ld to Red Dog,--a distance of forty miles,--where female
attention could be procured. But the unlucky suggestion met with fierce
and unanimous opposition. It was evident that no plan which entailed
parting from their new acquisition would for a moment be entertained.
"Besides," said Tom Ryder, "them fellows at Red Dog would swap it, and
ring in somebody else on us." A disbelief in the honesty of other camps
prevailed at Roaring Camp, as in other places.

The introduction of a female nurse in the camp also met with objection.
It was argued that no decent woman could be prevailed to accept Roaring
Camp as her home, and the speaker urged that "they didn't want any more
of the other kind." This unkind allusion to the defunct mother, harsh as
it may seem, was the first spasm of propriety,--the first symptom of the
camp's regeneration. Stumpy advanced nothing. Perhaps he felt a certain
delicacy in interfering with the selection of a possible successor in
office. But when questioned, he averred stoutly that he and "Jinny"--the
mammal before alluded to--could manage to rear the child. There was
something original, independent, and heroic about the plan that pleased
the camp. Stumpy was retained. Certain articles were sent for to
Sacramento. "Mind," said the treasurer, as he pressed a bag of gold-dust
into the expressman's hand, "the best that can be got,--lace, you know,
and filigree-work and frills,--damn the cost!"

Strange to say, the child thrived. Perhaps the invigorating climate of
the mountain camp was compensation for material deficiencies. Nature
took the foundling to her broader breast. In that rare atmosphere of the
Sierra foothills,--that air pungent with balsamic odor, that ethereal
cordial at once bracing and exhilarating,--he may have found food and
nourishment, or a subtle chemistry that transmuted ass's milk to lime
and phosphorus. Stumpy inclined to the belief that it was the latter
and good nursing. "Me and that ass," he would say, "has been father and
mother to him! Don't you," he would add, apostrophizing the helpless
bundle before him, "never go back on us."

By the time he was a month old the necessity of giving him a name became
apparent. He had generally been known as "The Kid," "Stumpy's Boy,"
"The Coyote" (an allusion to his vocal powers), and even by Kentuck's
endearing diminutive of "The damned little cuss." But these were felt
to be vague and unsatisfactory, and were at last dismissed under anothe