A La California/Chapter 11
CHAPTER XI.
THE CHINESE FEAST OF THE DEAD.
Weird and Ghastly Scene in a Chinese Temple at Midnight.—The Story of Concatenation Bill.—The True History of the Great Indian Fight on the Gila.
What a strange, peculiar people are these Chinese! Dwelling among us, they are not of us; but are born and grow up, and toil and die here in the midst of the boasted civilization of the nineteenth century, just as they have been being born and growing up, and toiling and dying, for ages on ages, in the "Central Flowery Empire" on the other shore of the blue Pacific. They walk the same streets and breathe the same air with us; but they do not talk the same language; do not act as we act; do not reason as we reason; do not think as we think. From the cradle to the grave, the Chinaman is always a Chinaman, adhering to the traditions of his ancestors, walking in the footsteps of his fathers, careless of the approbation or reprobation of the rest of mankind, except so far as it may affect him pecuniarily. Keen at a bargain, naturally quick-witted and sharp of comprehension, a patient toiler, and skillful at every kind of handiwork to which he turns his attention, he yet halts unaccountably on the shore of progress, and is the best representative living of the effete civilization of Asia, wedded to the traditions of the past, looking ever backwards and never forwards, All things to to all men, in commercial transactions, and wonderfully enterprising in his own way, he is a law unto himself; and our politics and ambitions, our industrial problems, and the amenities of our social life, are but as vanity and vexation of spirit to him, and he will take no part in them.
Among the strangest of the strange customs which the Chinese have transplanted on American soil, is the annual "Feast of the Dead." Heaven comes nearer to the land of his birth than to any other land, and before he leaves it for barbarian regions he provides for the ultimate return of his bones for interment in the soil where his ancestors, in countless millions, sleep the last sleep. Meantime he believes that the spirits of his departed friends linger lovingly near the place where their bodies rest for the moment; and so long as he remains within reach of their temporary resting-place, he, ever true to the traditions of his race, pays an annual visit of ceremony to it, and, with a solemn gravity which is incomprehensible to the average Caucasian mind, makes an offering of creature comforts for the delectation of the disembodied spirits with which his imagination peoples all the air.
All Chinese festivals come at irregular periods, for the reason that their months do not correspond with our own, and they throw in an odd month from time to time to make the year come even, as we do an odd day on our leap year. The feast of the dead came some years since in May, and I well remember visiting the Chinese quarter of Lone Mountain Cemetery at that time to witness the ceremonies. Their New Year festivities are accompanied by an incessant roar of burning fireworks: crackers of every size, from those which pop in the slightest and most delicate manner, to those which make a report like a young cannon, are burned by the cartload at a time; but the feast of the dead is a more quiet and solemn affair. The rich merchants, clad in the costlist silk and broadcloth, go on the first day, riding in the finest carriages procurable, and followed by express-wagons, loaded with pigs roasted whole, rice, fancy dishes, liquors, and other eatables and drinkables without number. A messenger or herald rides on the outside of each carriage, and as he goes along throws off, right and left, handfulls of squares of thin, yellow paper, in the centre of which is a small, impressed character, or a bit of gold or silver foil, for what purpose I could never ascertain. Next day, the artisans and manufacturers go in plainer carriages, clubbing together to make a load; on the next, the poor laborers and public women, riding in overcrowded express-wagons, carrying their meat-offerings with them in the same vehicle; and on the last day, the miserably poor, the rag-pickers and garbage collectors, trudge humbly along on foot over the dusty road to the city of the dead, each carrying in his hand the trifling offering, which his extreme poverty permits him after months of economy to provide for the occasion. At the cemetery the graves are almost buried beneath the offerings of yellow papers, which are blown about by the winds until they form in drifts, like the snow in the streets of the cities of the Atlantic coast. Red candles', of vegetable wax, are lighted and stuck in the ground by thousands; and a cloth being spread upon the ground at the foot of each grave by its particular visitor, the feast is arranged upon it, the cups filled with sam-shoo, tea, etc., and then the living friend, bowing with solemn politeness, invites the disembodied spirit or spirits to come and help themselves. After that, he walks around and chats gaily with his living friends, smokes, drinks a little rice wine, and then, quietly packing up the eatables, which are none the worse for the service they have done, and placing them in the wagon again, spills the drinkables on the ground, and returns to the city (proudly conscious of having done his duty well, like a man and a Chinaman), to dine upon "the funeral baked meats" himself. The spirits, as their name would indicate, take only the etherial part of the feast, and the living men get the most substantial, and to them at least most valuable portion of the comestibles.
