Oct. i, 1910 ] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
531 
rude, but in the main just. The six-shooter and 
knife settled many disputes. Then civil law was 
born of necessity. Shoshone; county was organ¬ 
ized and a log courthouse built which still 
stands, the first temple of justice in the new 
Territory and a monument to the law-abiding 
instincts of the American citizen. In time the 
rich gravels played out. Other excitements called 
the restless miners away and Pierce sank to 
sleep, never to awaken. Her glory faded in a 
night. The gilded dance halls were stripped of 
their finery and left bare and tenantless; the 
sound of revelry is heard no more. The log- 
buildings that once housed their tons of mer¬ 
chandise and resounded to the tramp of the busy 
miners now stand like huge barns, empty and 
forlorn. Scattered over the valley are the rot¬ 
ting evidences of mining industry. Decayed 
sluices, sagging penstocks, rusting hydraulic 
pipes, beds of gravel, immense caverns where 
the powerful streams from the six-inch hydrau¬ 
lic ate out tons of earth and hurled it into the 
sluices where it was hurried down in a brown 
tide, the precious yellow metal adhering to the 
riffles and quick-silvered plates. 
A few human derelicts are still stranded in 
the place, dreaming of a time when the country 
shall come to its own again. There is nothing 
more pitiable than these old fossils, clustered on 
the sunny side of a building, telling each other 
of the golden age that is past, and of the golden 
age that is to return. Chinese carry on the busi¬ 
ness of the place and one miserable building 
does duty as a hotel. One man acts as post¬ 
master, justice of the peace, constable, town mar¬ 
shal and mayor. An occasional newspaper strays 
into the town and the inhabitants assemble at 
the postoffice to hear the latest news, often 
months old, from the outside world. 
There is a single saloon in the place, for the 
old-time miner is partial to his morning eye 
opener, also one at noon, then several more dur¬ 
ing the day. We were seated there at evening 
when one^of the oldest inhabitants came in. He 
cast an inquiring eye around the crowd as 
though expecting someone to ask him to take 
a drink. Nobody did. His eye lighted on Char¬ 
ley Adams, who was sitting behind the box stove 
somewhat in the shadow. The old man rushed 
up. shook hands with my Indian friend and said: 
■‘Klowhiya six?” (How are you, my friend?) 
That salutation is in the Chinook jargon a 
medium of exchange of ideas that was particu¬ 
larly distasteful to Charley. He answered the 
old man with characteristic Indian brevity. 
“How is your grandfather, Charley? I hain’t 
seen the ole man fur nigh on to a ’coon’s age.” 
The Indian made some reply and got up and 
stalked out. 
"I knowed Charley when he were nothin’ but 
a papoose,” the old settler continued. “I knowed 
his grandfather afore him. The ole man was a 
tu-at. The ole chap come nearly gittin’ killed 
over on to French Crick one time. Did I ever 
tell you boys ’bout it?” 
Evidently he had, for they all looked bored. 
The barkeeper winked and I took the hint. I 
stepped up to the pine top bar and asked the old 
man if he would take something. 
“Waal, stranger, seein’ it’s you, I will, though 
I don t drink much as a gineral thing.” 
He poured out three fingers of the abomina¬ 
tion. This he downed without a wince, then 
seated himself in the chair vacated by Charley 
and talked. I shall not attempt to give his lan¬ 
guage. To attempt would be to fail. 
“Now, you take Charley Adams,” the old man 
began. "That man is a whole lot whiter than 
a good many people who boast of having blue 
blood. There’s a lot of folks that believe an 
Indian is at least half human and treat him that 
way; then there’s a lot more that know he is 
not human at all, and treat him that way, too. 
An Indian is human all right, and if you treat 
him white he will show it; if you don’t treat 
him white he’ll show it just the same, only the 
other side. I don’t know that all this has any¬ 
thing to do with my story, but it just came into 
my head. 
“After the placers played out here in Pierce, 
John Walters, Sam Averitt and I went over on 
the headwaters of French Creek and located a 
quartz lead. We knew there wasn't an ounce 
of gold in a mountain of the rock, but we 
thought we might be able to make some tender¬ 
foot believe there was, and as it turned out, that 
is just what we did. The next summer along 
came a fellow from New York, his name was J. 
Sylvester Brown, and he claimed to be a mining 
engineer. He was all right, too, when it came 
to drawing maps on paper and discoursing on 
the different kinds of rocks. We took him out 
to the Gold Cliff—that was what we called our 
hole in the hill—and he bought her for some 
Eastern parties. That chap was a rustler. He 
made me foreman and set to work right away 
developing his purchase. 
