The Lost Cabin Mine

by Frederick Niven

t would hardly astonish me, and certainly not offend me, to know that you found a difficulty in believing possible such a sight as Camp Kettle presented on our arrival. It made me shudder to see it, and the picture is one that I never remember without melancholy.

"They seem to be celebrating here," said he of the red eyes as a hideous din of shrieking and curses came up to us.

And "celebrating" they were, that day being, as Apache Kid now recollected, the anniversary of the first discovery of mineral in that place. Of such a kind was this celebration that the stage-driver had to dismount and drag no fewer than three drunken men from the road, which irritated him considerably, spoiling as it did his final dash up to the hotel door. But it served our turn better; for here, before entering Camp Kettle, we alighted.

Camp Kettle is built in the very midst of the woods, the old veterans of the forest standing between the houses which stretch on either side of the waggon road, looking across the road on each other from between the firs, so that a traveller coming to the place by road is fairly upon it before he is well aware. But on that day—or night—there were strips of bunting hanging across the waggon road, not from the houses, for they were all mere log huts, but from the trees on either side; and the forest rang with shouting and drunken laughter. Just where we alighted were several great, hewn stones by the roadside, with marks of much trampling around them.

"There 's been a rock-drilling contest here," said Apache Kid, pointing to the holes in the centre of these rocks, as we struck into the bush and came into Kettle from behind.

Here and there, backward from the front huts, were others dotted about in cleared spaces, and all were lit up, and doors standing open and men coming and going, lurching among the wandering tree-roots and falling over stumps still left there. And the whole bush round about you might have thought the scene of a recent battle, what with the drunken men lying here and there in all manner of attitudes, with twisted bodies and sprawled legs.

Some few fellows in their coming and going spoke to us, crying on us to "come and have a drink," but it was only necessary for us to move on heedlessly so as to evade them—so dazed and puzzled were they all and seemed to lose sight of us at once, wheeling about and crying out to the twilit woods. At some of the cabins horses stood hitched, snorting and quivering ever and again, their ears falling back and pricking forward in terror.

"For once," said Apache Kid to me, "I have to be grateful for the presence of the despised Dago and the Chinee. The Dago may be a little fuddled, but not too much to attend to our wants in the way of horses, and he is not likely to talk afterwards. The Chinee will be perfectly calm among all this, and he, for a certainty, will not speak. Here's the Chinee joint. Come along."

He thrust open the door of a long, low house and we entered into a babel of talk, that ceased on the instant, and closed the door behind us.