Excerpt: 'The cold of foot-hill California in the month of January held the night. The occupants of the surrey were too cramped and stiffened by it, and too uncomfortably enwrapped against it, to speak. Silence as complete as that which lay like a spell on the landscape brooded over them. At the last stopping place, Chinese Gulch, a scattering of houses six miles behind them on the mountain road, ...