An old and venerable member of the Christian church—a bright and shining light of the faith, who resides at Auburn, New York—once told me, while engaged in distributing tracts in the English language, which they could not read, to the poor native Protestants of Mexico, that he had learned, from long experience, that the true secret of Christian charity was to be able to do good unto others without costing yourself a cent. He had followed out that idea all his lifetime, and the Lord had so prospered him in things worldly and things spiritual, that he was more satisfied, day by day, that he was on the right track, and had the thing down to a science.
The Chinaman has not been able to quite come up to this standard in his observance of the ceremony of the feast of the dead, but he comes pretty near it, and in a few thousand years more may succeed in reaching it; but he will be a terribly mean Chinaman when that time arrives!
The feast of the dead, like our Christmas services, winds up with social gatherings, friendly reunions, a "feast of reason and a flow of soul," and a good time generally. The Buddhist temples are then decked out in strangely fantastic style, quite unintelligible to the white American. The ceremonies at the temple at this time appear to be devoid of any marked religious character.
This year—1872—the feast of the dead came late in August, and I had the honor of assisting. We were going home at midnight (a party of half a dozen, who had been indulging in that peculiar little game at which if you don't bid you lose, and if you do bid you go back and lose two bits more, so much affected in California on the last night of the feast), and had stopped at the corner of Dupont and Washington streets, to listen to the babel of many tongues, the screeching of the Chinese one-stringed fiddles, the dulcet notes of the tom-toms, and the clashing of the gongs in the gambling-houses, where infatuated 
CHINESE BURIAL RITES.
Celestials were betting themselves poor at the game of "Tan," or in the restaurants where others were dining convivially. It was a glorious moonlight night, such as one rarely sees, save on the Pacific coast, or in the tropics. The whole air was loaded with the fumes of burning "joss sticks," or incense candles, made from powdered sandal wood, fragrant gums, etc., the blue smoke of which rose from every doorway, open window, crack, crevice, or cranny in the houses where the blue-bloused sons of China congregate, resting on the Chinese quarter like a fog on a Jersey salt-marsh, or a cloud of mosquitoes on a Mississippi river-bottom. While we were standing there, a party of Chinese boys placed a row of these little joss-sticks upright along the edge of the gutter by the sidewalk, leading-down to the centre of the block northwards, and set them all burning-at once. As the cloud of fragrant smoke rose up from them, a well-dressed Chinaman appeared and directed a servant where to place a large tray, or salver, on which was neatly arranged a hot lunch, prepared in the most attractive style of the first-class Chinese culinary artist. The lunch being duly arranged on the edge of the side-walk, he kneeled before it, chin-chinned repeatedly until his forehead nearly touched the curbstone, and then, to avoid the curious and irreverent throng of Caucasians, who were fast gathering about him, arose and hustled away the lunch into the house from which he came. A huge mass of curiously curled, and twisted, and convoluted, and cornuted—and I don't know what not else—tissue paper, forming some emblematic figures, which resembled in shape, and color, and design nothing which Caucasian mind ever conceived, or could comprehend if described—and I don't know how to describe it—was lying in the street in front of the line of joss-sticks, and, as he arose to go, a boy touched off a pile of fire-crackers concealed within it, and in an instant it disappeared in a blaze of glory. This appeared to be a part of the programme.
