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Updated: May 24, 2025
He chose his liegemen shrewdly outlaws, renegades, Indians, breeds, trappers, canoemen, scowmen, packers, claim-jumpers, gamblers, smugglers, cattle-rustlers, timber thieves and these he dominated and ruled absolutely. Without exception, these men feared him his authority over them was unquestioned.
When Phoebe came running in terror toward the fusillade, with Marie and her swollen face, and Evadna and her red eyes following in great trepidation far behind, they found four claim-jumpers purple from long swearing, and the boys gleefully indulging in revolver practice with various camp utensils for the targets.
Eleanor and Barbara were so interested in the way Mr. Brewster handled the two rascals without telling a direct falsehood that they sighed when the claim-jumpers backed their horses and withdrew to confer anxiously on what they had heard. But Sam Brewster interpolated with: "If it is curiosity that brought you-all to lose a night's rest, pass right along and tell the Sheriff and Bill your yarn.
"We might take a ride, if you don't mind the heat." "You don't want to ride," she objected petulantly. "Why didn't you go with Good Indian?" he countered. "Because I didn't want to. And I do wish you'd quit calling him that; he has a real name, I believe." "If you're looking for a scrap," grinned Jack, "I'll stake you to my six gun, and you can go down and kill off a few of those claim-jumpers.
The men in the camp were, nearly all of them, old-timers in the West: miners from the Comstock lode whose boom was then on the wane, teamsters who had been freighting all over the blazing deserts of the Southwest, investors and merchants from Tucson, buffalo-hunters from western Kansas, Texas, and Colorado, gamblers from Dodge City, El Paso, and Santa Fé, Indian-fighters, cattle-rustlers, professional claim-jumpers, and some gentle-voiced desperadoes of the real breed, equally willing to slay from behind or take a long chance in front, according to the way the play came up.
A lot of good the mine would do either one of us if a dozen claim-jumpers put lead through us all at one time!" laughed Polly, but feeling far from humorous. "I suppose I'll just have to go, if all the rest of you do!" cried Eleanor, stamping her foot angrily.
"How about leavin' some one here at Four Mile Blaze to direct the Simms' party, while we-all ride on with Sam to hunt those three claim-jumpers," suggested one of the possé. "Barbara and I will wait here with Jeb if you leave us each with a gun," offered Eleanor, eagerly.
All thieves and claim-jumpers had been shot as fast as discovered, and the men who remained had taken each other's measures with such accuracy, that genuine fights were about as unfrequent as prayer-meetings. The miners dug and washed, ate, drank, swore and gambled with that delightful freedom which exists only in localities where society is established on a firm and well-settled basis.
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