第15章 FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF SILVERADO(3)

The door of the lower room was smashed, and one panel hung in splinters.We entered that, and found a fair amount of rubbish: sand and gravel that had been sifted in there by the mountain winds; straw, sticks, and stones; a table, a barrel; a plate-rack on the wall; two home-made bootjacks, signs of miners and their boots; and a pair of papers pinned on the boarding, headed respectively "Funnel No.1," and "Funnel No.2," but with the tails torn away.The window, sashless of course, was choked with the green and sweetly smelling foliage of a bay; and through a chink in the floor, a spray of poison oak had shot up and was handsomely prospering in the interior.It was my first care to cut away that poison oak, Fanny standing by at a respectful distance.

That was our first improvement by which we took possession.

The room immediately above could only be entered by a plank propped against the threshold, along which the intruder must foot it gingerly, clutching for support to sprays of poison oak, the proper product of the country.Herein was, on either hand, a triple tier of beds, where miners had once lain; and the other gable was pierced by a sashless window and a doorless doorway opening on the air of heaven, five feet above the ground.As for the third room, which entered squarely from the ground level, but higher up the hill and farther up the canyon, it contained only rubbish and the uprights for another triple tier of beds.

The whole building was overhung by a bold, lion-like, red rock.Poison oak, sweet bay trees, calcanthus, brush, and chaparral, grew freely but sparsely all about it.In front, in the strong sunshine, the platform lay overstrewn with busy litter, as though the labours of the mine might begin again to-morrow in the morning.

Following back into the canyon, among the mass of rotting plant and through the flowering bushes, we came to a great crazy staging, with a wry windless on the top; and clambering up, we could look into an open shaft, leading edgeways down into the bowels of the mountain, trickling with water, and lit by some stray sun-gleams, whence I know not.In that quiet place the still, far-away tinkle of the water-drops was loudly audible.Close by, another shaft led edgeways up into the superincumbent shoulder of the hill.It lay partly open;and sixty or a hundred feet above our head, we could see the strata propped apart by solid wooden wedges, and a pine, half undermined, precariously nodding on the verge.Here also a rugged, horizontal tunnel ran straight into the unsunned bowels of the rock.This secure angle in the mountain's flank was, even on this wild day, as still as my lady's chamber.But in the tunnel a cold, wet draught tempestuously blew.Nor have I ever known that place otherwise than cold and windy.

Such was our fist prospect of Juan Silverado.I own I had looked for something different: a clique of neighbourly houses on a village green, we shall say, all empty to be sure, but swept and varnished; a trout stream brawling by;great elms or chestnuts, humming with bees and nested in by song-birds; and the mountains standing round about, as at Jerusalem.Here, mountain and house and the old tools of industry were all alike rusty and downfalling.The hill was here wedged up, and there poured forth its bowels in a spout of broken mineral; man with his picks and powder, and nature with her own great blasting tools of sun and rain, labouring together at the ruin of that proud mountain.The view up the canyon was a glimpse of devastation; dry red minerals sliding together, here and there a crag, here and there dwarf thicket clinging in the general glissade, and over all a broken outline trenching on the blue of heaven.Downwards indeed, from our rock eyrie, we behold the greener side of nature;and the bearing of the pines and the sweet smell of bays and nutmegs commanded themselves gratefully to our senses.One way and another, now the die was cast.Silverado be it!

After we had got back to the Toll House, the Jews were not long of striking forward.But I observed that one of the Hanson lads came down, before their departure, and returned with a ship's kettle.Happy Hansons! Nor was it until after Kelmar was gone, if I remember rightly, that Rufe put in an appearance to arrange the details of our installation.

The latter part of the day, Fanny and I sat in the verandah of the Toll House, utterly stunned by the uproar of the wind among the trees on the other side of the valley.Sometimes, we would have it it was like a sea, but it was not various enough for that; and again, we thought it like the roar of a cataract, but it was too changeful for the cataract; and then we would decide, speaking in sleepy voices, that it could be compared with nothing but itself.My mind was entirely preoccupied by the noise.I hearkened to it by the hour, gapingly hearkened, and let my cigarette go out.Sometimes the wind would make a sally nearer hand, and send a shrill, whistling crash among the foliage on our side of the glen;and sometimes a back-draught would strike into the elbow where we sat, and cast the gravel and torn leaves into our faces.But for the most part, this great, streaming gale passed unweariedly by us into Napa Valley, not two hundred yards away, visible by the tossing boughs, stunningly audible, and yet not moving a hair upon our heads.So it blew all night long while I was writing up my journal, and after we were in bed, under a cloudless, starset heaven; and so it was blowing still next morning when we rose.

It was a laughable thought to us, what had become of our cheerful, wandering Hebrews.We could not suppose they had reached a destination.The meanest boy could lead them miles out of their way to see a gopher-hole.Boys, we felt to be their special danger; none others were of that exact pitch of cheerful irrelevancy to exercise a kindred sway upon their minds: but before the attractions of a boy their most settled resolutions would be war.We thought we could follow in fancy these three aged Hebrew truants wandering in and out on hilltop and in thicket, a demon boy trotting far ahead, their will-o'-the-wisp conductor; and at last about midnight, the wind still roaring in the darkness, we had a vision of all three on their knees upon a mountain-top around a glow-worm.