52 



LIFE SKETCHES OF A JAYHAWKER 



pay a dollar down as he would take all the risk of making the money. He 

 said I had done him a favor once, that he had not forgetten it. It is re- 

 markably strange how things do work out sometimes. 



However flattering the prospects were in his offer I did not accept it. 

 I don't know why, either, for I needed the money bad enough, but I didn't 

 go into it. A few months later he was on the road toward some of the mines 

 with his teams when they were attacked by the Indians and robbed of 

 everything and two of his men killed and he barely escaped with his life. 

 I sometimes think that some people have premonitions of coming disaster 

 and I don't believe I am the least bit superstitious either. 



CHAPTER IX. 



About this time I had made up my mind to return to California, and in 

 company with some others started back with some teamsters that were on 

 their way back empty, so we had a chance to ride all the time if we wished 

 to do so. About forty miles out we camped at Das Palms, where there is a 

 hot spring and at a distance of about five miles there is what is called the 

 mud volcanoes, that work very singularly. There will be a volume of steam 

 start from the shore edge and travel in a straight course right across the 

 lake. I call it a lake, it's really a lake of hot boiling mud. 



Into the lake for three or four hundred yards another will start from 

 the same place and follow the others ahead continuously, so that there are 

 about four in sight all the time, and each one of them turning over a mass 

 of mud. They can only be approached in winter; in summer no one can go 

 nearer than a mile or two, the heat is too intense. 



When we arrived at San Bernardino, we had to make different arrange- 

 ments, as the teams we were with were going direct to Los Angeles, and 

 some of us wanted to go a different direction. So we bought some horses 

 there and fitted ourselves with saddles, etc., necessary for the trip. I want- 

 ed to see more of the Owens River Country, as I liked the looks of it pretty 

 well as I passed down that way the fall before, and this I think was January 

 or February, 1864. There were four of us started and traveled together until 

 we got up to Owens River, where we separated, two going on up the range, 

 and two stopping there, and I soon found a location that suited me well 

 enough to take up and improve. 



The man who stopped with me only stayed a week or two, got home- 

 sick and started for San Francisco, where he lived. I wasn't very sorry for 

 he wasn't a person that I admired very much. That left me entirely alone 

 and this was right where the Indians had been committing deprecations 

 the fall before. 



I went to work on my claim, building a cabin, planting garden, and 

 plowing the ground. It was most excellent land and in former years the 

 Indians had irrigated a good part of this same land. They raised what is 

 called cumus and grows similar to potatoes. My nearest neighbors were 

 twenty miles away at Fort Indpeendence, in one direction, and eight miles 

 in another direction, to a sawmill, where Bishop is now situated. 



One day I was very busy working, digging a ditch, fencing in a garden 

 patch, when I looked up there stood four Indians about two rods away. As 



