Here we talked over our chances of getting to the mines. All the clothes
we had were on our backs and feet and those were the poorest of the
poor. We had no money. I had the little black-eyed mule, and Rogers had
the watch Arcane had given him. Mr. Moody had said it was 500 miles to
San Francisco, and 150 miles further to the mines, so that after the
hard travel of a year we were still a long way off from the place we
started for.
We could not see any way to make a living here. There was no land
cultivated, not a fence, nothing to require labor of any kind. The
valley was rich enough and produced great crops of grass, and the cattle
and horses we had seen grazing seemed to be about all the use they put
it to. It looked as if the people must live principally on meat. I
thought if we could manage to get a little provision together, such as
flour and beans, that I could pack there on the mule, and I was pretty
sure I could find game that would be better meat than we had lived on
during the last two months on the desert.
We looked around to see if we could find something to do to earn a
little for a start, but were not successful. In our walk about this city
of mud we saw many things that seemed strange to us. There were more
women than men, and more children than grown-up people, while the dogs
were plenty. At the edge of the town, near the river were some grape
vines fenced in with living willows, interlaced in some places with dry
vines. The Indians moved very moderately around and no doubt had plenty
of beef to eat, with very few wants to provide for.
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