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But I don't put any stock in that. Why, I've cruised all over that region, and so have others. There's not enough gold there to fill the eye-tooth of a mouse. I've been on too many fool stampedes of late, and I'm sick of them. What does that chechahco know about gold?" "But Jim Weston is in with him," Curly reminded. "What d'ye make of that?"
Naturally Dan's cattle-tussle reminded him of other tussles with ringing cattle; then the cattle-camp suggesting other cattle-camp yarns, he settled down to reminiscences until he had us all cold thrills and skin-creeps, although we were gathered around a blazing fire. Tale after tale he told of stampedes and of weaners piling up against fences.
Thar's a dozen different range brands in the bunch, mebby, and we needs a road-brand common to 'em all, so in case of stampedes on our trip to the no'th we knows our cattle ag'in an' can pick 'em out from among the local cattle which they takes to minglin' with. It's shorely work, markin' big strong steers that-away!
Every night I heard the clattering hoofs of the stampeders for some new gulch, starting in the utmost secrecy to gain the first right for themselves and friends. A trifling hint induces these stampedes. A wink from one old miner to another, and hundreds mounted their horses to seek some inaccessible mountain fissure. The more remote the diggings, so much the greater the excitement.
Nothing of unusual importance happened on this trip aside from the regular incidents pertaining to driving such a large herd of cattle on the trail. We had a few stampedes and lost a few cattle, arriving in Cheyenne we had a royal good time for a few days as usual before starting home.
"She lived at Junta, and would canter over on Saturdays to Trocalara, the Texan's ranch, to teach his herdsmen's families. His partner, Parker, and he had a large cattle-ranch not far from the Mexican frontier, and Kitty could not have lived on a bed of roses, I fancy. Raids, stampedes and other border pleasantries were constantly occurring.
Terror is creeping over the masses like a death chill. Welch and his friends have left; Weir with his 140 horsemen takes fright and flees; Hamilton loses his head and his cavalry stampedes; the army is thrown into confusion; all is lost. In the fight only 15 were killed; in the flight 400 were slaughtered.
Even in that close den, perpetually filled with the din of knives, plates, cans, clamorous voices, sudden struggles and stampedes, there was something Homeric in Syme's mirth which made many half-drunken men look round. "What yer laughing at, guv'nor?" asked one wondering labourer from the docks. "At myself," answered Syme, and went off again into the agony of his ecstatic reaction.
Desperate stampedes, the scattering of camp-fires, trampling, grunting in the dark; ghostly horsemen looming and vanishing suddenly in the half-light; and in the lull the querulous howling of wild beasts disappointed. To their full days succeeded their empty days, when they were alone with the desert and the sun.
Before many months the province's population had doubled, and the prayerful and painful era of caution, the day of small things, was whisked away in a whirl of Victorian enterprise. For the next few years the history of Otago became a series of rushes. Economically, no doubt, "rush" is the proper word to apply to the old stampedes to colonial goldfields.
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