rom the meals she tended or the
pans she scoured. We stumbled into the household at a crisis; and there
was a deal of downright humanity in that same. A bad, wicked dressmaker
had promised the maiden a dress in time for a to-morrow's railway
journey, and, though the barefooted Georgie, who stood in very wholesome
awe of his sister, had scoured the woods on a pony in search, that dress
never arrived. So with sorrow in her heart, and a hundred Sister Anne
glances up the road, she waited upon the strangers, and, I doubt not,
cursed them for the wants that stood between her and her need for tears.
It was a genuine little tragedy. The mother in a heavy, passionless
voice rebuked her impatience, yet sat bowed over a heap of sewing for
the daughter's benefit. These things I beheld in the long
marigold-scented twilight and whispering night, loafing round the little
house with California, who unfolded himself like a lotus to the moon; or
in the little boarded bunk that was our bedroom, swapping tales with
Portland and the old man. Most of the yarns began in this way: "Red
Larry was a bull-puncher back of Lone County, Montanna," or "There was a
man riding the trail met a jack-rabbit sitting in a cactus," or "'Bout
the time of the San Diego land boom, a woman from Monterey," etc. You
can try to piece out for yourselves what sort of stories they were.

And next day California tucked me under his wing and told me we were
going to see a city smitten by a boom, and catch trout. So we took a
train and killed a cow--she wouldn't get out of the way, and the
locomotive "chanced" her and slew--and crossing into Washington
Territory won the town of Tacoma, which stands at the head of Puget
Sound upon the road to Alaska and Vancouver.

California was right. Tacoma was literally staggering under a boom of
the boomiest. I do not quite remember what her natural resources were
supposed to be, though every second man shrieked a selection in my ear.
They included coal and iron, carrots, potatoes, lumber, shipping, and a
crop of thin newspapers all telling Portland that her days were
numbered. California and I struck the place at twilight. The rude
boarded pavements of the main streets rumbled under the heels of
hundreds of furious men all actively engaged in hunting drinks and
eligible corner-lots. They sought the drinks first. The street itself
alternated five-storey business blocks of the later and more abominable
forms of architecture with boa