This solitary man of the savage dog was, as you guess, "The Gopher." That was not the name given him by his parents, but it was the name the camp had given him a generation before, and it was now the only name by which he was known. The amount of gold which he had hoarded and hidden away in that dismal old cabin, through years and years of incessant toil, was computed to be enormous.
Year after year the grass stole farther down from the hill-tops to which it had been driven, as it were, in the early settlement of the camp; at last it environed the few remaining cabins, as if they were besieged, and it stood up tall and undisturbed in the only remaining trail. Still regularly three times a day the smoke curled up from the Gopher's cabin, and the bull-dog kept unbroken sentry at the door.
In the January spring that followed, the grass and clover crept down strong and thick from the hills, and spread in a pretty carpet across the unmeasured streets of the once populous and prosperous camp. Little gray horned toads sunned themselves on the great flat rocks that had served for hearth-stones, and the wild hop-vines clambered up and across the toppling and shapeless chimneys.
About this time a closely-contested election drew near. It was a bold and original thought of a candidate to approach the Gopher and solicit his vote. His friends shook their heads, but his case was desperate, and he ventured down upon the old gray cabin hiding in the grass and chaparral. The dog protested, and the office-seeker was proceeding to knock his ugly teeth down his throat with a pick-handle, when the door opened, and he found the muzzle of a double-barrelled shot-gun in his face. The candidate did not stay to urge his claims, and the Gopher's politics remained a mystery.
Here in this land of the sun the days trench deep into the nights of northern countries, and birds and beasts retire before the sunset: a habit which the transplanted Saxon declines to adopt.
Some idlers sat at sunset on the verandah of the last saloon, looking down the gulch as the manzanita smoke curled up from the Gopher's cabin.
There is an hour when the best that is in man comes to the surface; sometimes the outcroppings are not promising of any great inner wealth; but the indications, whatever they may be, are not false. It is dulse and drift coming to the surface when the storm of the day is over. Yet the best thoughts are never uttered; often because no fit words are found to array them in; oftener because no fit ear is found to receive them.
How lonesome it looked, that little storm-stained cabin thus alone, stooping down, hiding away in the long strong grass, as if half-ashamed of the mournful history of its sad and lonely occupant.
A sailor broke silence: "Looks like a Feejee camp on a South Sea island."
"Robinson Crusoe—the last man of the original camp—the last rose of Summer." This was said by a young man who had sent some verses to the Hangtown Weekly.