[Rollin M. Daggett, O'Doud's Diggin's, The Overland Monthly, November 1894]

 

1894.] The Story of O'Doud's Diggin's. 491

 

THE STORY OF O'DOUD'S DIGGIN'S.

EARLY FREAKS OF FORTUNE IN CALIFORNIA.

            THERE are certainly a few men in California that still remember Timothy O'Doud. He was in some respects the strangest of the strange medley of men, largely composed of soldiers, sailors, farmers, and trappers, who first penetrated the mountains of California in search of gold. He was brave, reckless, and generous, and for a time so petted by fortune as to be the envy and wonder of the less successful.

            When a boy of fourteen, Timothy immigrated with his parents to New York from somewhere in the north of Ireland. His father, Michael O'Doud, was a machinist by occupation. He earned fair wages in Ireland ; but as his family consisted of a wife and four children, of whom Timothy was the eldest, he concluded to seek a brighter future for himself and little ones in the New World.

            He did not land in New York quite empty-handed. His small savings, added to the proceeds of the sale of a few acres of inherited land, enabled him to purchase an interest in an established business, and in the course of a few years the O'Douds were in very comfortable circumstances.

            The personal belongings of young Timothy consisted of stout limbs, a handsome face, a bit of brogue, and a pronounced aversion to manual labor. Under the circumstances, his father concluded to educate him for one of the learned professions, and he was sent to the public schools, with the understanding that the requisite advancement there would be followed by a college course. But he exhibited as little taste for the mental drudgery of the schoolroom as for the muscular demands of the workshop, and was as irregular in his school attendance as he was careless and imperfect in his studies. At sixteen he was a member of a hose company, which gave him a pretext for leaving his room at all hours of the night and returning at any hour in the morning, and at nineteen he enlisted as a volunteer for the Mexican war. Being a minor, his father secured his release, which so enraged him that he refused to continue his studies, or fit himself in any way to earn an honest living.

            He was not vicious. He was simply wild, rollicking, and irresolute. Frank, generous, and courageous, he was a general favorite ; but his father saw that nothing could be hoped for him in New York, and when he finally enlisted in Stevenson's regiment, bound for California by the way of Cape Horn, no objection was interposed. It was thought that the discipline of the Army might give him stability of character. The mother wept, and the hand of the father trembled as he gave it to the young soldier in parting, but Tim sailed away with the blessings of both.

            The voyage was long, and before Stevenson's regiment reached Monterey, California was in possession of the Americans, never to be relinquished. In 1848, after the ratification of the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the regiment was disbanded, and Tim was of the number of the rank and file who remained in California.

            He left the service a corporal, and with two or three other members of the disbanded regiment proceeded to San Francisco, where a whale-boat was procured, and in two weeks the party succeeded in reaching Sacramento, the old embarcadero of Captain Sutter. That

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point was then the center of the new gold excitement, and Tim made his way to the mountains, and at once engaged in the business of mining. He claimed that he was the first miner who washed out a hundred ounces of gold with his own hands, and offered the dust for sale in a single lot.

            For three years or more Tim's luck in mining seemed to be almost phenomenal. Like the waters from the smitten rock, everywhere streams of gold gushed forth in answer to the stroke of his pick. He found gold where no one else thought of looking for it, and if there was an exceptionally rich " pocket " in any camp in which he happened to be mining, it was pretty sure to be within the boundaries of his claim.

            He rarely remained longer than two or three consecutive months in the same locality ; but, however brief the sojourn, it was generally sufficient to enable him to sack as many ounces of gold dust as he could conveniently carry to Sacramento or San Francisco, where the spoil was wasted on gaming tables, and eagerly exchanged for a few days of riotous living.

            Instead of resenting the style in which her gifts were squandered by Corporal O'Doud, Fortune plainly winked at his excesses, and year after year he scattered his large earnings without a thought of the future. As long-toms and sluices were gradually introduced in mining, involving the necessity of cooperative labor, Tim was occasionally induced to enter into copartnerships with miners who hoped to profit by his luck ; but his good fortune invariably deserted him when he attempted to share it directly with others, and he was compelled to strike out for himself alone whenever a speedy refilling of his purse was desired.

