If ever a
California horse was tried, it was mine on that occasion; and he came
into Mariposa on the full gallop, scarcely wet, and not galled or jaded
in the least.
Here I found our mule, whose obstinate memory had carried him home to
his old stable,--also the remaining events in Vance's brief, but
brilliant career. That ornament of the Utah and Yo-Semite expeditions
had entered Mariposa on Clark's horse,--lost our eighty golden dollars
at a single session of bluff,--departed gayly for Coulterville, where he
sold Clark's horse at auction for forty dollars, including saddle and
bridle, and immediately at another game of bluff lost the entire
purchase-money to the happy buyer, (Clark got his horse again on proving
title,)--and finally vanished for parts unknown, with nothing in his
pocket but buttons, or in his memory but villanies. Nowhere out of
California or Old Spain can there exist such a modern survivor of the
days of Gil Blas!
Too happy in the recovery of Clark's and our own animals to waste time
in hue-and-cry, I loaded my two reclaimed pack-beasts with all that our
commissariat needed,--nooned at Clark's, on my way back, the third day
after leaving the Valley for Mariposa, and that same night was among my
rejoicing comrades at the head of the Great Yo-Semite.
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