“This J. Sylvester was a dead game sports¬ 
man. He never had killed anything bigger than 
a woodchuck, but he was fearful anxious to kill 
a bear. There were a good many bear in that 
country then. They used in a meadow a mile 
from the mine. Every time one of us went 
down there we could see fresh bear sign. J. 
Sylvester had his arsenal along with him—a fine¬ 
haired shotgun without any hammers, the first 
weapon of the kind I ever saw-—and a rifle that 
shot a ball about the size of a pea. One day he 
lugged this toy rifle out and asked me if I 
thought it would kill a bear. 
“ ‘Mr. Brown,’ I said, ‘if you ever shoot a 
bear with that gun and the bear gets wise to it 
he will chew you up a whole Jot. You’d better 
take something that throws lead. Take that old 
Sharps buffalo gun that is hanging up in the 
cook house, clean it up and kill your bear with 
that.’ 
“He took my advice. It was in the fall and 
J. Sylvester hunted them hills for over a week 
without sighting a bear. Then we told him to 
go down to the edge of the meadow just before 
daybreak and climb a tree, then when the bear 
came down to drink he could shoot it. Seeing 
that the meadow was nearly a mile long, his 
chances for getting a shot at a bear were mighty 
slim. 
“The Indians were camped on the lower end 
of the meadow picking huckleberries. One morn¬ 
ing the old tu-at, Charley’s grandfather, got up 
and decided that he had to make medicine. He 
togged himself out in his regalia, which included 
the head of a bear. This stuck up above his 
scalplock six inches. The old man went under 
the bank of the stream that ran through the 
meadow and started to follow it up. The bank 
was steep and shelving, and that hid the old 
man’s movements from J. Sylvester, who was 
sitting in a black pine about forty feet from the 
ground with the old Sharps across his knees.-,. 
"It was getting daylight when J. Sylvester saw 
a monster bear crawling up out of the creek bed. 
He watched until the head and shoulders were 
well above the bank, then he turned loose an 
ounce slug that struck the bear's head between the 
eyes and smashed it into smithereens. The old 
tu-at let out a yell that scared J. Sylvester so 
much that he tumbled out of the tree and made 
for camp without looking back to find whether 
he had killed his bear or not. When he arrived 
in camp all out of breath he told how he had 
shot the bear. 
“We went down to bring in the bear. We 
didn’t find him, but we did find the old tu-at 
mad as a wet hen, looking for the fellow that 
shot his head gear all to pieces. When we got 
back and told J. Sylvester that the old savage 
was on the war path and hunting him, that New 
York mining man stopped only long enough to 
saddle his horse. Fie went back to New York, 
I guess, for I got a letter some weeks after that 
telling me to close down the mine. She was al¬ 
ready closed, for we were out of grub.” 
From Pierce an almost abandoned trail winds 
north and east across the mountains in the gen¬ 
eral direction of Pot Mountain. We struck this 
trail in the morning and in a short time had 
entered upon our exploration proper. Hitherto 
we had been in settled territory; now we were 
in the wilderness. We left even the remains of 
a frontier civilization behind us and journeyed 
through country untouched by the hand of man. 
The trail was dim at best and where it wound 
over rocky ridges, very difficult to follow. In 
the deep gulches where the giant cedars grew, 
trees had fallen across until the horses were 
compelled to scramble through the jumble as 
best they could. The cayuse is an artist at mak¬ 
ing his way through fallen timber. He will find 
an opening where the untrained eye can see only 
a tangle of fallen logs and rank undergrowth. 
It was slavish going and noon found us no more 
than ten miles from our starting point of the 
morning. 
Autumn Wanderlust. 
I am restless, somehow, Bill, 
As the air grows slightly chill, 
There’s a tingle in my blood that comes with fall. 
For the haze is in the sky. 
And the ducks are soon to fly— 
I can almost hear their leaders as they call. 
I’ve been furbishing my kit, 
(Guns, and all the rest of it), 
And the outfit’s lying ready on a chair— 
Boots and corduroys and hat. 
And my pipe (be sure of that)— 
And the sweater that I always used to wear. 
Hunting fever is, I think. 
Stronger than the thirst for drink; 
Every year it leads me outward, and I go 
To the haunts of beast and bird 
Where the hunting call is heard. 
And the reeds are all a-quiver to and fro. 
Aren’t you coming, Billy, too? 
Oh, I know you’ve lots to do; 
But you follow my example—let it slip. 
When the air is like champagne 
It goes bubbling to my brain, 
And I take my rod and gun and blithely skip. 
Now don’t sit there looking glum, 
Needn’t shake your head, you’ll come. 
Though your act is good enough to fit a play; 
But you might as well confess 
That your negative means “Yes,” 
For I saw you buying powder yesterday. 
—Puck. 