We followed along the line of joss-sticks, and found that it terminated at the entrance of the narrow passage which leads in between two gambling-houses to the centre of the block, where stands the Buddhist temple, erected by the famous Chinese physician, Li-po-Tai, in demonstration of his gratitude to a Supreme Intelligence for his escape from instant death some years since by a gas explosion, which killed his companion, and disfigured him for life. A crowd of visitors, Chinese and Caucasian, were moving in and out, and we passed in with the throng. At the end of the passage we came to a stairway, which zig-zags up on the outside of the tall brick building to the upper story, terminating on a balcony hung with Chinese lanterns of the most brilliant and striking patterns, each as large as a flour-barrel, from which you enter the temple proper. At the last landing, below the top of the stairway, we stopped to look at a gigantic statue representing a "devil-man" sentinel, placed in an alcove, in a half-sitting, half-standing position, menacing the intrusive unbeliever, seeking for the Holy of Holies, with outstretched arm and fist doubled up, like a pugilist's in a prize-fight. A hideous mask answered for a face, while the eyes, lighted up from within, glared on the visitor with something of the weird effect produced by
"Torches which have burned all night,
Through some impure, unhallowed rite,"
When viewed by the true believer. The devil- man winked inquiringly at us, and we winked back at him, said "Press," and then passed on unmolested. One of the party observed this pantomime, and enthusiastically exclaimed, "Well, you fellows of the press have got a good thing of it, haven't you? If I don't mean to practice that, and try it on, when the time comes, on old St. Peter, may the" We requested him to spare our sensitive feelings, and he did so, and did not finish the sentence. The temple was ablaze with light, crowded by a wondering throng, filled with the choking blue smoke of the incense, and as hot and close as the furnace room of an ocean steamer in the tropics. The images representing Buddha, or Foh, the guardian deities of the southern, middle and northern districts of China, the Queen Mother of Heaven and her attendants, the black gentleman of whom it is always safe to speak respectfully, if not admiringly, and other objects of mingled admiration and contempt to the average Chinese mind, were all on their shrines in the different apartments or halls of the temple, and the usual lamps were burning before them. But the visitors appeared to pay no attention to them, and, for the time being, at least, regard them with no respect. The extraordinary decorations for the occasion formed the attraction for the evening-. Fronting the great folding door—on the wings of which are painted a hideous monster, armed sentinels, etc., depending from the ceiling by crimson silken cords—hung a whatnot-like arrangement, representing in miniature the stage of a Chinese theatre, upon which a "celestial star dramatic company," in all the elaborate silk and gold embroidery, decked garments, etc., which pertain to their wardrobe, was grouped with really artistic skill and effect. The scene represented a tableau in one of their historic dramas, and each figure, which was from two and one half to three feet in height, was a perfect counterpart in miniature of one of the well-known Chinese actors of the Jackson street theatre, which is visited by every stranger from the east of the Rocky Mountains, who comes to see the wonders and curiosities of California. The features, which were of some hard material like plaster of Paris, were moulded with such cunning skill that the expression was as perfect as life itself; and each actor could be recognized in an instant by any person who had seen him once upon the real stage. Five similar groups, each representing a scene in a play illustrating the history and traditions of the Central Flowery Empire, hung in different parts of the same principal apartment. In one corner we saw two curious phantom horsemen, mounted on nondescript, half human, half animal, phantom steeds. The framework of these figures was of the lightest split-rattan, and the superstructure light tissue paper of various brilliant colors. "What do they represent?" we asked of a polite Chinaman, who came bowing out of a side room to meet us, and show us around free of charge. He told us forty graceful fictions in ten breaths, and was "joshing" us all the time. I did not blame him, for two reasons: first, he did not know himself; and, secondly, his people are an imaginative race, and it is the custom of the country—their country, not ours, I mean, of course. In China—blessed country!—there are no professional politicians, and the lying is more evenly distributed among the people than with us.
