Every feature of the spectacle was repeated in the
glowing mirror of the lake! Both pictures were
sublime, both were beautiful; but that in the lake
had a bewildering richness about it that enchanted
the eye and held it with the stronger fascination.
We sat absorbed and motionless through four long hours.
We never thought of supper, and never felt fatigue.
But at eleven o’clock the conflagration had
traveled beyond our range of vision, and then darkness
stole down upon the landscape again.
Hunger asserted itself now, but there was nothing
to eat. The provisions were all cooked, no doubt,
but we did not go to see. We were homeless wanderers
again, without any property. Our fence was gone,
our house burned down; no insurance. Our pine
forest was well scorched, the dead trees all burned
up, and our broad acres of manzanita swept away.
Our blankets were on our usual sand-bed, however,
and so we lay down and went to sleep. The next
morning we started back to the old camp, but while
out a long way from shore, so great a storm came up
that we dared not try to land. So I baled out
the seas we shipped, and Johnny pulled heavily through
the billows till we had reached a point three or four
miles beyond the camp. The storm was increasing,
and it became evident that it was better to take the
hazard of beaching the boat than go down in a hundred
fathoms of water; so we ran in, with tall white-caps
following, and I sat down in the stern-sheets and
pointed her head-on to the shore. The instant
the bow struck, a wave came over the stern that washed
crew and cargo ashore, and saved a deal of trouble.
We shivered in the lee of a boulder all the rest
of the day, and froze all the night through.
In the morning the tempest had gone down, and we paddled
down to the camp without any unnecessary delay.
We were so starved that we ate up the rest of the
Brigade’s provisions, and then set out to Carson
to tell them about it and ask their forgiveness.
It was accorded, upon payment of damages.
We made many trips to the lake after that, and had
many a hair-breadth escape and blood-curdling adventure
which will never be recorded in any history.
I resolved to have a horse to ride. I had never
seen such wild, free, magnificent horsemanship outside
of a circus as these picturesquely-clad Mexicans,
Californians and Mexicanized Americans displayed in
Carson streets every day. How they rode!
Leaning just gently forward out of the perpendicular,
easy and nonchalant, with broad slouch-hat brim blown
square up in front, and long riata swinging above the
head, they swept through the town like the wind!
The next minute they were only a sailing puff of
dust on the far desert. If they trotted, they
sat up gallantly and gracefully, and seemed part of
the horse; did not go jiggering up and down after
the silly Miss-Nancy fashion of the riding-schools.
I had quickly learned to tell a horse from a cow,
and was full of anxiety to learn more. I was
resolved to buy a horse.
