rcumstances in
which I could feel it right to make any use of it, or in which it could
do me any possible good. Last night, however, I took it out, cleaned
and oiled it, and laid it under my pillow, resolving to keep awake all
night. I slept as soon as I lay down, and never woke till the bright
morning sun shone through the roof, making me ridicule my own fears and
abjure pistols for ever.

I. L. B.

Letter XII

Deer Valley--Lynch law--Vigilance committees--The silver spruce--Taste
and abstinence--The whisky fiend--Smartness--Turkey creek Canyon--The
Indian problem--Public rascality--Friendly meetings--The way to the
Golden City--A rising settlement--Clear Creek
Canyon--Staging--Swearing--A mountain town.

DEER VALLEY, November.

To-night I am in a beautiful place like a Dutch farm--large, warm,
bright, clean, with abundance of clean food, and a clean, cold little
bedroom to myself. But it is very hard to write, for two free-tongued,
noisy Irish women, who keep a miners' boarding-house in South Park, and
are going to winter quarters in a freight wagon, are telling the most
fearful stories of violence, vigilance committees, Lynch law, and
"stringing," that I ever heard. It turns one's blood cold only to
think that where I travel in perfect security, only a short time ago
men were being shot like skunks. At the mining towns up above this
nobody is thought anything of who has not killed a man--i.e. in a
certain set. These women had a boarder, only fifteen, who thought he
could not be anything till he had shot somebody, and they gave an
absurd account of the lad dodging about with a revolver, and not
getting up courage enough to insult any one, till at last he hid
himself in the stable and shot the first Chinaman who entered. Things
up there are just in that initial state which desperadoes love. A man
accidentally shoves another in a saloon, or says a rough word at meals,
and the challenge, "first finger on the trigger," warrants either in
shooting the other at any subsequent time without the formality of a
duel. Nearly all the shooting affrays arise from the most trivial
causes in saloons and bar-rooms. The deeper quarrels, arising from
jealousy or revenge, are few, and are usually about some woman not
worth fighting for. At Alma and Fairplay vigilance committees have
been lately formed, and when men act outrageously and make themselves
generally obnoxiou