            Now, all these events in the life of Corporal O'Doud, including his apparently psychologic gift in locating deposits of gold, were gathered from his own lips, and the testimony of two or three of his friends, when I first met him on Jones's Bar, on the South Yuba, late in the autumn of 1851. Three or four months prior to that time he had abruptly severed his connection with a party of five or six miners, who were tunneling into the mountain in search of an old channel on the north side of the river, nearly opposite the upper end of the Bar.

            The Corporal's instincts were correct. As subsequently ascertained, there was really no old channel to be found at that point ; and after spending a month in prospecting in and around the tunnel, he shouldered his blankets one morning and started up the trail leading to Nevada City. In addition to his interest in the tunnel, he left with his partners a demijohn of whisky and three fourths of all the gold dust remaining in his purse, and promised to visit them, on his way to Sacramento, before the rainy season began, with more gold than he could carry.

            Tim pretty nearly fulfilled his promise. Where he went after leaving the Bar I did not ascertain, but one afternoon, in the latter part of the succeeding October, Corporal O'Doud descended the Nevada trail, and came marching unsteadily down the flat. He was tastefully clad in black doeskin trousers, tucked into low-top boots of fine material and finish ; a gray flannel shirt open at the collar, and disclosing a white merino undergarment, and a broad-brimmed white fur hat. About his neck was a loosely knotted silk handkerchief, and around his waist a heavy red silk scarf, with fringed ends falling at the side. The scarf partially concealed a glazed leather belt, from which hung a scabbarded knife and revolver. His hair and whiskers had been recently trimmed, —and altogether, as I first saw him, he was a striking and picturesque representative of that robust and self-reliant

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manhood with which the early pioneers of the Pacific were so largely endowed.

            A few yards in front of the Corporal trotted a Chinaman, with a bamboo pole across his shoulder, from each end of which was suspended a basket. One of them contained a demijohn, surrounded by a dozen or more bottles ; and the other, a gunny-sack, in which were five buckskin purses of gold dust — sufficiently heavy in the aggregate to counterbalance the merchandise at the other end of the pole. The frequent shifting of the burden from shoulder to shoulder showed that the weight was very considerable, but the hardy Asiatic did not slacken his pace until he was called to a halt in front of the little trading establishment that partially supplied the wants of the score or more of miners working on the Bar, or within a mile or two of it.

            Notwithstanding his somewhat impressive attire, the Corporal was recognized and warmly welcomed back to the Bar by his friends, and his old mining partners hastened across the river to greet him. He was knee-deep in clover. It seemed that the waters in the river gurgled in glee at his coming, and that the tall pines on the hillsides were trying to tip glasses with him. He felt as if he wanted to entertain the whole world, and soon everybody in the neighborhood was drinking with him,—drinking every ten minutes,—until at last the Chinaman, who was watching the baskets outside of the store door was about the only sober human being on the Bar. Then, not knowing what might happen, the prudent Mongol crowded his way into the store with the baskets, and lifting the heavy sack of purses to the counter, said to the careless owner : —

            " Too muchee golo. Me no likee watchee. S'pose you see all light, then you keepee him."

            A dozen men put down their glasses, and stared at the Chinaman with stupid looks of interrogation.

            "All right, John," replied the Corporal good-naturedly. "Afraid it might get ye into trouble, eh ? Well, I 'II take care of it. I guess it 's all here, but I'll take a look, since you want me to."

            So saying, the Corporal opened the sack, and one by one removed the five heavy purses of dust, placing them side by side on the counter.

            "They 're all here, John," he continued, replacing the purses in the gunny-sack, and carelessly shoving them out of his way. "Dump them bottles in a corner, and scoot back to Nevada with your traps. I promised to give ye ten dollars, but here's twenty." And the Corporal tossed a double eagle to the Chinaman, who pocketed the money with a grin of satisfaction, and immediately left the Bar with his empty baskets.

