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In the spacious office are gathered together each evening, mining-engineer and real-estate broker, experts and prospectors from Denver, men from Springtown in search of business and diversion, to say nothing of visitors from the eastern and western seaboards; and hither, to the more secluded and less pretentious barroom, at least, come the better class of miners, those who have no special taste for bloodshed and other deviltry, and who occasionally go so far as to leave their firearms at home.
Peckham sat somewhat apart from the others on his high revolving stool, sometimes listening, without a sign of interest in his face, sometimes twirling his stool around and sitting with his back to the company, apparently immersed in figures. Allery Jones, the Springtown wag, had once remarked that Peckham's back was more expressive than his face.
One after another the Springtown men went up to investigate matters for themselves, and the most sceptical came back a convert. The railroad folks began to talk of building a branch "in." Eastern capitalists pricked up their ears and sent out experts.
It was about six months after our removal to Springtown, that an incident in my early life occurred which gave rise to one of the most popular tales perhaps, with the exception of "The Miser," that I have written that is "The Poor Scholar."
In September it was that the bit of quartz was carried down to Springtown; before the winter snows had thought of melting, a town of rude frame huts had sprung up in the hollow below, and Lame Gulch was a flourishing mining-camp.
Here then was I once more at a loss for a school, and I must add, in no disposition at all to renew my acquaintance with literature. Our family had again removed from Nurchasy, to a place up nearer the mountains, called Springtown, on the northern side of the parish.
"Do you know, you do look like a brigand!" he said, in an easy tone, that had a curious effect upon the excited boy. "I don't so much wonder that I took you for a footpad!" No one but Dick Dayton, for it was the Springtown "Mascot" himself who was trying to make friends with the ranch boy, could have "hit off" the situation so easily.
Now the "Horn of Plenty" was a Lame Gulch stock, and, since the mining-camp of Lame Gulch had been in existence less than a year, the value of any mine up there was a very doubtful quantity. It was perhaps the proximity of the camp to Springtown, that fired the imagination of the Springtown public, perhaps the daily coming and going of people between the two points.
There were all the bills, just as she had anticipated; bills for food and bills for medicine; bills for all those useless odds and ends which made up her stock in trade, which she and Jim had been so proud of a few years ago when they first came to Springtown.
There was the grave, keen-eyed judge, of humane and dignified bearing; there was the district attorney, shrewd and alert, a rising man; and there were lawyers from the city of Springtown: all this ability and training placed at the service of the remote little prairie community.
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