one. But he reckoned
mistakenly. Tracey saw him coming, came to the door, bade him Halt!
and on his sneering refusal, shot the bad man dead.

In September, 1913, I paid a visit to Knoxville. Just above the town,
on the eastern slope of the mountain, were several tunnels and great
dump-piles, clearly showing the vast amount of work that had been
done. The quartz ledge that caused the excitement was distinctly in
evidence, indeed, when the Tahoe Railway roadbed was being graded,
this quartz ledge was blasted into, and the director of operations
sent a number of specimens for assay, the rock looked so favorable.

Here and there were the remains of old log-cabins, with their outside
stone chimneys. In some cases young tamaracks, fifteen and twenty feet
high, had grown up within the areas once confined by the walls. These
ruins extended all the way down to Deer Creek, showing the large
number of inhabitants the town once possessed.

I saw the graveyard by the side of the river, where King's body was
the first to be buried, and I stood in the doorway of the store from
which the shot that killed him was fired.

In imagination, I saw the whole life of the camp, as I have seen
mining-camps after a stampede in Nevada. The shacks, rows of tents,
and the rudely scattered and varied dwellings that the ingenuity and
skill of men hastily extemporized. Most of the log-houses are now
gone, their charred remnants telling of the indifferent carelessness
of campers, prospectors or Indians.

The main street was in a pretty little meadowed vale, lined on either
side with trees, and close to the Truckee, which here rushes and
dashes and roars and sparkles among the bowlders and rocks that
bestrew its bed.

When it was found the ore did not "pan out," the excitement died
down even more rapidly than it arose, and in 1863-4 the camp was
practically dead.

It has been charged that the Squaw Valley claims were "salted" with
ore brought from Virginia City. I am inclined to doubt this, and many
of the old timers deny it. They assert that Knox was "on the square"
and that he firmly believed he had paying ore. It is possible there
may have been the salting of an individual claim or so after the camp
started, but the originators of the camp started it in good faith,
as they themselves were the greatest losers when the "bottom" of the
excitement dropped out.

About a mile further up the river is still to be seen the site of the
rival town of