Almost absently, and pondering over many things, he made his way past the saddler’s and down the somnolent street to the Miners’ Emporium.
“Can’t tell whether Pearl Brown’s a Riggs or a Cathcart,” he said, and, the hour being idle and the storekeeper lounging, retailed his recent encounter.
“Great Scott!” exclaimed Fosdike. “That young woman and you become friends, and young Ring is out sticking up for you! That young man⸺ What do you think of this? He ambled in here a while ago, calm as you please, just as if him and me hadn’t been at cross ends ever since he came to this camp and says:
“‘Fosdike, I’m not a man to bear a grudge. Also you sell good stuff, straight and clean. I’m going to buy anything I need here after this. Here’s an order.’
“Then he throws down a little list and walks out. Can you beat it?”
“Does seem as if folks in this camp were sufferin’ a change of heart,” the miner agreed. “About time one of those revivalist chaps came along, I reckon. Seems too good to last. Ought to be clinched while the going is good, before anybody can backslide. Afraid something mighty bad’s about to happen.”
But nothing did. Save for its occasional brawls and squabbles, all in the natural course of events, Murdock went its peaceful way. From the Placer City side, it looked clean and calm, sprawled in the sunshine, on the afternoon when Circumlocutory Smith and his partner Jim Clarke visited Placer City to inspect some secondhand mining material that they felt they could, in their increasing prosperity, afford.
Their examination had been made and, from the seclusion of a tavern porch where they had dined, they were considering their homeward journey when they saw a group forming in the middle of the road but a short distance away. In the center of it, a tall man held a newspaper in his clenched fist and waved it aloft as if it were a banner of hate. Voices were becoming louder and some one shouted: “Get a rope!” To this, came another shout: “No, no! Tar, feathers and a rail!”
“Looks interesting,” Smith said, with a grin, as he stood by the veranda rail.
“Anyhow, we got a seat in the gallery to watch it,” his partner remarked, as he caught a pillar, jumped upward, and stood on top of the rail, from which vantage point of height he could overlook the excited mob.