All about the place, far as the eye could reach, was a tempest-tossed expanse of dry, glistening rocks.
As there was neither timber for building nor material for bricks, the dwellings, stores, saloons, hotels and offices were necessarily of canvas.
The tents were pitched here and there irregularly, and as all of them had seen hard service in other mining camps and "cities," their general appearance was patched and dilapidated in the extreme.
The great majority of the men at Hurley's Gulch were industrious miners; but as vultures hover over the track of an army in the field and wolves follow up a buffalo herd to prey upon the weakest, so crowds of well-dressed gamblers and red-faced whisky sellers swarm in prosperous mining camps to plunder and demoralize.
Hurley's Gulch had more than its share of these wicked fellows, and as there was not the shadow of law there to defend the weak, every man went armed as a matter of course.
Until law officers can be elected or appointed and courts of justice established in such camps, it is the custom of the more industrious and peaceable to form what they call "vigilance committees" for their own protection.
It need not be said that, no matter how well-meaning the purpose, many men, themselves criminals, get on such committees, and that great wrong is often done to the innocent by these rude efforts to do justice.
Mr. Willett's was a case in point.
A few days before he had come over this last time to Hurley's Gulch, a hard-working miner had been killed and robbed of the gold-dust which he had patiently panned out from the bed of the stream.
This crime made the miners angry, and they held an indignation meeting after the poor man's funeral, and organized a committee to ferret out and punish the criminals.