Lord! I thought everybody knew Annie Black.
She drifted into camp one day, tall, slab-sided, ornery to the view,
and raising fifty or upwards; disposition uncertain as frozen
dynamite. Her ground plans and elevations looked like she was laid
out for a man, but the specifications hadn't been follered. We ain't
consumed by curiosity regarding the etymology of every stranger that
drifts in, and as long as he totes his own pack, does his
assessments, and writes his location notices proper, it goes.
Leastways, it went till she hit town. In a month she had the
brotherly love of that camp gritting its teeth and throwing back
twisters. 'Twas all legitimate, too, and there never was a
pennyweight of scandal connected with her name. No, sir! Far's
conduct goes, she's always been the shinin' female example of this
country; but them qualities let her out.

First move was to jump Bat Ruggles's town lot. He had four courses
of logs laid for a cabin when "Scotty" Bell came in from the hills
with $1800 in coarse gold that he'd rocked out of a prospect shaft on
Bat's Moose's Creek claim.

Naturally Bat made general proclamation of thirst, and our town
kinder dozed violently into a joyful three days' reverie, during
which period of coma the recording time on Bat's lot ran out.

He returns from his "hootch-hunt" to complete the shack, and finds
Annie overseeing some "Siwashes" put a pole roof on it. Of course he
promotes a race-war immediate, playing the white "open" and the red
to lose, so to speak, when she up an' spanks his face, addressing
expurgated, motherly cuss-words at him like he'd been a bad boy and
swallered his spoon, or dug an eye out of the kitten. Bat realizes
he's against a strange system and draws out of the game.

A week later she jumps No. 3, Gold Bottom, because Donnelly stuck a
pick in his foot and couldn't stay to finish the assessment.

"I can't throw her off, or shoot her up," says he, "or even cuss at
her like I want to, 'cause she's a lady." And it appeared like
that'd been her graft ever since--presumin' on her sex to make
disturbances. In six months we hated her like pizen.

There wasn't a stampede in a hundred miles where her bloomers wasn't
leading, for she had the endurance of a moose; and between
excitements she prospected for trouble in the manner of relocations.

I've heard of fellers speakin' disrespectful to her and then
wandering around dazed and loco after she'd got through painti