Martie and her mother—her mother was the other woman in the camp, and, except that she had been responsible for Martie years before, she didn't particularly count—had come to the rough little mining settlement with Martie's father, a mining engineer, who represented certain speculative holdings in the East which needed personal attention.
Before they arrived the camp had been a fairly peaceable one: the boys got drunk just about so often, once in a while there was a shooting affair, but Medicine Dog was as orderly a camp as might have been found in Colorado, until Martie came. It was a serpent, I believe, that introduced the trouble in the Garden of Eden. I wonder what the wild beasts thought of the advent of Eve. At any rate, Martie first reformed and then disorganized Medicine Dog.
Following her arrival there was an ebullition of "boiled shirts,"—come by express in response to telegraphic communications with Denver, the first evidence of the reform. This was followed by the influx of a lone Chinaman, imported for the reboiling of the said shirts, his life, liberty, and the peaceful pursuit of his vocation over the tubs being guaranteed him by the camp, the second evidence of the reform. There was a consequent amelioration of manners, proportioned to the prevalence of shirt bosom, too. "Boiled shirts"—I use the language of the camp—are the beginning of that civilization of which "plug hats" are the end. Medicine Dog never got that far, except in its dreams; even Martie was not quite equal to promoting the "plug hat."
The saloon, too, felt the good—or evil, according to the point of view—effect of Martie's presence, and the wonderful part of it was that Big Sam, who dispensed liquor, profanity, and on occasions, if necessary, bullets from his "Colt's 45," from behind the bar, bore the situation philosophically. He was as much under Martie's sway as anybody else. That was the last evidence of the reform. And when a preacher—a wandering missionary—came along, Big Sam cheerfully, if temporarily, suspended business one Sunday morning and they had services in the saloon, the preacher on the counter to conduct them, and Martie on a table where they could all see her, with a portable organ to lead the singing.
That was the only time Martie's presence graced the saloon. The effect of her presence there was lasting. The boys could hardly swallow their whiskey during that or the next day.
"It tastes as if it had sugar in it," said Dan Casey, mournfully, subtly referring to the sweetening effect of Martie's visit. When it came to choosing between Martie and whiskey, the difficulties of the situation were enough to appall the stoutest heart in Medicine Dog.
Casey signified his change of heart in the matter of clothing by trimming his beard—there was no barber in the camp yet—and by adding a green tie to his shirt, and when MacBurns appeared with a yellow silk streamer across his bestarched bosom, Casey took it as a direct reflection upon his religious and political views, and for a time Medicine Dog threatened to resume its pristine liveliness.
The quarrel was compromised by Martie; for when she artfully caused the news to be circulated that she doted on red or blue ties and could not abide green or yellow ones, Casey and MacBurns discarded the colors of their choice and settled the affair by wearing Martie's.
Martie wore those colors herself. She was the reddest-cheeked, bluest-eyed, and bonniest girl that had ever come across the mountains, so Medicine Dog swore unanimously, at any rate. As occasion served, the various members of the camp maintained Martie's cause with strenuous and generally fatal effect to various gentlemen from other camps who were rashly inclined to question the assertion. Martie would have shone anywhere in the open air, and in womanless Medicine Dog she was a heroine, a queen. That was the beginning of disorganization, too.
The two men hardest hit were Jack Elliott and Dick Sanderson. Elliott was a jolly, happy-go-lucky fellow born in the East, Sanderson a quieter man from the middle West, who complemented his companion admirably. They worked a rich claim together on the mountain side with good results. They were steady-going fellows and both were dead shots with the rifle. They were great-hearted young men, who loved each other with an affection that some men develop under certain circumstances for one another until a woman intervenes. Martie intervened. Both men fell in love with her, and as they were men of education,—being fellow-graduates of the old University of Pennsylvania,—they were not content with the mere blind adoration which the rest of Medicine Dog exhibited. They wanted Martie, and as the days grew longer and they knew her better, they wanted her more and more.