ather-Nose, as he sat on a barrel one night in the grocery, and
squirted amber at the back-log, say: "I guess, by gol, she's Injun:
She's devilish enough. She don't look the Injun, I know; but its the
cussedness that makes me know she's Injun."

"And when did she come to the camp?" asked a respectable stranger.

"Don't know. That's it. Nobody don't know, and nobody don't care, I
guess."

"Well, don't you know where she came from? Children don't come down, you
know, like rain or snow. There were about fifty little children left in
the Mountain-meadow massacre. They are somewhere. These may be some of
them. Don't you know who brought them here, or how they came?" asked the
honest stranger, leaning forward and looking into the faces of the
wrinkled and hairy old miners.

An old miner turned his quid again and again, and at last feeling scant
interest in the ragged little sister who led her little brother about by
the hand, and stood between him and peril as she kept their
liberty--drily answered, along with his fellows, as follows: "Some said
an old Indian that died had her; but I don't know. Forty-nine knows most
about her. When he's short of grub, and that's pretty often now, I
guess, why she has to do the best she can."

"O, it was a sick looking thing at first. Why, it wasn't that high, and
was all hair and bones," growled out an old gray miner, in reply to the
man.

"Yes; and don't you know when we called it the 'baby,' and it used to
beg around about the cabins? The poor little barefooted brat."

"Yes, and when the 'baby' nearly starved, and eat some raw turnips that
made it sick."

"Yes, and got the colic--"

"Yes, and Gambler Jake got on his mule and started for the doctor."

"Yes, an' got in a poker game at Mariposa, and didn't get back for four
days."

"Yes, and the doctor didn't come; and so the baby got well."

"Yes, just so, just so." And old Col. Billy bobbed his head, and fell to
thinking of other days.

This little piece of land where the old Indian woman had lived so long,
and about which she had built a fence, was very valuable indeed. Valley
land was scarce here in the mountains; and there was a young orchard,
the only thing of the kind in the country. And then the roads forked
there, and two little rivers ran together there, and that meant that a
town would spring up there as the country became settled, farms opened,
and the Indians were swept away. Evil-minded men are never without
res