ouston.

"Int'restin'? I should say so! You fellows don't know nothin' about
minin' compared to them days; I tell you, things was lively then. I
was there at Leadville when it was opened up, and you couldn't get
anybody to look at you without payin' 'em a good, round sum for it;
couldn't get a place to roll yourself in your blanket and lie on the
floor short of five or ten dollars; folks bought dry goods boxes and
lived in 'em. Then I was down here when they opened up the Big Bonanza
mine, in Diamond gulch, not far from Silver City. I tell you boys,
them was high old times, everything was scarce and prices was
high,--flour was a hundred dollars a sack, and potatoes seventy-five
dollars a bushel,--but money was plenty,--or gold dust,--we didn't
have no money, everything was paid for in gold dust. 'Twas pretty
tough in them days, too, everybody went armed to the teeth, and guns
and knives was used pretty free."

"Was that in the days of the vigilantes?" asked Houston.

"Yes, they come along soon after, they had to. There was desperate
characters here, but the vigilantes made short work of 'em, they
didn't even give 'em time to say their prayers. I tell you, the
gambling houses and the dance halls, and all them places was lively in
them days. There wasn't many words over a game, if any quarrels come
up, they was settled pretty quick with the revolver or bowie knife."

"There must have been some high stakes played in those days," Houston
remarked.

"High? well, yes, rather; I've seen men sit down to a game worth
anywhere from fifty to two or three hundred thousand, and get up
without a cent in the world."

The old man paused to relight his pipe, and having puffed reflectively
for a few moments, settled himself with the air of a man who has a
long story to tell, and the surrounding miners evidently so understood
it, for they shifted their positions accordingly, and prepared to
listen.

"Speakin' of gamblin'," he began, "puts me in mind of something that
happened among the camps on the other side of the range, nigh onto
fifteen years ago. A gang of us boys was in Dandy Jim's gambling hall
one night. The place was crowded, I remember, and we was all tryin' to
make our fortunes on the high card. Some of us was dead broke, but
them that hadn't the stuff borrowed from them that had, sure of better
luck next time. They was all so deep in the game that none of 'em
noticed a seedy-lookin' chap who come in, kinder quiet like