Devils Ford | Page 3

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This etext was prepared by Donald Lainson, [email protected].

DEVIL'S FORD
by Bret Harte

DEVIL'S FORD

CHAPTER I
It was a season of unequalled prosperity in Devil's Ford. The half a
dozen cabins scattered along the banks of the North Fork, as if by some
overflow of that capricious river, had become augmented during a week
of fierce excitement by twenty or thirty others, that were huddled
together on the narrow gorge of Devil's Spur, or cast up on its steep
sides. So sudden and violent had been the change of fortune, that the
dwellers in the older cabins had not had time to change with it, but still
kept their old habits, customs, and even their old clothes. The flour pan
in which their daily bread was mixed stood on the rude table side by
side with the "prospecting pans," half full of gold washed up from their
morning's work; the front windows of the newer tenements looked
upon the one single thoroughfare, but the back door opened upon the
uncleared wilderness, still haunted by the misshapen bulk of bear or the
nightly gliding of catamount.

Neither had success as yet affected their boyish simplicity and the
frankness of old frontier habits; they played with their new-found
riches with the naive delight of children, and rehearsed their glowing
future with the importance and triviality of school-boys.
"I've bin kalklatin'," said Dick Mattingly, leaning on his long- handled
shovel with lazy gravity, "that when I go to Rome this winter, I'll get
one o' them marble sharps to chisel me a statoo o' some kind to set up
on the spot where we made our big strike. Suthin' to remember it by,
you know."
"What kind o' statoo--Washington or Webster?" asked one of the
Kearney brothers, without looking up from his work.
"No--I reckon one o' them fancy groups--one o' them Latin goddesses
that Fairfax is always gassin' about, sorter leadin', directin' and bossin'
us where to dig."
"You'd make a healthy-lookin' figger in a group," responded Kearney,
critically regarding an enormous patch in Mattingly's trousers. "Why
don't you have a fountain instead?"
"Where'll you get the water?" demanded the first speaker, in return.
"You know there ain't enough in the North Fork to do a week's washing
for the camp--to say nothin' of its color."
"Leave that to me," said Kearney, with self-possession. "When I've
built that there reservoir on Devil's Spur, and bring the water over the
ridge from Union Ditch, there'll be enough to spare for that."
"Better mix it up, I reckon--have suthin' half statoo, half fountain,"
interposed the elder Mattingly, better known as "Maryland Joe," "and
set it up afore the Town Hall and Free Library I'm kalklatin' to give. Do
THAT, and you can count on me."
After some further discussion, it was gravely settled that Kearney
should furnish water brought from the Union Ditch, twenty miles away,
at a cost of two hundred thousand dollars, to feed a memorial fountain

erected by Mattingly, worth a hundred thousand dollars, as a crowning
finish to public buildings contributed by Maryland Joe, to the extent of
half a million more. The disposition of these vast sums by gentlemen
wearing patched breeches awakened no sense of the ludicrous, nor did
any doubt, reservation, or contingency enter into the plans of the
charming enthusiasts themselves. The foundation of their airy castles
lay already before them in the strip of rich alluvium on the river bank,
where the North Fork, sharply curving round the base of Devil's Spur,
had for centuries swept the detritus of gulch and canyon. They had
barely crossed the threshold of this treasure-house, to find themselves
rich men; what possibilities of affluence might be theirs when they had
fully exploited their possessions? So confident were they of that
ultimate prospect, that the wealth already thus obtained was religiously
expended in engines and machinery for the boring of wells and the
conveyance of that precious water which the exhausted river had long
since ceased to yield. It seemed as if the gold they had taken out was by
some ironical compensation gradually making its