After enduring all the hardships entailed by life in such a wild
country, they blundered into a gully where a brief analysis of the
detritus gave a result per ton which was not to be measured by ounces
but by pounds.
"Virgin! What a place that was!" exclaimed Suarez, his dark eyes
sparkling even yet with the recollection of it. "In one day we secured
more gold than we could carry. We threw away food to make room for it,
and then threw away gold to secure the food again. We called it the
Golden Valley. When weary of digging, we would spin coins to see who
drew corner lots in the town we had mapped out on a level piece of
land."
White men and Indians alike caught the fever. They accumulated a
useless hoard, having no means of transport other than their own backs,
and then, all precautions being relaxed, the nomad Indians, whom they
despised, rushed the camp when they were sleeping. They were nearly
all killed by stones shot from slings. Suarez was only stunned, and he
and a Spaniard, with two Indians, were reserved for future slaughter.
"The others were eaten," he said, "and their bones were used for making
fires. I saw my friend, Giacomo, felled like a bullock, and the
Indians as well. By chance, I was the last. I had no hope of escape.
I was too downcast even to make a fight of it, when, at the eleventh
hour, the mad idea seized me that I might please and astonish my
captors by performing a few sleight-of-hand tricks. I began by
throwing stones in the air, pretending to swallow them and causing them
to disappear otherwise, but finding them again in the heel of my boot
or hidden beneath any object which happened to be near. When the
Indians saw what I was doing, they gathered in a circle. I ate some
fire, and took a small toad out of a woman's ear. Dios! How they
gaped. They had never seen the like. All the tribe was summoned to
watch me."
Then the poor fellow began to cry.
"Holy Mother! Think of me playing the fool before those brutes! I
became their medicine man. I fought and killed my only rival, and,
since then, I have doctored a few of the chief men among them, so they
took me into the tribe, and always managed to procure me such food as I
could eat. They gave me roots and dried meat when they themselves were
living on putrid blubber, or worse, because they kill all the old women
as soon as famine threatens. The women are devoured long before the
dogs; dogs catch otters, but old women cannot. In winter, when a long
storm renders it impossible to obtain shell-fish, any woman who is
feeble will steal off and hide in the mountains. But the men track her
and bring her back. They hold her over the smoke of a fire until she
is choked. Ah! God in heaven! I have seen such sights during those
five years!"