He dreamed of striking it rich nightly. The lack of human contact did not help either. By now only a handful of miners remained working their claims. Most were of Thomas’ greedy bent and thus loathe to talk with their neighbors. So driven was Thomas that he began to think that he should ignore McBride and abandon this claim in search of another better yielding one. Now lump fever was wracking his soul.
If others had found gold while engaged in pursuits totally unrelated to prospecting maybe he could be as lucky he reasoned. A hunter near Angel’s Camp had hit pay dirt in an unusual way. He had poked his ramrod into the roots of bushes to flush out any game hiding there. Instead of meat for the table he found gold bearing quartz. Forgetting about his search for rabbits, he used the rod to pull out $700 worth of gold before nightfall. Returning with pick and shovel, he found $2,000 worth the second day and $7,000 on the third.
Such dumb luck astounded Thomas. Why has all of my hard work not paid me such dividends? Life is not fair.
Salvation for him came unexpectedly. Toward the end of the second week a miner representing his company from Ohio stopped to talk.
“How much you pull from it so far?”
“I got here in June.” Thomas motioned for the miner to step inside of the tent and out of the foggy mist that dampened everything. “The original owner staked it out last March. His last reckoning was that it yielded fourteen or fifteen pounds since then. He and the other partner left me here to sell it. Look, I’m still finding gold, even working in this bad weather. There will be plenty more when the winter rains swell up the river. Then the water will push down even more gold from the mountains. That’s the way it works, I’ve been told.”
The miner examined the leather bag that Thomas had half filled on his own. “Hmmm. Not bad. I represent a company that came out here. The rest of ‘em is camped out in Sacramento for the winter. They sent me on ahead to buy up claims we kin start working come spring. How much you want for it?”
“Fifty dollars.”
“I’m only allowed to give you $25 since I have to buy up at least seven or eight claims for us all to have enough to work on. It’s the best I can do. Honest to God.”
Thomas’ sore throat, aching body, advanced case of canyon fever, and new infection of lump fever rendered him unwilling to haggle. “Okay.”
The buyer threw in another $5 for the two shovels and $30 for the tent, which became his base of operations as he searched for more claims to buy.
Thomas did not wait for morning. He quickly filled his backpack with his few clothes and bag of gold. His lust for the metal was temporarily forgotten. The only goal now was to reach Mormon Island by nightfall and find a warm room with a bed, a luxury that he had not enjoyed since leaving the steamship that he had taken from New York seven months earlier. His last act at the claim was to sign a crude document that transferred its ownership to the company from Ohio.
Thomas rode Daniel until his rear end began to bother him. He hopped off of the mule and tried readjusting the makeshift saddle of blankets but that only slightly relieved his discomfort. His poor diet had given him constipation, which had led to piles. In addition, his daily intake of beans and the wild mushrooms that Yee had added to the rice and his alcohol consumption had given him a bout of gout. The gout had subsided; the piles had worsened. Dismounting again, he began to lead his friend. This lessened his pain.
“Maybe we’ll even be able to find a stable for you, Daniel.” He tried to coax the mule along. Other than the buyer from Ohio, Daniel was the only one that Thomas had talked to in days.
It was dark by the time Daniel was chewing hay in a Mormon Island stable and Thomas was eating a hot meal at a small hotel. After dining both of them fell soundly asleep and did not hit the trail until two hours after daybreak. Mormon Island had grown since Thomas had seen it in June. Samuel Brannan had transformed the small camp into a community. However, many chafed at his insistence that its Mormon residents pay a tithe to him. Although now officially not a part of the Mormon branch headquartered in Salt Lake City, Brannan still retained some of its practices. He would go on to make a fortune from the stores he set up at Sutter’s Fort and elsewhere.
As Daniel and Thomas retraced the path that they had taken from Sutter’s Fort last spring, the full extent of Thomas’ fatigue began to worry him. He had never been this tired, not even after working six days during harvest time on his father’s farm and then a long night of drinking. He concluded that living in a tent for five months, eating a diet sorely lacking in the fruits and vegetables he had grown up on, working seven days a week, and worrying that he would not strike it rich had combined to drain him both physically and emotionally.
