ch
lasted for many hours. When he awoke he complained of feeling very
hungry; and when I prepared some food he ate quite heartily, and
retained it on his stomach without difficulty. Encouraged by these
favorable indications, I continued the medicine, and with surprising
results. His recovery was so rapid that it seemed almost miraculous. In
eight days he declared himself entirely well, and almost overwhelmed me
with expressions of gratitude, declaring that I had saved his life. I
told him that his thanks were due not to me, but to Wakometkla, the
strange old medicine-man of the Camanches, or, more properly, to that
higher Power, which had enabled this uneducated savage to discover and
prepare from the simple growths of the forest and mountain, so wonderful
a remedy for "all the ills that flesh is heir to." Ned was so universal
a favorite among the miners, that his illness had excited great sympathy
and commiseration. As he went about, trumpeting forth my praise as a
medical practitioner, I soon found that I had gained considerable
notoriety. The miners dubbed me "Doctor," and called for my services in
all cases requiring medical assistance. With Wakometkla's remedy alone
as my entire pharmacopoeia, I battled with many forms of disease
incident to our rough and exposed life, and met with almost unvarying
success. In fact, in that region I expect I shall never be known by any
other title than "Doctor," although I do not claim or fancy such a
designation. It would be well for the people if the old school mineral
physicians, who are rapidly ruining the health of the entire nation by
the free use of deleterious and poisonous drugs, would take a leaf from
the book of nature, and re-study their profession in the same school
from which I graduated--the school of nature.

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE "VIGILANTS."

With the influx of population to our settlement came adventurers of all
classes; desperadoes, gamblers, broken down professional men, _nymphs du
pave_ of the coarse and vulgar sort, gentlemen who "had interests" in
"wild-cat" mines in half the counties of the Pacific States, _greasers_,
or Mexicans, Indians (_pueblas_)--in short, a conglomerate mass of
humanity; or, judging by later events, one might rather say
_inhumanity_--such as is nowhere to be seen but in the mining towns of
the far West. Under the instructions of Ned Harding, we had on our first
arrival "located" all the "claims" that there was any probability