But the greatest attractions that night were two monster statues, twin giant ghost- warriors, who stood on either side of the hall in front of the great altar. These figures were each fully eighteen feet in height, and were perfectly proportioned. They were costumed in half-armor, worn over long robes of the most brilliant hues, elaborately ornamented and embroidered, and each wore the cap of a high mandarin, surmounted by the crimson ball, indicative of the first rank, and a tall, variegated plume. The face of one had something of serene dignity and power in beatific repose upon it, and he held his right hand aloft, with the thumb, fore and fourth fingers slightly bent, and the middle and third fingers nearly straight—as do always the images of Buddha, or Foh, the representations of the incarnation of the Supreme Power and Intelligence, which are seen upon every shrine of the faith—while the right foot rested upon and crushed down to the earth a hideous, open-mouthed, writhing dragon. The second was the counterpart of the first in all, save that his face was covered by a hideous, frowning mask, his raised right hand was open, with the palm turned full toward the spectator, and with his foot he trampled a snarling and struggling yellow and black spotted tiger. We asked the meaning of these giant figures of our obsequious Chinese attendant, and, as before, he told us a cock-and-bull story as gigantic in proportion as the figures themselves. The excuses urged in his behalf in the first instance are equally good in this.
We ascertained that the statues, like the phantom horsemen, despite their imposing appearance, were nothing but rattan, tissue and gilt paper, and bits of looking-glass—trifles light as air, almost, which even a breath might knock over and demolish. If they were intended to represent ghosts of the mighty dead of the days when there were giants in the land, they came near the mark; for anything more thin and unsubstantial to all the senses, save that of sight, could never have been conceived. Only the cunning hand of a celestial artist could have put them together, preserved their anatomical proportions, and made them stand there, erect, the very impersonation of hollow imposture. We noticed that the celestial crowd laughed and talked, and wandered about without the slightest regard for the religious character of the place, and we came away amused and interested, but not a whit the wiser for any insight into the hidden meaning of all this pageant—if any meaning there was—than when we came. Coming back to Dupont street, I met a man whom I had last seen while on a hostile raid into the Hualapai Indian country, in Arizona, and our conversation, after the first greetings were over, turned upon one of the strange, peculiar characters with which the Pacific coast abounds—one we had both known—old "Concatenation Bill."
When and where he picked up the sobriquet, or it picked up him, we never knew; but, once attached to him, it became a part of his personality, and stuck to him thenceforth, through good report and through evil report, for the term of his natural life, and will be inscribed upon his tombstone, should fortune so far change her mood as to permit him to have one, which is a matter for doubt. It was doubtful if he knew himself. It was probably all he had to show for his months of labor in some early mining-camp, when he left it; and, as the camp itself is doubtless long since played out, and numbered with the things which have been, but are not, what matters it where it was located, or who toiled in it? In any event, it usurped the place of the name given him in baptism—if he ever was baptised—and, like most California nicknames, was appropriate.
"You are out of luck," said a rough-looking miner, to whom he had detailed his misfortunes, wanderings and misadventures for an hour.
"Out of luck! Well, I wish to Heaven I was; you may gamble on that; but I ain't. Why, God bless you, stranger, I'm just in a perfect streak of luck from morning to night, and from one year's end to another; and the cussedest luck! Why, I have had more luck than would sink a ship, and have got it yet!"
I will be just to the memory of my departed friend; he had.
He came across the plains in '49. He started with a good outfit supplied him by friends in Illinois, who fitted him out "on shares" as a speculation. He left them confident of large dividends, and those who are yet above ground are still waiting for them. His best horse was stolen from him on the first night out from "St. Joe," and he traded off the other and the double harnesses for a yoke of oxen, with a cow thrown in. One of his oxen was gobbled up by Indians on the Platte, and having sold, given away, or thrown away half his provisions to lighten his load, he started on with the cow yoked in with the remaining ox.
The cow pegged out on the headwaters of the Humboldt, and he abandoned his wagon and rode the remaining ox down to "the Sink," where it also gave up the struggle, and left him alone in his misery. From thence he made the remainder of the journey on foot, camping by night with any family or party who would give him a supper and the use of a spare blanket
All things must have an end some time, and he finished his journey at last, arriving at Placerville late in the autumn, worn out, ragged, and seedy to the last degree—the very impersonation of persistent bad luck—but still hopeful of the future, and obtained a situation as waiter at a hotel, with good wages. At the end of the second month, he actually had money ahead, and being of a commercial turn of mind, tried his hand at "busting" a faro bank. He did not quite succeed in the operation—he never quite made a success of anything he undertook—but he won eleven hundred and eighty dollars nevertheless.
