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to abandon her, but the joy of the place had gone with its mystery. Nonetheless, when I arrived in town, my first stop was the gold commissioner’s office in Richfield, where a government clerk—tall and very dour—had me sign a form, give descriptions of the terrain, and trace a location on a counter map. I assured him that my stakes were carefully placed in an obvious location, although I had completely forgotten to put them in before I left. I promised myself to do so immediately on my return.
    I next proceeded to the far end of the active section of Williams Creek, where I looked for the three friends I had made on my last trip in. I found instead that the owner of the claim had returned from his winter absence and was now alone there, carrying on his work. He was a polite and friendly Scotsman who seemed to bear no ill will toward the fellows he had found on his territory. In fact, he was able to inform me that one of the trio was, to the best of his knowledge, working in a mine on Stout’s Gulch. I got the impression from the man that he had been taken on as a partner, which was an impressive achievement, as the claims along Stout’s Gulch were, as a rule, more than decently rich. Since most men were not interested in working for wages in the goldfields, accepting a partner was sometimes the only way for an operation to get help.
    I looked him up there—the oldest of the three companions, a man named Carl—and waited for him to quit for the day. The other two were brothers and had returned to Upper Canada after receiving news that their father had passed away.
    Carl had the build of a bulldog—low to the ground and very muscular, with a decisive spring to his step, even when he was at his ease. He wore rather thick spectacles, which he tied behind his ears with string, making his blond hair stick up like a rooster’s comb. He was not yet in fact a partner in the Stout’s Gulch operation, but had agreed to work for wages for one year with the promise that he would become a full partner the next season. This would still be a good arrangement, he thought, as the mine showed no sign of being depleted at all, so five or six months of work would leave him with several hundred dollars in his pocket and a sixth part of a prosperous enterprise.
    To emphasize his point, he stood me to a good meal at a hotel, then spent the evening putting beer into me and several other fellows who suddenly seemed to know him well. After this I followed him home and curled up in the corner of his new living quarters—the tool shed at his place of employment.
    During those hours of food and drink, Carl advised me strongly that I should try to make an arrangement such as his. He even said he knew of a place that needed men and might turn out to be a good opportunity. I was convinced and the next day followed his suggestion to a large underground outfit on Lightning Creek, which employed at that time eleven men.
    I lasted exactly one day, working in the cold and dark alongside a bunch of Frenchmen from Canada. At some point in the middle of the afternoon I came to my senses and remembered that I had come to town to escape the toil and tedium of mining, not to pursue it in a more repugnant form. I took my wages at the end of the shift.
    There were indeed other occupations to try, and I hired on at a couple more over the next few days. It took me again only one morning as a tinsmith’s assistant to realize that it would be a most unsatisfactory career, particularly if one were apprenticed to a pompous buffoon who drank while he worked and wept about the wife he had left in California.
    I lasted twice that long as a carpenter, working for the firm of Masters and Carson, putting shakes on the roof of a new hotel. The work was better, the air was cleaner, and I got along well with the men. The bulk of them spoke English and did not smell worse than myself or carry any more exotic forms of vermin on their