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The next bad sleugh brought opportunity to make experiment of the new system. The team stuck fast in the black muck, and every effort to extricate them served only to imbed them more hopelessly in the sticky gumbo. Time passed on. A dark and lowering night was imminent. The Bishop grew anxious. Macmillan, with whip and voice, encouraged his team, but all in vain.
But when his team became involved in a sleugh, it was always a point of doubt whether he aroused more respect and admiration in his attendants by his rare ability to get the last ounce of hauling power out of his team or by the artistic vividness and force of the profanity expended in producing this desired result.
There is no sleugh hay in the foothill country; the hay is cut on the uplands, a short, fine grass of great nutritive value. This grass, if uncut, cures in its natural state, and affords sustenance to the herds which graze over it all winter long.
Lashing his pony into a gallop, heedless of the obstacles on the trail, or of the trees overhead, Brown crashed through scrub and sleugh, with old Portnoff following as best he could.
Five hundred acres, one hundred broke an' a timber lot; a granary; stables and corral, no good; house, fair to middlin'. Two hundred an' fifty acres worth ten dollars at least, best out of doors; cattle run, two hundred acres worth five; swamp and sleugh, fifty acres, only good to look at but mighty pretty in the mornin' at sun-up. Not much money in scenery though.
The town council meets and changes the name to Silver City having regard, no doubt, to the alkali in the sleugh water. The old-timers, and all that great, innocent public which is forever hoping to get something for nothing, are now glad to buy the lots at five hundred to ten thousand dollars each, and by the time they've bought it up the gang moves on.
Meanwhile, Kalman was developing his mine, and dreaming great dreams as to what he should do when he had become a great mine owner. It was his custom, ever since Irma's coming, to spend the Sunday evening with her at the hospital. His way to the mine lay through scrub and sleugh, a heavy trail, and so he welcomed the breaking up of the ice on the Eagle River.
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