There was a gushing young lady, who tended bar in a dance-house in Placerville, who had made his acquaintance before he made this "ten-strike," and now she suddenly discovered that he was a really good-hearted fellow, and not bad-looking. She suggested that it would be a good thing for them to go into partnership, matrimonial and financial, and start a hotel at Coon Hollow, a new and promising camp not far from Placerville—which was then more familiarly known as "Hangtown." The financial partnership was to be immediate and absolute; the matrimonial one, conditional and prospective. The arrangement, though it might have pleased him better if slightly modified, on the whole met with his approval; they rented the hotel, and she started down to Sacramento to purchase the necessary outfit for the bar before starting in at "keeping tavern." She took his money with her, and—did not return. Bill borrowed fifty dollars of a sympathizing friend, followed her down to Sacramento, and there learned that she had gone "to the Bay" in company with a big red-headed fellow, known as "Sandy Bob," who came out with her from New York, and who, if not her husband, should have been. "No use following any further after her!"
Bill knocked around Sacramento until his borrowed fifty dollars were all expended, then got a situation as "assistant bull-whacker" on an up train, and made his way up into the mountains to Fiddletown, where he came across a friend, who took him into partnership in a placer gold-claim, which at the moment did not promise largely. They "struck it rich," for a wonder, in two weeks sold out for a "big stake," and started for San Francisco. On the way down the river, on the steamer, Bill was induced to take a hand in a little friendly game of draw-poker, just to pass away the time, and succeeded not only in passing away the time, but also with it all his own money, and all his confiding partner's share as well. In San Francisco he met with various adventures, finding temporary employment in a dozen different kinds of business, only to be thrown out of each in turn through some unfortunate occurrence, and find himself "dead broke" every time. When the Frazer River excitement broke out, he went up there, and came back "busted." Then he joined in the mid-winter rush over the Sierra Nevada to the newly-found Washoe silver mines, and found his way back again in the spring as poverty-stricken as ever. Then he drifted southward, fished for sharks, and gathered abalones at San Pedro, and for a time made himself generally useless on a stock-ranch. The Arizona gold excitement of 1862-63 took him across the desert to the Colorado River. In the first camp he struck on the eastern side of the Colorado River, he set to work with a will to secure a valuable quartz claim—everybody was hunting up and locating quartz claims at that time. He would go out in the morning with claim-notices written out in advance, and tramp over the red volcanic mountains all day long in the burning sun, vainly seeking for an unclaimed lead. All the quartz leads in the country appeared to have from one to a dozen claim-notices stuck up on them. Just as hope was abandoning him, a friend suggested to try "extensions."
If he could not find new claims, he could at feast locate extensions on those taken up by others, and if the original claims prospected well, his extensions would eventually become valuable. The idea struck him favorably.
Next morning he was off bright and early, with his pocket full of ready-written extension claim-notices. Luck was still against him; he found extensions located in every claim in the mountains. Late in the evening he was making his way back to camp, footsore, weary and dejected, when he stumbled upon a claim-stake on a mesa at the head of a cañon, and getting down on his knees to examine it, was filled with delight at the discovery that there was no extension-notice fastened to the other side of it. He could not make out the words of the notice, but it was a claim, and that was quite enough for him. Pulling out an extension-notice, reading:
"We, the undersigned, claim 200 feet each on the first northerly extension of this claim, and intend to work the same according to the laws of the United States and of this district.
