"Then you are not so badly off, after all. I think I could live on the interest of that much."
"There are some objections to my going back," said Mr. Banta, looking off toward the distant mountains. "When I get back there I will have to settle down to a humdrum life, and there won't be nothing at all to get up a little excitement. Here the thing is different. We live here, taking gold in paying quantities all the time, and the first thing we know we hear of some new placers, which have been found somewhere else, that make a man rich as fast as he can stick a shovel into the ground. Of course we pack up and go off to find the new placers. We have a muss or two with some outlaws, and when we get rid of them we go to work and find out that there is nothing there."
"Then you wish yourself back at Dutch Flat," said Jack.
"That's the way it happens, oftentimes. It is the excitement that keeps us a-going. Now, in the States I would not have any of that."
"Did you find many outlaws in this country when you first came here?"
"They were thicker than flies around a molasses barrel," answered Mr. Banta. "But we have got rid of them all, and your life is just as safe here as it would be in St. Louis. Whenever we go to a new country, the outlaws are the first things we look out for. There's the camp, all right and tight, just as we left it."
The camp covered a good stretch of ground; but then Mr. Banta had not told them that there were fully two hundred miners in it, and of course such a multitude of men, where nobody owned the land, would spread over a good deal of territory. The boys had a fine opportunity to take a survey of the first mining camp they had ever seen. They were surprised at the neatness of it. Things in the shape of old bottles or tin cans were not scattered around where somebody would stumble over them, but such articles were thrown into a ravine behind the camp, out of sight. The most of the miners had erected little log cabins to protect them from the storms of winter, and the others had comfortable lean-to's which served the same purpose. Most of the men were busy with their mines, but there were three or four of them loafing about, and when the noise made by the pack-animals saluted their ears they turned to see who was coming. One glance was enough; they pulled off their hats and waved them by way of welcome.
"Well, if here ain't Banta!" they all exclaimed in a breath. "Did you drop your roll down at Denver and come back to get more?"
"Nary a time," replied Mr. Banta, emphatically. "We got just what we could eat and drink, and that is all the money we spent. Who has passed in his checks since I have been gone?"
(This was a miner's way of asking "Who's dead?")