            The casual exhibition of Tim's heavy purses had a quieting effect upon his. friends. They all wanted to know where he had found the gold, how he had taken it out, and what he intended to do with it ; but his only answer was a general proffer of a "slug " or two to any of his friends who happened to be short of beans and bacon for the winter.

            "Ye see, boys, the gold is not exactly mine," he explained. "It belongs to a lot of well-dressed folks in Sacramento, and San Francisco that I've been workin' for since the fall of forty-eight, and what you take 'ill be more their loss than mine. So, set 'em up ag'in !— all down !— roll!"

            It was nearly dark before the noisy gathering began to disperse, and then Tim crossed the river with his old mining partners, and found quarters in the company cabin. In addition to the gold and liquid supplies brought down to the Bar by Tim's Chinaman, large quantities of canned goods and other luxuries were taken over the ferry from the store, including two or three cases of claret and a keg of cherry brandy, and nothing was lacking in the materials re-

494 The Story of O'Doud's Diggin's. [Nov.,

quired for a first-class mountain "jamboree."

            As the mountains opposite Jones' Bar drop rather abruptly down to the river, and no eligible building place can be found near the margin of the stream, the log cabin occupied by Tim's companions had been erected on a narrow bench forty or fifty feet above the river, and overlooking a small bar thickly covered with large granite bowlders. It was, in fact, less a bar than a part of the channel of the stream, for, although exposed and dry during the summer and a portion of the autumn months, it was flooded throughout every other season of the year. Owing to the huge rocks plentifully scattered over it, the bar had never been very thoroughly prospected, but nothing encouraging had been discovered, and it was generally believed to be barren.

            While Tim remained, work, of course, was not to be thought of by his old mining partners. Day after day and night after night they kept up a noisy and barbarous revelry. They fired off pistols, howled themselves hoarse, danced themselves lame, beat the bottoms out of their prospecting pans, and exploded a keg of powder in the mouth of their tunnel, knocking out three sets of timbers ; and to cap the climax, during the sixth night of their wild debauch one of them staggered out of the door unobserved with the Corporal's sack of gold dust, and one by one deliberately threw the purses fifty or sixty feet down the declivity among the bowlders of the bar below the cabin. Striking the rocks, the purses bursted, of course, scattering their contents in every direction.

            Returning, the lunatic boasted of what he had done, declaring that the gold in the purses had turned to snakes and scorpions. "And this is full of 'em too !" he exclaimed, seizing a camp-kettle half filled with beans, and starting for the door.

            His companions were not too far dazed with drink to understand the meaning of this sudden frenzy. It was plain that the man had a touch of delirium tremens, and he was seized, forced to swallow a pint of mingled vinegar and mustard, and then thrown into his bunk. In five minutes he was too sick to think of snakes. The heroic dose operated as an exhaustive emetic, and within an hour the patient was asleep.

            Then the Corporal quietly lighted a lantern, and accompanied by the soberest one of the party, groped his way down to the little bar, to learn what had become of his gold. Within an area of thirty feet he found among the rocks the rent and nearly empty purses, while the sandy spaces between the imbedded bowlders were yellow with the Corporal's wasted treasure. A cold wind was sweeping down the river and moaning among the pines, indicative of an approaching storm ; but nothing of advantage could be done before daylight, and with a string of oaths and a stout resolution, Tim returned to the cabin and sullenly rolled into his bunk. The others followed his example, and for the first time for nearly a week quiet reigned in the neighborhood of Jones's Bar.

            About the middle of the following forenoon, the miners on the opposite side of the river were astonished at discovering a party of men at work with two rockers among the bowlders below the tunnel company's cabin. Surmising that a new development had been made, a few of them crossed the river, and returned with the strange information that the Corporal's gold had been sown among the sands the night before, and his friends were engaged in recovering what they could of it.

            At the end of two days of incessant washing, panning, and scraping, resulting in the resacking of about two thirds of the scattered dust, a sudden rise in the river flooded the rocky little bar, and the work of recovery was indefi-

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nitely suspended. Tattered, bruised, and grimy, but seemingly delighted with his visit, Tim strapped his gold around him and started for Nevada City, accompanied by two of his friends as a body-guard. The latter did not return, and their mining partners soon after abandoned their wrecked tunnel and left the Bar.