(Signed)"John Smith,
"John Jones et al."
he fastened it on the northern side of the stake, and started on toward camp with a lighter heart. Descending into the cañon, he came upon another claim-stake, and repeated the performance of putting up an extension-notice. Fortune had favored him at last! Two extensions located within an hour—he was a millionaire already, in prospect, at least, when he returned to camp. That night he hardly slept at all. His heart beat high with hope—visions of untold wealth floated unceasingly before his half-closed eyes. Next morning he was up betimes, and invited his companions in the camp to go up with him before breakfast and take a look at his locations. They went up the cañon and found that the last extension located was the result of an error. All sorts of locations besides mining-claims were being made—town sites, mill sites, etc., etc.; the last claim on which he had taken up an extension was for a slaughter-yard. The discovery lowered his spirits a peg, but he was still hopeful, and went on with the party up to the mesa to examine the first location.
When they arrived at the stake, and Bill bent down to read the notice, his face turned pale and he started back frightened, as did Robinson Crusoe when he saw the footprint of the cannibal on the island of Juan Fernandez. As I am a man and a Christian, he had located and agreed to work an extension on a claim for a graveyard.
The joke got back to camp ahead of him, and Bill shot out of the place an hour later, like a second Mazeppa, followed by a
loud shout of savage laughter,
Which on the wind came roaring after,"
He paused in his flight at a new camp near La Paz, and there had better luck for the moment. He located on a small vein, or deposit, of "silver-copper glance," and sold it to a San Francisco capitalist for three hundred dollars. With this money he started a modest and unpretending "dead-fall," proposing to supply the honest miners with liquor and cards at a handsome advance on original cost. The first day's business was a success, and he began to entertain high hope of a change for the better. Vain hope! On the second day a stranger came into his shanty for a drink, and fell down dead with heart disease before reaching the counter. Bad news travels fast. In half an hour the rumor had gone abroad through the whole camp that the respected and lamented deceased (who had emigrated from Northern California or Southern Oregon on account of a lawsuit involving the question of title to a horse) had died just after, instead of just before, imbibing a glass of Concatenation Bill's best whisky.
It was the warm season, and the gold and copper-seekers of that district were an excitable set at any time, with no wholesome restraint upon their actions in the shape of courts and legal enactments. In an hour fifty men had assembled, and were engaged in sampling his liquor, and testing it as a Committee of the Whole, with a view of deciding whether it would kill or not. It did not directly kill those who drank it then and there, without paying a cent for it, but it led to a fight, in which two honest miners were laid out with bullet- holes through them; and the indignant citizens, with the crude ideas of justice prevailing among them, held him responsible for this result, and immediately organized a Vigilance Committee, with the intention of going for Bill as soon as daylight came, to enable them to hunt up his hiding-place in the chaparral. Luckily for him, he learned of their good intentions in season, and before morning broke over the Weaver Mountains, he broke in that direction himself. They heard of him the next day at the Granite Wash, forty miles east of the river, and their ardor having cooled down a little meantime, concluded to drop the matter and pursue him no farther.
He next turned up at Wickenburg, on the Hassi-yampi, in Central Arizona. Wickenburg was a lively place at that time. Jack Snelling was acknowledged to be a capital fellow when perfectly sober, but inclined to be playful at times, and indulge in little practical jokes, which generally resulted in somebody being sent out of town feet foremost, and perforated like a colander. It so happened that Jack was festively inclined on the day on which Bill arrived, and had been going around town compelling all the traders to close their shops and go home, on pain of instant death. Jack was much respected in that community, and his will was law. As Concatenation Bill rode down the single long, tortuous street which comprised the city at that time, Jack sighted him, and mistaking him for a man who had once insulted him by refusing to drink with him, went for him the moment he alighted, and thrashed him within an inch of his life before he discovered his mistake. Bill accepted his apology and a drink, but thought that business was opening a little too briskly in Wickenburg to be permanent, washed the blood from his lace, bound a piece of raw beef on one of his eyes, and struck out for a new location at sunrise next morning.
In the course of his wanderings, he was seen at Hooper & Co's store on the Gila, and for a time was at home around Tucson.
