out it
hurt their eyes, and certain it is that owing to the altitude there were
always two months more of winter in Ore City than in any other camp in
the State.

After the first few falls of snow a transcontinental aeroplane might
have crossed the clearing in the thick timber without suspecting any
settlement there, unless perchance the aeronaut was flying low enough to
see the tunnels which led like the spokes of a wheel from the
snow-buried cabins to the front door of the Hinds House.

When the rigid cold of forty below froze everything that would freeze,
and the wind drove the powdery snow up and down the Main street, there
would not be a single sign of life for hours; but at the least cessation
the inhabitants came out like prairie dogs from their holes and scuttled
through their tunnels, generally on borrowing expeditions: that is, if
they were not engaged at the time in conversation, cribbage, piute or
poker in the comfortable office of the Hinds House. In which event they
all came out together.

In winter the chief topic was a continual wonder as to whether the stage
would be able to get in, and in summer as to whether when it did get in
it would bring a "live one." No one ever looked for a "live one" later
than September or earlier than June.

There had been a time when the hotel was full of "live ones," and nearly
every mine owner had one of his own in tow, but this was when the
Mascot was working three shifts and a big California outfit had bonded
the Goldbug.

But a "fault" had come into the vein on the Mascot and they had never
been able to pick up the ore-shoot again. So the grass grew ankle-deep
on the Mascot hill because there were no longer three shifts of
hob-nailed boots to keep it down. The California outfit dropped the
Goldbug as though it had been stung, and a one-lunger stamp-mill chugged
where the camp had dreamed of forty.

In the halcyon days, the sound that issued from "The Bucket o' Blood"
suggested wild animals at feeding time; but the nightly roar from the
saloon even in summer had sunk to a plaintive whine and ceased
altogether in winter. Machinery rusted and timbers rotted while the roof
of the Hinds House sagged like a sway-backed horse; so did the beds, so
also did "Old Man" Hinds' spirits, and there was a hole in the
dining-room floor where the unwary sometimes dropped to their
hip-joints.

But the Hinds House continued to be, as it always had been, the social
centre, the ne