February 20 Monday – Jim Gillis, Dick Stoker and Sam returned to Jackass Hill through a snowstorm, the first that Sam had seen in California [MTNJ 1: 81]. Billy Gillis remembered that Sam immediately wrote out some of the Angels Camp stories:
“When Sam came back he went to work on the Jumping Frog story, staying in the cabin while we went out to work at our claims and writing with a pencil. He used to say: ‘If I can write that story the way Ben Coon told it, that frog will jump around the world.’”
Sam discovered upon arrival at Jackass Hill that he’d left his knife, his meerschaum, and his toothbrush at Angels Camp [MTL 1: 321 citing West; Sanborn 264].