            For some years thereafter, " O'Doud's Diggin's " were kept in remembrance by the miners on Jones's Bar, and for those who could locate the deposit it was not a difficult matter during low stages of the river to scrape together a few dollars from among the bowlders of the little bar, where the Corporal's gold had been scattered by a drunken lunatic in the belief that it had turned into snakes and scorpions.

            AND what became of O'Doud ? A letter from a friend, written more than thirty-five years ago, which was not preserved, but the contents of which are well remembered, enables me partially to answer the question.

            One afternoon, early in the summer of 1855, a poorly clad, unkempt and footsore pedestrian, carrying a roll of blankets and little else, slowly picked his way down the trail leading to the upper end of Jones's Bar. Proceeding to the river, he dropped his blankets, bathed his face, and filling and lighting his pipe, seated himself on a rock, and for a few minutes watched a party of Chinamen at work near the edge of the Bar a hundred yards or more down the stream.

            "There 's nothing for a white man where the likes o' them are workin'," he muttered aloud. " Out o' luck, out o' money, and out at the toes and elbows ! By the Lord, Timothy O'Doud, you're in a fine fix ! Not a color to the cartload, and the bed-rock comin' up in yer face. But never mind. Ye don't deserve it, Tim, but 1 believe there 's a pile o' gold in the country for ye yet, and it must be hunted up."

            It was Corporal O'Doud, indeed, who was holding this little conversation with himself. After squandering the gold packed up the Nevada trail in 1851,—and it did not take him long to do it,—his luck had completely deserted him. Month after month and year after year he had roamed from one mining locality to another, in search of rich deposits that would remind him of the past, but he could find no spot that would yield him more than average wages, and for such niggardly reward he could bring himself to labor only under the stress of pressing want.

            A hundred dollars was a larger sum than he had possessed at any one time for more than three years, and he was then on his way to the Middle Yuba with the bare color of gold in his pocket. Considering his financial condition and the necessity of providing himself with a pair of new boots, he concluded to turn his hand to mining for such length of time as might be required to supply his urgent needs, and take him to his destination without humiliation or discomfort.

            With this resolution he shouldered his blankets and proceeded down the Bar. He hoped no one would recognize him, and was glad to see but few men at work anywhere. He was not exactly ashamed of the tumult he had created there some years before, but imagined that he could stand a reference to it with less uneasiness if he were a little better clad.

            The first cabin he came to was unoccupied. The door was open, and he walked in and took possession of the premises, tossing his blankets into one of the three bunks left standing. He observed a commodious fire-place, with pot-hooks hanging from the jambs, and near it a low shake table. He nodded his head approvingly, and then stepped out and seated himself on a bench beside the door. He wanted to look at the surroundings, and think for a few min-

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utes. There had been changes since he left the Bar, and everything seemed to be a little out of place. A slice of the lower end of the flat had been sluiced away, and a number of prospecting cuts had been made above it.

            He had not been seated long before he saw a miner cross the river on a log above the ferry, and stroll up toward the cabin of the old tunnel company, which was still standing, with the door gone, and a part of the roof fallen in. Thus far there was nothing noteworthy to Tim in the plodding movements of the miner ; but when he next observed him at work with pick and shovel on the rocky little bar below the dilapidated log shanty, he was seized with a curious interest in the proceeding. He thought of the wild night when his purses were flung down upon the rocks among which the miner was delving, and a resistless impulse took him across the river and to the spot where his gold had been fed to the sand.

            "Curious lookin' claim you 've got here, stranger," remarked Tim, as an entering wedge to a conversation.

            " Ya-a-s, if you choose to call it a claim," drawled the miner, straightening up and mopping the perspiration from his face with his shirtsleeve. His name was Tubbs. He was a good-natured, indolent-looking, middle-aged man, who had never been very successful either as a miner or anything else, and whose sole surviving ambition was to find a spot where he could sit in the shade and " horn out " a living by working only when moved by evanescent spasms of industry.

