-the
home of the sweet, sad-faced Anita. The date is one month later--one
long, eventful month since Justin McKenzie shot down Ned Harris under
the noonday sun, a short distance above Deadwood.

Returning to the Flower Pocket by the route to the rugged transverse
gulch, and thence through the gaping fissure, we find before us a
scene--not of slumbering beauty, but of active industry and labor,
such as was not here when we last looked into the flower-strewn
paradise of the Hills.

The flowers are for the most part still intact, though occasionally
you will come across a spot where the hand of man hath blighted their
growth.

Where stood the little vine-wreathed cabin now may be seen a larger
and more commodious log structure, which is but a continuation of the
original.

A busy scene greets our gaze all around. Men are hurrying here and
there through the valley--men not of the pale-face race, but of the
red race; men, clad only to the waist, with remarkable muscular
developments, and fleetness of foot.

Over the little creek which dashes far adown from pine-dressed
mountain peaks, and trails its shining waters through the flowering
land, is built another structure--of logs, strongly and carefully
erected, and thatched by a master hand with bark and grass. From the
roof projects a small smoke-stack, from which emanates a steady cloud
of smoke, curling lazily upward toward heaven's blue vault, and inside
is heard the grinding, crushing rumble of ponderous machinery, and we
rightly conjecture that it is a crusher in full operation. Across from
the northern side of the gulch comes a steady string of mules in line,
each pulling behind him a jack-sled (or, what is better known to the
general reader as a stone-boat) heavily laden with huge quartz rocks.
These are dumped in front of one of the large doorways of the crusher,
and the "empties" return mechanically and disappear within a gaping
fissure in the very mountain side--a sort of tunnel, which the hand of
man, aided by that great and stronger arm--powder--has burrowed and
blasted out.

All this is under the Immediate management of the swarthy-skinned
red-men, whose faces declare them to be a remnant of the once great
Ute tribe--now utilized to a better occupation than in the dark and
bloody days of the past.

Near the crusher building is a large, stoutly-constructed windlass,
worked by mule power, and every few moments there comes up to the
surface from the depth