hours out of the twenty-four, over the wash-tub; for, notwithstanding the ungovernable disposition of this woman, she never shirked her share of the responsibilities attendant upon providing food and clothing for herself, her husband, and her worthless offspring. But cruel fortune would not even allow them this miserable respite. The Frazer River excitement burst like a thunder-clap over their heads, and depopulated the county. Miners, merchants, and prospectors shouldered their tools and joined the rush—the camp had "petered;" even the wash-tub could no longer keep the grim monster, starvation, from the cabin door.

One day, when the clothes-lines in the rear of the Peterson cabin were flaunting scarcely three dozen "pieces" to the autumn breeze— the result of four days' washing—Peterson staggered through the door, and fell heavily upon a stool beside the dirt-begrimed table, his head dropping upon his breast, and a deep groan of despair welling up from his surcharged bosom. His stalwart wife was upon him in an instant, her arms akimbo, and a sneer upon her lips.

"Well, what's gone wrong now?" she exclaimed with vindictive asperity. A groan was the only reply she received.

"Can't ye answer? What's the matter with ye? Hev ye taken to drink? Ain't it enough that I've got to slave my life out from mornin' till night, scrapin' an' scrimpin', to feed yer wuthless ol' carcase? Air ye drunk, ye onbidable wretch?"

Peterson only moaned, and folding his arms upon the table, rested his head upon them, the picture of abject despair. The woman, exasperated beyond her feeble control, dragged the table away from him, and, catching him by the shoulder, threw him to the centre of the room.

"Answer me," she shrieked. "Answer me, or I'll brain ye. What's yer dev'lish shif'lessness. brought us to now?"