to them: they heard of railroads annihilating the long
oxen-traversed distances of covered wagon days, of new gold strikes, of
national politics, rumblings of the Civil War, slavery agitation,
presidential elections, and those other momentous, history-making
events of their time.

The most important and regular social occasion of that day was the
community dinner and "literary." Imagine the picturesque company,
congregated from miles around, each contributing whatever he could
muster of food and drink--the old Earl of Dunraven, as well as others,
had a bar!--and seated at a long, single table. What genuine,
home-made fun! What pranks, what wit--yes, what brilliance! Some one,
usually Parson Lamb, sometimes gaunt old Scotch John Cleave, the
postmaster, rarely some noted visitor, who either from choice or
ill-health lingered on into the winter, made a speech. There were
declamations, debates, the interminable, singsong ballads of the
frontier, usually accompanied by French harp or fiddle. Families were
few, bachelors much in the majority; I remember that at one of the
community affairs there were eighteen bachelors out of a total
attendance of thirty persons! But as the region settled up, the
bachelor ranks dwindled. They, like the big game, disappeared, as
though in their case "open season" prevailed likewise.

I had attended several of these pioneer festivities and had enjoyed
them greatly, and was much impressed with their importance, for
underlying all the fun was an old-fashioned dignity seldom found
nowadays. But Parson Lamb told me these dinners were tame compared to
a real mountain dance. "Just you wait till you see a real shindig" he
said. "Then you'll have something to talk about." In January, there
was a letter in the mail from Jim Oss, my acquaintance of the train on
which I came West. We had been carrying on a desultory correspondence,
but this message was momentous.

"I am giving a dance Monday," he wrote, "to celebrate proving up on my
homestead. Come ahead of time so you can see all the fun." His
hundred and sixty acres lay on the western slope of the Continental
Divide--fifty-five miles away. Snow lay deep over every one of those
intervening, upstanding miles! The Parson was concerned about my going
alone.

"'Tain't safe to cross that old range alone any time of year, let alone
the dead of winter. Hain't no one else agoing from here?"

I inquired, but it seemed there was not. Secr