[Albert S. Evans, A Waif of the Pogonip, The Overland Monthly, June 1871]

 

1871.]  A WAIF OF THE POGONIP.           561

 

A WAIF OF THE POGONIP.

            IT was a terrible night in the early winter of 1868-9, when the mad rush to the newly found mines at White Pine was at its height. The Pogonip, laden with death and suffering, swept before the fierce northern blast, dragged like a great white shroud over Treasure Hill. Trees, houses, rocks, even men and animals moving along the mountainside—every object exposed to the tempest—were covered deep with the white garment of hoar-frost. Men enveloped to the eyes in woolen wrappings, piled fold on fold, until the form and outlines of humanity were lost, jostled and collided with each other in the frozen cloud as they ran, stumbling wildly, through the crooked, ungraded streets, beating their hands upon their breasts, and stamping their benumbed feet, uttering never a word, like the voiceless ghosts of the damned, who heeded not the voice of the Prophet of God, wandering in speechless despair, on the shores of the Sea of the Dead.

            The frail tenements of cloth and rough boards, which lined on either side the straggling street, each contained a saloon, a " club- room," and lodgings, in which the motley crowds drawn from every rough locality in the four quarters of the globe were, respectively, poisoned, robbed, and stowed away in narrow bunks, to sleep as best they might amid all the din and confusion, in an atmosphere as hot as red-hot stoves, smoking lamps, and scores of lungs pumping out vaporized alcohol incessantly, could make it, and thick with the fumes of bad tobacco, and blue with curses and obscenity. Men, with lumps of pure chloride of silver in their hands, lied and swapped, or bought and sold mines or claims the locations of which were even then in doubt, and the very names of which are to -day forgotten—at prices almost fabulous, and straightway scattered the money right and left, among bar-tenders, faro-dealers, and the brazen- faced women who swarmed in every place. The clinking of glasses, the strains of discordant music, the laugh of the harlot and the dupe, the ringing of coin, and the duller clicking of the ivory chips, were heard incessantly. That little world by itself, far up on the lone mountain-peak among the clouds, was the scene and centre of an excitement, such as the world below —happily for it that it is so—seldom sees, and never fully feels. The Frost-king was master of the ghostly world without, while Vice and Death held high carnival within.

            Accompanied by a friend, with whom we had in other years wandered on desert sands, and crept stealthily by night through the land of the accursed Apache, we had climbed the mountain- peak,

562      A WAIF OF THE POGONIP.           [JUNE,

breasting step by step the driving storm that savage night. Just as we were passing one of the largest of the establishments before described, there was a sharp report of a pistol—another and another —crack, crack, crack !— and a humming as of a bee in his flight, as a stray bullet, going wide of the intended mark, wandered away into the misty night ; then the shouts of an excited crowd, the crash of glass, and a headlong rush pell-mell into the street and up and down it. It was all over in a moment. " What the —— was it all about ? " cried one. " Something about a woman, I think !" said another. "No ; it was two gamblers at poker, and one caught the other raising a hand on him," said another. We were swept along on the crest of the outermost wave of the crowd; and as soon as it ebbed and left us alone on our feet, we hurried on to our lonely cabin on the hill-side. Such things were a matter of too common occurrence, in those times, to warrant our wasting time in their investigation.

            When we reached our cabin and sat down by the roaring fire, Cale remarked: "Somebody in that stampede lost something, and I picked it up. It is a porte-monnaie, or something of that sort, I think." He drew it from his overcoat - pocket, and held it up to the light. It was only an old-fashioned, square daguerreotype - case ; its once bright - colored leathern covering worn with long handling, possibly also from the frequent touch of feverish lips, and the corrosion of scalding tears. He opened it, saw at a glance that the picture was gone, only the glass and the soiled gilt border remaining within it ; then tossed it contemptuously from him into the box of letters, claim notices, old bills, etc., such as may always be found in a mining-camp cabin, and the matter was for the moment forgotten.

            That was two years ago. Two years to a mining - camp, is half a century to any other locality. The mad excitement is over. The city in the clouds is half deserted now ; and the actors in the rude orgies of that wild night are scattered far and wide over the whole world. Some are seeking treasure still in the red mountains of Arizona; some in New Mexico, Chihuahua, or Sonora ; some delve for diamonds amid the sands of southern Africa ; some turn the soil of Australia and New Zealand in search of gold ; some sought the "bubble reputation" on the bloody fields of Europe, and found death instead ; others sleep the last, dreamless sleep in the lonely graves out on the desolate hill- side, among the snow-drifts and in the shadow of the frozen cloud.

            Sitting, to- night, alone here in my quiet room in the City by the Golden Gate, I listlessly pull over the contents of the old mining-camp box ; and coming upon the worn daguerreotype - case, open it carelessly. Under the glass beneath, where the picture once was, I see a slip of folded paper, once tinted and delicate in its texture. Taking it out and opening it, I find written upon it, in a beautifully neat and regular hand—the hand of a lady, refined, tasteful, and educated, unmistakably—these lines, which tell all that you and I will ever know of the story of a wasted life—of a lost soul, whose wail of hopeless agony went up to Heaven unheard of men, amid the storm of human passion and the elemental tempest, on that wild night in the Pogonip:

                                    Comes there from old blessed memory,

                                                Gleaming from the shadowy Past,

                                    One sweet face, as fresh and life-like

                                                As on the day I saw it last.

 

                                    Years have had their birth and burial —

                                                Long, long years, a weary score—

                                    But Time's treacherous shadow passeth

                                                O'er that sweet face nevermore.

 

                                    O, this gasping heart home-sickness !

                                                That comes choking up the breath—

                                    Sick for home! O God ! where is it?

                                                Answer where, O friendly Death !

 

                                    Haunting face, thou'st been a beacon,

                                                Through this warring world of strife;

                                    Shining upward, beckoning onward,

                                                Smoothing down this restless life.