Two or three years after his adventure at La Paz, Concatenation Bill came down Bill Williams' fork from Prescott, near Date Creek, and for some weeks was one of the fixtures of the Great Central Mining Company's camp, at the copper mines near Aubray City, twelve miles above the mouth of the fork. Nobody asked him to stop, and nobody seemed to care to invite him to leave; so he partook liberally of the hospitalities of the camp, never missing a meal nor paying a red, until it was whispered round among the miners that he was a heavy stockholder in the company, and it would be well to be on the good side of him. It was in midsummer, and the heat was something terrible. All day long the naked red mountains absorbed the heat of the burning sun, and all night long they gave it back to the inhabitants, as the baker's brick oven absorbs the heat of the burning wood fire, and gives it back to the loaves within it, when the coals and embers have been raked out. Sleep, until far into the morning hours, was an impossibility, indoors or out, and the miners were wont to spread their blankets on the floor of the long veranda, at the hacienda, and, lying down upon them, while away the earlier part of the night, fighting mosquitoes and swapping lies, which were about equally abundant at that time in camp.
Some years previous to this time, the Mojaves of the Colorado Valley, becoming tired of inglorious peace, and panting for war and its triumphs and renown, concluded to go on an expedition up the Gila, and clean out the Pimos and Maricopas, their old friends and allies against the Apaches. The campaign opened auspiciously. The first skirmish resulted in the rapid retreat of the Pimos, with the loss of four bucks and one squaw, toward their main village, farther up the valley. But the second fight resulted differently, and the Mojaves retreated in confusion toward the Colorado, with the loss of half their force, and with their thirst for military glory whipped clean out of them.
Now it happened, almost as a matter of course since trouble was going on, that Concatenation Bill was in the vicinity when the fight took place—or, at least, had heard the particulars from some one who had been—and, as was his custom, had worked up the incidents and details into a wonderful romance, like unto that of the adventures of the Cid, of which you may be sure he was the central figure and hero, and he never tired of relating it, with endless variations, to any crowd who could be got to listen to the story. No one about the camp knew aught to the contrary; so, for want of contradiction, the story was accepted for its face, and became one of the acknowledged and respected legends of the fork. But for an unfortunate incident which I shall proceed to relate, it is probable that it would have passed into history and been handed down to posterity, with all the claim to reverence and credence which attaches to the story of William Tell, the tyrant Gessler, and the apple; or the infant G. W., his hatchet, and the old man's cherry-tree.
One day, just as the sun was sinking down in the orange-hued western sky, and the sweating cook was ringing the welcome bell to call the toilers at the mine to supper, a game-looking young frontiersman, clad in buckskin garments, and a broad-brimmed vicuna hat, rode down the steep declivity of the red mountain, and made his way into camp. He was tendered the hospitalities of the place, as were all strangers then, and turned in with the other "boys" on the veranda at night. Stories came on in due course, and, at a hint dexterously thrown out by one of the party, Concatenation Bill started in with the true and affecting history of the "Great Indian Fight on the Gila." And thus he began:
"Well, you see, boys, the old chiefs of the Pimos and Maricopas were all out of practice, and when they found things had gone agin 'em on the first fight, they looked about for a leader who knowed jest how to put up the pins for a victory. Pretty soon they pitched on me, and I drawed up the plan for the next day's operations right away. I stationed the braves at the right points, then laid for the Mojaves, and got 'em. "They came up the river, yelling like so many devils, and drove our pickets in like chaff before 'em; but when I got 'em jest in the right spot, I give the word, and we riz on 'em. I never did feel much compunction at taking life before, leastwise the life of a damned redskin; but the fact is, that slaughter was dreadful, and it came to be a perfect butchery before we got through. I swear to man that the Gila riz over a foot; though mind, boys, I don't say it was all owin' to the blood which ran into it. There was about two thousand dead Mojaves a floatin' down the stream, an' it's likely they lodged and choked it up at some pint where it was narrer like, an' so set the water back, more or less. Right in the thickest of the fight, when it seemed for a few minutes as if the Mojaves—who was game to the last; I'll say that injustice to 'em—was goin' to get the best of us, after all, I sailed in myself, and went for their big chief, and downed him with a blow from the butt of my revolver; an' I was jest cockin' my weapon to give him a settler, when old Ickthermiree, his second in command, an' about half a dozen leftenants, lighted on me all at onst, an' we clinched and went down all in a heap. I got one arm loose, an' pulling out my old Arkansas toothpick, commenced slashin' 'em right and left, when"
Concatenation Bill never told us what happened after that.
