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Updated: October 10, 2025
The ground was rich with gold here, and if we had gone to digging and washing the very spot on which we slept we could all of us have made a snug fortune; but it was not for us to get rich so quickly. This was our last night together, Hangtown, or Placerville, Eldorado County, as it is to-day, being but a few miles distant.
We started from Hangtown at five o'clock in the morning and at twelve o'clock that night the driver drew rein at the American Exchange Hotel in Sacramento. The coach was loaded down to its utmost capacity, there being nine passengers aboard.
In those memorable days it was called "Hangtown," a name some of its present-day citizens would fain forget, oblivious, in their own small-mindedness that they are neither responsible for its history nor its nomenclature.
This winter passed off, apparently, very slowly, being the most lonesome winter I had put in since I struck the mountains. Along about the middle of February our groceries were running short and Jim went to Hangtown for supplies. On his return he brought me a letter from Col. Elliott, asking me to come to San Francisco at once. I asked him what he thought of it, and he told me by all means to go.
The entire trip from Monroe, Michigan, our starting-point, to Hangtown, the point of landing in California, covered 2,542 miles, and we were five months, lacking six days, in making it. Today the same trip can be made in a half week, with every comfort and luxury which money and invention can provide.
"Captain Sutter is not here," answered the alcalde, "as anyone in the city might have told you; and it is impossible to send to Hangtown after your fathers." "But, are we to be proven guilty on the evidence of those two men alone, whom I am almost certain committed the crime themselves?" and Thure's face flushed indignantly. "Is not our word, at least, as good as theirs?"
I promised to go and winter with him if it was possible for me to do so, as at this time I did not know but what I might have to go to San Francisco to have my leg treated the coming winter. From here the emigrants were to pay Jim to pilot them across the mountains to a little mining camp called Hangtown, which was about one hundred and twenty miles east of Sacramento.
"And the only chickens in Hangtown are in that pie," declared Dickson proudly. "When we saw those birds Mollie and I just couldn't keep our hands off them. They seemed to be just a-begging us to buy them and make them into a chicken pie. Now, fall to, boys; and, with every mouthful that you eat, think of our good luck. It means a lot to us, boys, a whole lot to the Little Woman and me.
For an hour all hands were busy, getting the breakfast, eating, packing and saddling and bridling the horses; and then, just as the sun, like a great globe of gold, rose above the gold-filled mountains of their hopes to the east and shone down on the waters of the Sacramento, Ham gave the word to start, and, leading one of his well-loaded pack-horses on either side of him, he strode off, headed for the rough trail to Hangtown, followed by Thure and Bud, driving their pack-horses before them.
"Why, there is hardly a lock on a door in all Hangtown; and most of the miners don't even take the trouble to hide their gold-dust securely. I thought everybody knew that the climate of Hangtown wasn't good for the health of robbers." "An' so it ain't for them that gits caught," answered Ham. "But humans will risk anything, even their lives for gold.
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