Two weeks later a light buckboard bearing Welton and Bob dashed in the early morning across the plains, wormed its way ingeniously through gaps in the foothills, and slowed to a walk as it felt the grades of the first long low slopes. The air was warm with the sun imprisoned in the pockets of the hills. High chaparral, scrub oaks, and scattered, unkempt digger pines threw their thicket up to the very right of way. It was in general dense, almost impenetrable, yet it had a way of breaking unexpectedly into spacious parks, into broad natural pastures, into bold, rocky points prophetic of the mountains yet to come. Every once in a while the road drew one side to pause at a cabin nestling among fruit trees, bowered beneath vines, bright with the most vivid of the commoner flowers. They were crazily picturesque with their rough stone chimneys, their roofs of shakes, their broad low verandahs, and their split-picket fences. On these verandahs sat patriarchal-looking men with sweeping white beards, who smoked pipes and gazed across with dim eyes toward the distant blue mountains. When Welton, casually and by the way, mentioned topographical names, Bob realized to what placid and contented retirement these men had turned, and who they were. Nugget Creek, Flour Gold, Bear Gulch--these spoke of the strong, red-shirted Argonauts of the El Dorado. Among these scarred but peaceful foothills had been played and applauded the great, wonderful, sordid, inspired drama of the early days, the traces of which had almost vanished from the land.
Occasionally also the buckboard paused for water at a more pretentious place set in a natural opening. There a low, rambling, white ranch-house beneath trees was segregated by a picket fence enclosing blossoms like a basket. At a greater or lesser distance were corrals of all sizes arranged in a complicated pattern. They resembled a huge puzzle. The barns were large; a forge stood under an open shed indescribably littered with scrap iron and fragments of all sorts; saddles hung suspended by the horn or one stirrup; bright milk pails sunned bottom-up on fence posts; a dozen horses cropped in a small enclosed pasture or dozed beneath one or another of the magnificent and spreading live-oak trees. Children of all sizes and states of repair clambered to the fence tops or gazed solemnly between the rails. Sometimes women stood in the doorways to nod cheerfully at the travellers. They seemed to Bob a comely, healthy-looking lot, competent and good-natured. Beyond an occasional small field and an invariable kitchen garden there appeared to be no evidences of cultivation. Around the edges of the natural opening stretched immediately the open jungle of the chaparral or the park-like forests of oaks.
"These are the typical mountain people of California," said Welton. "It's only taken us a few hours to come up this far, but we've struck among a different breed of cats. They're born, live and die in the hills, and they might as well be a thousand miles away as forty or fifty. As soon as the snow is out, they hike for the big mountains."
"What do they do?" inquired Bob.
"Cattle," replied Welton. "Nothing else."
"I haven't seen any men."
"No, and you won't, except the old ones. They've taken their cattle back to the summer ranges in the high mountains. By and by the women and kids will go into the summer camps with the horses."
On a steep and narrow grade they encountered a girl of twenty riding a spirited pinto. She bestrode a cowboy's stock saddle on which was coiled the usual rope, wore a broad felt hat, and smiled at the two men quite frankly in spite of the fact that she wore no habit and had been compelled to arrange her light calico skirts as best she could. The pinto threw his head and snorted, dancing sideways at sight of the buckboard. So occupied was he with the strange vehicle that he paid scant attention to the edge of the road. Bob saw that the passage along the narrow outside strip was going to be precarious. He prepared to descend, but at that moment the girl faced her pony squarely at the edge of the road, dug her little heels into his flanks, and flicked him sharply with the _morale_ or elongated lash of the reins. Without hesitation the pony stepped off the grade, bunched his hoofs and slid down the precipitous slope. So steep was the hill that a man would have had to climb it on all fours.
Bob gasped and rose to his feet. The pony, leaving a long furrow in the side of the mountain, caught himself on the narrow ledge of a cattle trail, turned to the left, and disappeared at a little fox trot.
Bob looked at this companion. Welton laughed.
"There's hardly a woman in the country that doesn't help round up stock. How'd you like to chase a cow full speed over this country, hey?"
As they progressed, mounting slowly, but steadily, the character of the country changed. The canons through which flowed the streams became deeper and more precipitous; the divides between them higher. At one point where the road emerged on a bold, clear point, Bob looked back to the shimmering plain, and was astonished to see how high they had climbed. To the eastward and only a few miles distant rose the dark mass of a pine-covered ridge, austere and solemn, the first rampart of the Sierras. Welton pointed to it with his whip.
"There's our timber," said he simply.
A little farther along the buckboard drew rein at the top of a long declivity that led down to a broad wooded valley. Among the trees Bob caught a glimpse of the roofs of scattered houses, and the gleam of a river. From the opposite edge of the valley rose the mountain-ridge, sheer and noble. The light of afternoon tinted it with lilac and purple.
"That's the celebrated town of Sycamore Flats," said Welton. "Just at present we're the most important citizens. This fellow here's the first yellow pine on the road."
Bob looked upon what he then considered a rather large tree. Later he changed his mind. The buckboard rattled down the grade, swung over a bridge, and so into the little town. Welton drew up at a low, broad structure set back from the street among some trees.
"We'll tackle the mountain to-morrow," said he.
Bob descended with a distinct feeling of pleasure at being able to use his legs again. He and Welton and the baggage and everything about the buckboard were powdered thick with the fine, white California dust. At every movement he shook loose a choking cloud. Welton's face was a dull gray, ludicrously streaked, and he suspected himself of being in the same predicament. A boy took the horses, and the travellers entered the picketed enclosure. Welton lifted up his great rumbling voice.
"O Auntie Belle!" he roared.
Within the dark depths of the house life stirred. In a moment a capable and motherly woman had taken them in charge. Amid a rapid-fire of greetings, solicitudes, jokes, questions, commands and admonitions Bob was dusted vigorously and led to ice-cold water and clean towels. Ten minutes later, much refreshed, he stood on the low verandah looking out with pleasure on the little there was to see. Eight dogs squatted themselves in front of him, ears slightly uplifted, in expectancy of something Bob could not guess. Probably the dogs could not guess either. Within the house two or three young girls were moving about, singing and clattering dishes in a delightfully promising manner. Down the winding hill, for Sycamore Flats proved after all to be built irregularly on a slope, he could make out several other scattered houses, each with its dooryard, and the larger structures of several stores. Over all loomed the dark mountain. The sun had just dropped below the ridge down which the road had led them, but still shone clear and golden as an overlay of colour laid against the som............