The fellows looked rough, and I suspected
they might be bad characters. The stream they lived near was afterward
called Bloody Run, and there were stories current that blood had been
shed there.
Here was a section of comparatively level land, for the mountain divide,
and a fine spring of good cold water, all surrounded by several hundred
acres of the most magnificent sugar pines California ever raised, very
large, straight as a candle, and one hundred feet or more to the lowest
limbs. This place was afterward called Snow Tent, and S.W. Churchill
built a sawmill at the spring, and had all this fine timber at the mercy
of his ax and saw, without anyone to dispute his right. He furnished
lumber to the miners at fifty dollars or more per thousand feet. Bloody
Run no doubt well deserves its name, for there was much talk of killing
done there.
I, however, went up and talked to the men and told them I wished to hire
a cross cut saw for a few days to get out stuff for a cabin, and agreed
to pay two dollars a day for the use of it till it came back.
We cut down a large sugar pine, cut off four six feet cuts, one twelve
feet, and one sixteen feet cut, and from these we split out a lot of
boards which we used to make a V-shaped flume which we placed in our
ditch, and thus got the water through. We split the longer cuts into two
inch plank for sluice boxes, and made a small reservoir, so that we
succeeded in working the ground. We paid wages to the two men who
worked, and two other men who were with us went and built a cabin.
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