JUST A GIRL.
[CHAPTER I.]
There was really a lovely row on at Dan MacGrath’s Eldorado Saloon in Three Star Camp.
The saloon, a long and narrow room, built of rough, feather-edged boards and decorated with scraps of turkey-red cotton and cheap calico lining, with occasional portraits of local celebrities rudely drawn in charcoal, was well filled with the crew of miners and camp followers which made up the population of Three Star Camp—Three Star, it is needless to explain, after the well-known legend on the brandy bottles.
At one end of the saloon was a drinking-bar, at the other a card-table; in the center a billiard-table, spotted with candle grease and stained with the rims and bottoms of wet glasses. Men were lounging at the bar or playing a noisy game at pool, or gathered round the faro-table, over which presided Mr. Varley Howard, the professional gambler of Three Star and other camps.
Whether the really lovely row commenced at the bar, began at the billiard-table or originated at the faro, it would be difficult to say; rows sprung up very quickly at Three Star Camp at all times, but especially at this season, when the weather was disgustingly hot and everybody feverish and overstrained.
Rows not only began with great facility, but spread with marvelous ease and rapidity. You had only to refuse a drink; to take up somebody’s glass; to push against a man accidentally; to observe that it was cooler than yesterday, when the man you addressed happened to be particularly hot; or to wear a tall hat—an article of attire held in special detestation by the whole of Three Star, and only permitted to Mr. Varley Howard as a special recognition of his peculiar qualities as a gambler, a man of fashion, and the promptest and deadliest shot in the district—to raise a shindy directly. On this night the row was generally welcomed, for everybody felt blasé and bored and thirsting for any excitement to relieve the dull monotony of an existence in which bad luck and the perpetual heat fought for predominance.