‘Spin out that yarn again, mate!’ demanded a gentleman who rejoiced in the sobriquet of Old Grizzly. This personage had only entered the ‘bar’ in time to catch the concluding words of the narrative. ‘Let’s have it, Jack!’ he repeated impatiently.
Thus invited or encouraged, the young man rejoined carelessly: ‘It was nothing much, only the finding of a man—all that was left of him at least—in a place they call the Devil’s Panniken, when they were blasting the rock for the new railroad between Sandy Bar and ’Frisco’——
‘I know the place—travelled that road years afore they ever thought of running cars through it,’ interposed Old Grizzly. ‘But what about the man?’
‘Well, that’s the queer part of the story; not that they found a man, but that they should have found him where they did, and with so much gold on him too,’ answered Gentleman Jack with his slow languid drawl.
‘Say!’ ejaculated Old Grizzly, who was listening with a curiously eager excited face to the indifferent, careless utterances of the younger man. ‘Cut it short, mate, and tell us how they found him.’
‘Well, they were blasting a big rock, and as it broke, it disclosed a cave right in the heart of the limestone; but there must once have been an entrance to it, for the skeleton of a man lay there. All his clothes had fallen to dust; but there was a ring on one finger, and about seventeen ounces of gold lay in a little heap under him. It had evidently been in his pockets once; but the bag that held it, and the skeleton’s clothing, were alike a heap of dry light dust. There was nothing to identify him, nothing to show how long he had been there. The very ring he wore was of such a queer outlandish fashion that the fellows who found him could make nothing of it.’
‘Was that all?’ demanded the elder man.
‘All that I can recollect.—Stay! I think he had a rusty knife somewhere near him, but nothing more. It’s a queer story altogether. How he got there, if he died in the cave, and by what means it was afterwards closed up—these are all mysteries.’
Old Grizzly smoked in silence for some time; and the miners had resumed the usual occupations of their idle hours, drinking, smoking, playing poker, and quarrelling, which amiable amusements had been momentarily suspended in order to welcome the return of the ‘Wanderer’ with due empressement, when suddenly the deep voice of Old Grizzly was heard above the babel of tongues, saying: ‘This story of Jack’s about the Devil’s Panniken and the man they found there puts me in mind of what befell me and a mate of mine when we were riding through that same place one October night hard upon twenty years ago. His Satanic Majesty had a hand in that job, if ever he had in anything.’
‘Spin us your yarn, old chap!’ shouted a dozen voices; and passing the word for a fresh supply of whisky, they gathered closer round the log-fire, filled their pipes, and prepared to listen with the keen interest of men who lead an isolated and monotonous life far from the stir and life of big cities, and are therefore ever ready and eager to hail the smallest incident with pleasure; while a good story-teller is regarded with universal respect. Rattlesnake Gulch was at that period a comparatively new Claim, on the very outskirts of civilisation, and news from the cities was long in reaching the denizens of this locality.