Maj continued to be restless and frightened. Now and then, as if to judge for himself how the storm was getting on, he would go to the cave opening, and, after whining in a pained way for some seconds, he would come back and crouch down near the fire with his nose resting on his young master's knees.
To sorrow-stricken Sam Willett that night seemed like an eternity of darkness.
He was beginning to feel that the storm had destroyed the sun, when the grey light of another day began to creep slowly into the cave.
[CHAPTER V.—AT HURLEY'S GULCH.]
Hurley's Gulch, though subsequently called "Hurley City," has no right on the map if it ever had a place there, for, like many other more ambitious and important cities, it has ceased to be the abode of man and returned to its original state of barrenness and desolation.
It was at this time a mining camp that had sprung up in a night, as it were, when a man named Hurley—after whom the place was named—had discovered gold in a little creek near the spot that so suddenly became the site of busy mining life.
Though less than six months old and destined not to survive a second birthday, Hurley's Gulch had nearly a thousand inhabitants, with stores, saloons, assay offices, hotels and all the business establishments that characterize such places.
There were a few women in the camp and a sprinkling of Indians, Negroes and Mexicans, but the great mass of the inhabitants were miners, rough in appearance and even rougher in speech.
A more picturesque and novel settlement than Hurley's Gulch it would be impossible to find outside the peculiar mining camps of the West.
Two little streaks of grass could be found growing beside the creek on the bluff above which the camp had been established; but beyond this there was hardly a sign of vegetation in sight.