ke to her, but not her--ez made it lively for the
boys with a game called 'Little Monte,' and he dropped a hundred dollars
there afore he came away. They do say that about seven men got shot in
Marysville on account o' this one, or from some oneasiness that happened
at her shop. But then," he went on slowly and deferentially as the faces
of the two others were lowered and became fixed, "SHE says she tired o'
drunken rowdies,--there's a sameness about 'em, and it don't sell her
pipes and cigars, and that's WHY she's coming here. Thompson over at Dry
Creek sez that THAT'S where our reputation is playin' us! 'We've got her
as a reward o' virtoo, and be d----d to us.' But," cautiously, "Thompson
ain't drawed a sober breath since Christmas."

The three men looked in each other's faces in silence. The same thought
occurred to each; the profane Thompson was right, and the woman's advent
was the logical sequence of their own ethics. Two years previously,
the Buckeye Company had found gold on the South Fork, and had taken up
claims. Composed mainly of careful, provident, and thoughtful men,--some
of cultivation and refinement,--they had adopted a certain orderly
discipline for their own guidance solely, which, however, commended
itself to later settlers, already weary of the lawlessness and reckless
freedom which usually attended the inception of mining settlements.
Consequently the birth of Buckeye was accompanied with no dangerous
travail; its infancy was free from the diseases of adolescent
communities. The settlers, without any express prohibition, had tacitly
dispensed with gambling and drinking saloons; following the unwritten
law of example, had laid aside their revolvers, and mingled together
peacefully when their labors were ended, without a single peremptory
regulation against drinking and playing, or carrying lethal weapons.
Nor had there been any test of fitness or qualification for citizenship
through previous virtue. There were one or two gamblers, a skillful
duelist, and men who still drank whiskey who had voluntarily sought the
camp. Of some such antecedents was the last speaker. Probably with two
wives elsewhere, and a possible homicidal record, he had modestly held
aloof from obtrusive argument.

"Well, we must have a meeting and put the question squarely to the boys
to-morrow," said Parks, gazing thoughtfully from the window. The remark
was followed by another long silence. Beyond, in the darkness, Buckeye,
u