            " Ah, I see !" returned Tim, with a twinkle in his eye ; " it 's only a sand bank, and you 're huntin' lizards."

            " Not quite that, either," replied the miner with a lazy laugh. " A little spot about where we are standin' is called O'Doud's Diggin's, and I sometimes come over here when I've nothin' else to do, and scrape up a dollar or two. But the place has been purty well worked over, and there 's mighty little left."

            "O'Doud's Diggin's ! And who was O'Doud ? " queried Tim.

            "O, a wild young chap, who had more luck than sense. At the end of a spree in the old cabin up there, three or four years ago, a lot of his gold got scattered among the rocks here, and he never recovered the half of it."

            "Now that ye mention him, I know that same O'Doud," returned Tim. " He 's a changed man, my friend. He 's a banker in San Francisco, and belongs to the Presbyterian Church. He was elected an alderman last year, and there 's talk of running him for governor on both tickets. But that he was born in Ireland, he would be on the high road to the White House."

            "Then his luck seems to have stuck to him," said the miner thoughtfully. "I did n't believe it would. I expected to hear of his bein' shot, or somethin' o' the sort. But a banker and an alderman !— well, well !"

            " Oh, the devil takes care of his own, they say," responded Tim carelessly ; "but he 's surely neglectin' one of his favorites, for I 'm desperately in need of a few ounces of dust at this moment, and have neither a claim nor the tools to work one if I had the best in the hills. Now, call me Tim, and tell me where I can borrow or steal a pick, pan, shovel, and bar, and maybe a rocker, for I've got to go to work, whether I like it or not."

            "See here, stranger," said Tubbs, with more than his usual animation, " don't you worry about tools. My cabin 's full of 'em, mostly given to me by men leavin' the Bar. Help yourself to any or all of 'em. And if ye like, there 's an extra bunk for ye in my cabin, and bacon and beans enough to last us till we 're able to buy more."

            Tim thankfully accepted the offer of the easy-going old miner, and before night was sharing his cabin with him. A complete clean-up of purse and pock

1894.] The Story of O'Doud's Diggin's. 497

et enabled them to pool about fifteen dollars, with which their store of provisions was varied and augmented, and Tubbs' credit was found to be good for a pair of number nine cowhide boots, which he brought over from the store for Tim's use.

            As Tubbs seemed to know of no place in the neighborhood where any such wages could be earned as Tim would consent to work for, the latter concluded to try his luck for two or three days in O'Doud's Diggin's. Accordingly, early next morning, both of them crossed the river with additional tools and a rocker, and inaugurated something like a systematic search for what remained of Tim's scattered treasure.

            Water-swept, and mined over and over again at intervals for so many years, it was difficult to determine what had become of the unrecovered gold. Tim knew better than any one else the general character of the gold of which he was in quest. Much of it was coarse, and he very reasonably concluded that, while the tendency of the larger particles had been almost directly downward through the sand, the finer had been gradually moved down the bar by the winter currents. He therefore began to strip the sand, to the depth of a foot or more, from an area of about twenty feet square, testing it in the rocker from time to time, and finding nothing of consequence.

            With frequent rests and much tribulation, Tubbs managed to wear out the day in assisting Tim ; but at night the outlook was not at all encouraging to him, and he resumed work the next morning with manifest reluctance. Persistent labor in the hot sun was more than he was willing to endure, and he began to complain of a rheumatic pain in the shoulder, and resorted to all kinds of time-killing expedients. Finally, after washing forty or fifty buckets of the stripped ground without appreciably gilding the riffle-box, Tubbs declared that he would waste no more time in hunting for O'Doud's gold, and abruptly left for the cabin, with the avowal that he relinquished every right of ownership in the premises, and all claim to whatever might be found.

            Not greatly disappointed,—for he had discovered that Tubbs was too lazy to do a full day's work in less than a week,—Tim continued to take out and wash the gravel from which the sand had been removed, and returned to the cabin quite early in the evening with a good half ounce of clean dust. Tubbs looked at it and smiled. Any one else in his place would have been annoyed. But he knew it represented ten hours of steady toil in the broiling sun, and neither envied the owner, nor regretted that he did not remain at the rocker and earn as much more for himself.

