The sort of mining indulged in was both quartz and placer—placer-mining in the gulch and quartz-mining in the neighboring hills. Only the placer-miners lived in the camp; the quartz-miners had camps of their own, and only came to Sun Dance for supplies.
The camp could be reached in two ways: From the bottom of the cañon by a steep climb, and from the top by a stiff descent.
The stage from Montegordo reached camp by way of the cañon’s rim, which was its only feasible route; but Wild Bill and Crawling Bear came from below, and gained the settlement by spurring their horses up the slope.
Just where the trail crawled over the edge of the flat, there was a sign-board with the rudely lettered words: “No Shootin’ Aloud in Sun Dance.” As an indication of how seriously the sign was taken, it may be mentioned that the lettering could hardly be read for bullet-holes.
By day the camp was practically dead, all the miners being at work on their placers, and only storekeepers, gamblers, resort proprietors, and the man who “ran” the hotel being visible. For the most part, these worthies smoked their pipes and cigarettes during the day, or played cards among themselves merely to pass the time.
With night everything changed. The camp became a boisterous, rollicking place.
Miners flocked in, bet their yellow dust on the turn of a card or a whirl of the wheel, sampled the camp’s “red-eye,” and very often forgot the warning of the sign, and indulged in shooting that was very loud and occasionally fatal.
The name of the one hotel in the camp was the “Lucky Strike.” The proprietor was one Abijah Spangler, a leviathan measuring six foot ten, up and down, and ten foot six—or so it was said—east and west at his girth-line. Anyway, Abijah Spangler weighed 300 pounds, and when he sat down it took two chairs to hold him.
When Wild Bill and Crawling Bear halted in front of the Lucky Strike, Bije Spangler was sitting down, dripping with perspiration and agitating the air with a ragged palm-leaf fan.
“You the boss of this hangout?” inquired Wild Bill, surveying Spangler’s huge bulk with much interest.