tation.

But there is a queer inn at Calabasas. A pioneer Thief River
prospector, mad with thirst, fought his way across the Sinks to the
Calabasas Spring, and wandered thence one day into Sleepy Cat. In a
delirium of gratitude he ordered built at Calabasas what he termed a
hotel, to provide at that forbidden oasis for the luxurious comfort of
future thirst-mad wanderers. It was built of lumber hauled a thousand
miles, and equipped with luxuries brought three thousand--a fearsome,
rambling structure, big enough for all the prospectors in the Rocky
Mountains.

Having built this monument, creditable to his good-will rather than
his good sense, the unfortunate man went really mad, and had the sorry
distinction of being the first person to be put in the insane asylum
at Bear Dance. It had never occurred to him that any one had any title
to, or that any madder man would lay any claim to, so accursed a spot
as Calabasas. But old Duke Morgan announced in due time that the hotel
was built on Morgan land, and belonged to the Morgans. Nobody outside
a madhouse could be found to dispute with Duke Morgan a title to land
within ten miles of Morgan's Gap, and none but a lunatic would attempt
to run a hotel at Calabasas, anyway. However, a solution of the
difficulty was found: Duke's colorable title gave the cue to his
retainers in the Gap, and in time they carted away piecemeal most of
the main building, leaving for years the kitchen and the servants'
quarters adjoining it to owls, lizards, scorpions, and spiders.

Meantime, to tap the fast-developing gold-fields, the freight route
and stages had been put in, and the barns built at Calabasas. A need
naturally developed for at least one feature of a hotel--a barroom. A
newer lunatic answered the call of civilization--a man only mildly
insane stocked the kitchen range with liquors, and fitted up in a
crude way the ice-boxes--where there never was ice--serving pantries,
and other odd nooks for sleeping quarters. Here the thirsty stage
passenger, little suspecting the origin of the facilities offered him
for a drink, may choose strong drink instead of water--or rather, he
is restricted to strong drink where water might once have been
had--the spring being piped now half a mile to the barns for the
horses. And this shack, as it is locally called, run by a Mexican, is
still the inn at Calabasas. And it continues to contribute, through
its stirring annals, to the tragic history of the co