The man who said that was a narrow-minded, one-eyed, suspicious fellow, who barely escaped being knocked down by the head of the "Gay Roosters," and kicked into the street by the crowd.
There was a poor Dutchman in the camp who had been crippled in the first settlement of the camp, and who had been all the time too lame to work and too poor to go away.
The Parson and Sandy were sent in a committee to the Widow with the gold. She smiled, took the heavy bag in her hand, turned, shut the door in their faces, but did not say a word. That evening she was seen to enter the crippled Dutchman's cabin. The next day the crippled Dutchman rode up the trail out of camp, and was seen no more.
Still later in the Fall the Parson sat in the Howling Wilderness, with his back to the blazing, crackling fire, having it all his own way at his favorite game of old sledge.
He had led his queen for the jack just as though he knew where every card in the pack was entrenched. Then he led the king with like composure, and was just crooking his fingers up his sleeve for the ace, when a man in black, with a beaver hat and white necktie, rode by the window on a black horse.
"Somebody's a dyin' up the creek, I 'speck," said Stubbs. "Maybe it's old Yallar. He allers was a kind of a prayin' codfish eatin' cuss, any how."
Here Stubbs turned and kicked nervously at the fire.
The game did not go on after that. No one said any thing. Perhaps that was the trouble. The men fell to thinking, and the game lost its interest.
There was no fight of importance at the Howling Wilderness that night, and by midnight the frequenters of the saloon had withdrawn. The candles were then put out, and the proprietors barricaded the door against belated drunkards, spread their blankets on a monte-table, with their pistols under their heads, and by the smouldering fire were at rest.
The ground was frozen hard next morning, and the miners flocked into the Howling Wilderness. The Parson was leading off gaily again, and swearing with unusual eloquence and brilliancy, when a tall, thin, and sallow man, from Missouri, known as the "Jumper," entered. He looked wild and excited, and stepped high, as if on stilts.