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But even as they crossed the gulch and reached the outskirts of the camp a great white moon rose from behind the Sierras. To Castro, hidden now in the pines, it meant nothing so long as it did not interfere with his purpose. As a matter of fact he was already listening intently to the bursts of song and shouts of revelry that came every now and then from the nearby saloon.
Not only did the travelers wish to get to the Sierras before the snows blocked the passes, not only were they eager to enter the gold mines, but they were pursued by the specter of cholera in the concentration camps along the Mississippi Valley. This scourge devastated these gatherings.
Compare any of the lesser nature books of the mid-nineteenth century Clarence King's "Mountaineering in the Sierras," for example with the current novel writing of the period and you will feel the greater sincerity. A passion for nature!
In the course of years he has crossed the length and breadth of the state a half dozen times. He has harvested apples in Siskiyou and oranges in Riverside; he has chopped sugar pine in the snows of the Sierras and manzanita on the blazing hillsides of San Bernardino; he has garnered the wheat of the great Santa Clara Valley and the alfalfa of San Fernando.
"The doctor had to take his hospital service, and for three years he spent six months in the hospital in the city, and six months out here in the mountains. But there were several good surgeons in the city, and only one on the great wide Sierras, and, as you know, he is strong enough for the hardest work.
Valois sees that the robber chief's permanent haunt is somewhere in the Sierras. This must be found. The sheriffs of Placer, Nevada, Sierra, El Dorado, Tuolumne, Calaveras, and Mariposa counties are in the field with posses. Skirmish after skirmish occurs. All doubtful men are arrested. Yet the red record continues.
It was there that I saw the most marvelous storm that has perhaps ever been recorded. An electrical disturbance of great magnitude was passing over the country at the time, and it reached its vivid climax on the Sierras. Our camp was struck, several animals killed, and a couple of the teamsters severely injured, but for nearly two hours the whole world seemed set in a coronal of lightning flashes.
Lying on his pillow were a few dead leaves of an odorous mountain fern, known only to the Sierras. They were tied together by a narrow blue ribbon, and had evidently been intended to attract his attention. As he took them in his hand, the distinguishing subtle aroma of the little sylvan hollow in the hills came to him like a memory and a revelation!
There's a river there, too the Injuns call it a water-road an' I can git on that an' drift an' drift an' smell the wild syringa on the banks. An if I git tired o' that I can turn my horse up-grade an' gallop right into the winter an' the lonely pines an' firs a-whisperin' an' a-sighin'. Lonely? Mountains lonely, did you say? Oh, my mountains, my beautiful peaks, my Sierras!
He's found a pretty widow in the Sierras, and there's no knowing now when we'll drink his health again in Spencer's Folly:" a statement which wakened but one picture in my mind and that was a long stretch of empty rooms teeming with art treasures amid which one gem rose supreme the gem which through his reckless carelessness, I now proposed to make my own, if loving fingers and the responsive clay would allow it.
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