When he commenced the story, the stranger, who was lying some feet away, listened attentively for a few moments, then rose slowly to a sitting posture, and then to his feet. As the story progressed, he moved quietly toward the spot where Bill was lying, and at length startled that worthy by suddenly appearing over him, towering up like a giant in the moonlight, every feature convulsed with excitement.
"You did that, stranger?" he yelled from stentorian lungs, every syllable being evidently enunciated under pressure of rage suppressed, until it was ready to burst him.
"Yes, me!" was Bill's slightly less confident reply.
The stranger bounded about four feet into the air, cracked his heels together with such force that the report sounded like that of a musket, swung his revolver round to the front, so as to have it ready for instant use, and as he came down yelled out:
"Well, by the great horn spoon, stranger, that is singular! There wasn't but one damned white man thar, or I hope to be dropped into hell this minute; an' I'm the man!"
The camp was as silent as death in an instant. Every man expected to hear the report of a revolver, or the sounds of a deadly hand-to-hand struggle, and waited in breathless anxiety for the crowning catastrophe.
"You the man?"
"Yes, by the bloody jumping tom-cats of Jerusalem, me! Take a good look at me, stranger. I kin jest eat any ten men that dar dispute it."
The silence grew deeper. Concatenation Bill lay as motionless as a dead man for a moment, looking up at his opponent in the moonlight, silently weighing him and taking his measure; then apparently fully satisfied that he was a man of his word, and able to carry out his promises, slowly turned over on his side, drew the corner of his blanket up over his head, and in a voice as free from excitement as that of a child playing on its mother's bosom, drawled out:
"Well, I reckon that lets me out!"
A peal of laughter, wild and long, from all but two of the party, rang out upon the still air of the desert, and was answered on the instant by a loud yap-yap-yap-ya-hoo-oooo, from the startled wolves which were prowling around the camp by dozens. The stranger stood there in silence and in doubt for a moment, then walked sulkily back to his blankets and lay down. Again, and yet again, the loud laughter pealed forth upon the night, but not a word or sound of any kind came from the blankets where Bill was lying, to denote his consciousness of aught which was going on around him. He had played that hand for all it was worth, and was fairly raised out at last.
When the summits of the distant Harcuvar Mountains were glistening with the rays of the rising sun, the miners of the fork were up and stirring, as was their wont. The breakfast-bell sounded, and a rush was made for the dining-room. A familiar face was missing, and for the first time in weeks there was a vacant place at the table. Concatenation Bill was gone. The camp which had known him so long was to know him no more forever. In the grey dawn he had stealthily risen, folded his blankets, packed up his traps, saddled his hipshot mule, and as silently as a ghost departed, not deigning even to say good bye to anybody about the premises. What became of him we never satisfactorily ascertained. The road to La Paz he had already traveled too often; that toward Salt Lake was Hualapais; and that to Prescott and Tucson was swarming with Apaches. Had he taken "the road which Ward's ducks went?" We shuddered at the thought, but he may have done so in sheer desperation.
A few days later, the writer and a party of frontiersmen friends paused beside a lowly grave on the road to Skull Valley, over which some wandering Mexicans had erected a cross of stones, in testimony of the supposed fact that there rested the remains of a Christiano. There was an empty bottle by the side of the grave, and on the label the letters "C. B." Did they stand for "Cognac Brandy" or "Concatenation Bill?"
The party were about equally divided on the question of the probabilities; but it is a rule on the frontier never to miss an opportunity out of respect to a mere uncertainty; so from our pocket-flasks we reverently drank to the memory of the illustrious departed, the hero of the "the Great Indian Fight on the Gila;" then rode away into new scenes and dangers new, and thenceforth to all that reckless party, save the writer, poor Concatenation Bill was as dead, and almost as nearly forgotten, as
"The little birds that sang
A hundred years ago."