            Every night, for four or five days thereafter, Tim brought home a constantly increasing quantity of gold. Then he emptied into a pan all he had taken out of O'Doud's Diggin's, and spreading the dust in a thin layer over the bottom, carefully examined it with a glass in a good light.

            That night Corporal O'Doud was happy again,—happier than he had been for four years. He handed his purse to Tubbs, telling him to pay for his boots, bring him a couple of flannel shirts from the store, and expend what was left of the gold for cabin supplies, as he had concluded to remain on the Bar for some time.

            Tubbs was puzzled. He could not account for Tim's recklessness. It was scarcely possible that he could hope to realize any very considerable amount from O'Doud's Diggin's, since but a few thousand dollars in dust had originally been left there, and the ground had been worked over a number of times ; yet he acted as if he had a sure hold upon a fortune, and a few ounces more or less were of no consequence to

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him. These were the thoughts that flashed through the mind of Tubbs, as he took Tim's purse and started for the store. However, he saw no discomfort in laying in an additional supply of provisions, and very cheerfully made the purchases suggested, including a demijohn of corked comfort, for the relief of imaginary rheumatism.

            Tim had not explained everything to Tubbs. He had not told him that there were two distinct kinds of gold in the purse he had handed him, and that in seeking for treasure scattered by the hand of man he had cut into the top of an unlooked-for deposit made by Nature. But this is exactly what happened, nevertheless,— exactly why Tim was jubilant, and cared nothing for the few ounces of dust in his purse.

            Tim crossed the river very early the next morning, taking his lunch with him. He was troubled with water, of course, but managed to put a hole down to the bed-rock between two large bowlders, and returned to the cabin before sundown with a pan half filled with gold and black sand. Tubbs stared at the exhibit in speechless amazement.

            " A purty good day's work," remarked Tim quietly. " How much is there of it, Tubbs ? "

            " The Lord knows!" gasped Tubbs. " There looks to be a ton of it !"

            " I only wish it weighed the half of it," laughed Tim. "But there's less than ye imagine. Three or four pounds of clean dust is about what it will pan down to. However, there's plenty more in O'Doud's Diggin's, as ye call 'em,—plenty more, that's been there since Noah's flood,— and Tim O'Doud, who stands before ye, is the chap that 'll take it out !"

            Tubbs sat down on the doorstep and fanned himself with his hat. The weather was warm, and these developments were a little too burdensome for a lazy man to stand up under, especially when dragged down by the wearying conviction that his indolence had lost him a fortune.

            Tim was right. After toiling in barren places for years, he had unexpectedly drifted into the channel of his old-time luck. The deposit proved to be small, but very rich, and curious to relate, the best part of it was found in the corrugations of the bed-rock immediately under the bowlders among which Tim's gold had been scattered. A wild seeding, truly, to be followed by such a harvest.

            To remove the heavy bowlders partially covering the deposit, much blasting and heavy lifting had to be done ; but as many hands were employed as could be worked to advantage, and a month before the autumn rains came, Tim made his final " clean up," leaving some valuable odds and ends of the claim to Tubbs, together with an even hundred ounces of dust, in recognition of his hospitality when no return for it seemed probable.

            After living on the husks of ill luck for three or four years, Tim resolved to play no more pranks with fortune. It required a stout mule to pack his gold up the trail to Nevada City, and there he took drafts for it on New York, reserving a small amount only for traveling expenses.

            " I've got 'em this time," chuckled Tim, as he placed the drafts in his pocket. He had bridged over the allurements of San Francisco by making them payable to Michael O'Doud, his father.

            I heard of Tim in New York, some years later. He had tried his luck in Wall Street, and was keeping a small cigar stand on Broadway, and occasionally entertaining his customers with stories of his mining experiences in California, which not more than one in a hundred of them believed. If he is living today, by these presents I send him greeting.

R. M. Daggett.