“Once we get to Sacramento, I will only work five or six days a week.” He confided to Daniel. The mule sensed his master’s distress but could only stare at him with his sad eyes. He occasionally shook his head in response to let Thomas know that he was paying attention.
As the miles wore on, Thomas felt his last reserves fade away. He now wished that he had followed McBride and Yee’s habit of resting every Sunday. The two had warned him of the folly of working every day.
“The gold will still be there tomorrow.” McBride had said weekly.
“Why you greedy?” Yee had added.
“The early bird gets the worm.” Thomas had retorted more than once. “Go ahead and take your Sunday naps. I’m the one who’ll make us rich!”
It was the stories of those who had struck it rich that had spurred Thomas on to work without a day off. During the first days of the mining around Auburn, not far from McBride’s claim, a mere four cartloads of dirt had held $16,000 in gold. Those early miners were often digging up $1,000 or more worth of gold a day.
The story of the German miners who found $36,000 worth in only four days on a tributary of the Feather River also irked him. They had stumbled on the spot while taking a short cut when they spotted gold glittering in the crevices of rock lying on the bottom of a creek bed. At first they used knives, spoons, and bare hands as tools to dig it out. Before long so many miners showed up that claims were limited to ten square feet at what rightly came to be called Rich Bar. Even panning, which often proved to be unfruitful elsewhere, paid off at Rich Bar. A $1,500 panful was nothing to brag of at first. Legend had it that the best panful yielded almost $3,000. It was the old story of being in the right place at the right time because the discoverers of Rich Bar had not even been prospecting when they accidentally came across the strike of their lives. According to some accounts, they had given up on mining and were going back home when they found the location of their dreams.
The story of a strike near where Thomas had lived for almost half a year especially irritated him because he knew that it had kept any of that deposit from washing down to where his company had toiled. Now these tales and other similar ones ate away at his soul.
By the time that Daniel and Thomas reached Sutter’s Fort, fever and chills were wracking his body. Before the first waves of gold seekers had devastated the fort and its surroundings there had always been a doctor on hand to treat both Sutter’s employees and the settlers who were constantly passing through it. Now there were only random visits by doctors there. When Thomas stumbled into the fort’s interior, the first one to greet him was a “Doctor” Samuel Ringer, whose framed medical diploma adorned the outside of his wood paneled wagon. Ringer had purchased the diploma in Chicago before heading west after someone had told him of the lack of doctors in California. He was headed to the diggings with a wagon filled with medicines guaranteed to cure all ills and ailments from arthritis to whooping cough. After listening to Thomas’ list of symptoms he produced a bottle of tonic, the kind he prescribed for everything. Its ingredients of alcohol and opiates gave Thomas eight straight hours of slumber.
The next morning it took Thomas a little over an hour to reach Sacramento. By the time that he found McBride at the hotel, his symptoms were raging once more, only now the alternating fever and chills were even more
intense. Thomas begged for another bottle of tonic. McBride’s mining partner now became his patient.
“Into bed with you.” The doctor pushed Thomas that direction as he continued his questions. “What have you been doing the last couple of weeks to be in such bad shape now? You were in good enough condition when we left you up at the claim. What happened?”
Thomas fumbled with his boots as McBride, seated in the modest room’s only chair, watched. The patient waited until he felt safe under the covers before answering.
“Umm…I kept on working a little.”
“Every day as usual, I bet.”
“Well…I was still finding gold and nobody was buying the claim. I had to do something, right?”
McBride sighed. “I warned you that if you weren’t careful you would get scurvy, typhoid fever, dysentery, or Lord knows what else. I’m not for certain what is ailing you. But whatever it is, you’re not getting out of that bed till I say so. I’ve watched too many miners die in too many different places already. If you go ahead and die in this bed I won’t be able to sleep in it anymore.”
“Yes, doctor.” Thomas knew better than to argue. Besides, he had no strength left with which to disagree.
“Well at least you are calling me what I am for you