The Antelope-Goat of the Pacific Slope. 93 



time Virginia City vigilante, known as " Judge Neversweat." 

 According to his own story he had gained this name by the 

 equanimity of mind exhibited by him at a certain most critical 

 moment of his life, when he held at bay, with an unloaded revolver, 

 four doomed and desperate men thirsting for his life and their 

 liberty. Judge Neversweat evinced much anxiety to act as our 

 guide across the Bitter-Root Mountains, every foot of which he 

 professed to know from his "prospecting" days. "We'll have 

 a blank good time, you bet your bedrock flume on that," he said, 

 adding, sotto voce, " Anyhow, as long as the whiskey don't peter 

 out." His indignation when informed that this w r as not likely to 

 occur, for the reason that on principle we never took whiskey on 

 our shooting trips, was at first rather amusing, then startling, to 

 behold. The mere idea of a good time without unlimited whiskey 

 was a dire imposition, nay, an insult to frontier manhood. He was 

 too angry to give vent to the usual unbridled flow of bad language; 

 his otherwise loud voice toned down to an angry snarl, his eyes 

 glittered, his form grew erect, his whole being assumed an austerely 

 dignified air ; in one word, Judge Neversweat became polite. It was 

 a mood the half dozen mountaineers, silent witnesses of this scene, 

 seemed to understand and to fear, for they all suddenly discovered 

 they had business elsewhere, leaving us, as I heard one mutter, 

 "to our own funeral." Then spoke up the Judge: "Gentlemen, 

 let Judge Neversweat po-litely inform you, on the first call of his 

 hand, that this yar camp aint lost no goat ; and if this yar straddle 

 aint going to find your approvement, Judge Neversweat's record 

 aint one that'll stand a second call." Our egregious exhibition of 

 insular prejudice cost us some odd dollars. Judge Neversweat had 

 not, we found, included a call to the nearest saloon among those 

 incompatible with his " record." Of the three men from whom we 

 decided to pick our guide, the third man, known as Arcles, enjoyed 

 a more harmless reputation none less than that he was " the 

 biggest liar this side of the Rocky Mountains." He was the son of 

 a French-Canadian hence his name, which was the phonetic 

 rendering of Achilles and of a mother with rather more than less 



