tain morning twenty years ago, when there was neither
sickness nor a fashionable entertainment to excuse irregular hours in
camp, a bright light streamed from the only window of Chagres Charley's
residence at Flatfoot Bar, and inside of the walls of Chagres Charley's
domicile were half a dozen miners engaged in earnest conversation.

Flatfoot Bar had never formally elected a town committee, for the
half-dozen men aforesaid had long ago modestly assumed the duties and
responsibilities of city fathers, and so judicious had been their
conduct, that no one had ever expressed a desire for a change in the
government.

The six men, in half a dozen different positions, surrounded Chagres
Charley's fire, and gazed into it as intently as if they were
fire-worshipers awaiting the utterances of a salamanderish oracle.

But the doughty Puritans of Cromwell's time, while they trusted in God,
carefully protected their powder from moisture, and the devout
Mohammedan, to this day, ties up his camel at night before committing it
to the keeping of the higher powers; so it was but natural that the
anxious ones at Flatfoot Bar vigorously ventilated their own ideas while
they longed for light and knowledge.

"They ain't ornaments to camp, no way you can fix it, them Greasers
ain't," said a tall miner, bestowing an effective kick upon a stick of
firewood, which had departed a short distance from his neighbors.

"Mississip's right, fellers," said the host. "They ain't got the
slightest idee of the duties of citizens. They show themselves down to
the saloon, to be sure, an' I never seed one of 'em a-waterin.' his
liquor; but when you've sed that, you've sed ev'rythin'."

"Our distinguished friend, speaks truthfully," remarked Nappy Boney, the
only Frenchman in camp, and possessing a nickname playfully contracted
from the name of the first emperor. "_La gloire_ is nothing to them.
Comprehends any one that they know not even of France's most illustrious
son, _le petit caporal_?"

"That's bad, to be sure," said Texas, cutting an enormous chew of
tobacco, and passing both plug and knife; "but that might be overlooked;
mebbe the schools down in Mexico ain't up with the times. What I'm down
on is, they hain't got none of the eddication that comes nateral to a
gentleman, even, ef he never seed the outside of a schoolhouse. Who ever
heerd of one of 'em hevin' a difficulty with any gentleman, at the
saloon or on the crick? They drar a good deal o