“We cannot consider the story completed until we know something more of the young lady. She is really the object of the most interest.”
“Well, gentlemen,” he resumed, “since you desire it, I will tell you all I know. Soon after Helm’s departure, influenced by a desire to have the address of and see once more my benefactress, I drove my herd to Yreka, and sold it for a handsome sum. While there I searched diligently, but in vain, for my heroine. She had gone, and, as she had refused to give me her name, I found inquiry for her impracticable. I went to San Francisco, but no one could give me the least trace of her, and, after repeated disappointments, I gave up the search and returned to Oregon.
“Five years thereafter, business took me to Portland. While seated by the office stove, in conversation with some old friends, the clerk came and whispered that a young lady in the parlor wished to see me. Wondering who she could be, I hastened to the room, and there sat my friend of the wilderness. She gave me a cordial greeting, and to my numerous and eager inquiries, informed me in substance that soon after she left me and returned to Yreka, she went to Boston. After a year spent among old friends, she came back to San Francisco, accompanied by her mother. She purchased a neat residence there, and it was now her home. She had arrived in Oregon with some friends the day before on a pleasure excursion, but intended to return in a few days. We had a pleasant interview, and I bade her good-bye.”
“So you did not marry her, after all,” was the eager remark of our young friend.
“No, gentlemen. Had I not been fortunately married some time before our last meeting, I cannot tell what might have happened; but as it was, I did not marry her after all, as you say.”
CHAPTER XLII
WHITE AND DORSETT
The attachments formed between men, where the privileges and enjoyments of social life are confined to the monotonous round of a mining camp, are necessarily strong. The surroundings, which dictate great prudence in the choice of friends, where confidence is once established, are continually strengthening the ties that bind men to each other. Self-preservation and self-interest will furnish apologies for incompatibilities of temper in the mountains, which would sever friendships formed in less exposed communities. The sterling qualities of truth, honor, integrity, and kindness are sooner ascertained and more highly prized among miners than any other class. We have seen the operation of these principles in the instance of Beachy and Magruder, a very strong but not an exceptional case; this is another narrative of similar import.
Rudolph Dorsett arrived at Bannack with a party of miners from Colorado, in April, 1863. During the following Summer, he, in company with John White, the discoverer of the Bannack mines, and a few others, left for the interior on a prospecting tour. The Winter of 1863–64 found the little party near the head of Big Boulder Creek, where they had made some promising discoveries. Being nearly out of provisions, White and Dorsett started on horseback for Deer Lodge, to obtain a fresh supply. At the head of Boulder, they came upon one Kelley and a comrade, who had made a camp there, and been detained several days by deep snows. They were literally “snowed in”; and, their food being exhausted, they had killed and were feeding upon one of their horses.
After supplying their immediate wants, White and Dorsett, discouraged by the gathering snows from any further effort to cross the main ridge, changed their course, and, taking the two men with them, started for Virginia City, where they arrived after three days of perilous travel. Kelley and his partner were entirely destitute. Their kind benefactors made known their condition to Henry Thompson and William Rumsey, and they paid their bills at a restaurant the two days succeeding their arrival; and other citizens of Virginia City, at Dorsett’s solicitation, provided them with clothing. An arrangement was made for Kelley and his comrade to return with White and Dorsett to their camp; but, when the time came to leave, Kelley said that he had been promised a horse the next day, which he would get and overtake them. The three men departed without him, and, after a cold ride of several days, found their party camped on the upper waters of Prickly Pear Creek. They were all in excellent spirits, and supposed they had found a very prolific placer. Dorsett, true to the confidence reposed in him by his friends, Thompson and Rumsey, returned immediately to Virginia City, to apprise them of his good fortune, so that they might improve the earliest indications of a stampede, and secure a good interest in the placer mine. This is one of the rigid requirements of friendship in a mining region. No matter how distant the discovery may be, nor how difficult the journey, when a mine is found of any value, it is the duty of the discoverer, before disclosing it to the public, to notify his friends, that they may make sure of the best location. Indeed, in the early days of Montana, there were hundreds of old miners, experts in the business of prospecting, who, being unable to purchase “grub,” were fully supplied with horses, food, and tools, upon the distinct understanding that they were to share with those who “outfitted” them in all their discoveries. Woe to the man who was base enough to violate this agreement! If he escaped lynching he never failed being driven from the country by the hisses and execrations of every “honest miner” in it. There was held
“in every honest hand, a whip