e hillside, both in the Yuba Valley and for some distance along Pine
Tree Gulch, was dotted by shanties and tents; the former constructed for
the most part of logs roughly squared, the walls being some three feet
in height, on which the sharp sloping roof was placed, thatched in the
first place with boughs, and made all snug, perhaps, with an old sail
stretched over all. The camp was quiet enough during the day. The few
women were away with their washing at the pools, a quarter of a mile up
the Gulch, and the only persons to be seen about were the men told off
for cooking for their respective parties.

But in the evening the camp was lively. Groups of men in red shirts
and corded trousers tied at the knee, in high boots, sat round blazing
fires, and talked of their prospects or discussed the news of the
luck at other camps. The sound of music came from two or three plank
erections which rose conspicuously above the huts of the diggers, and
were bright externally with the glories of white and colored paints. To
and from these men were always sauntering, and it needed not the clink
of glasses and the sound of music to tell that they were the bars of the
camp.

Here, standing at the counter, or seated at numerous small tables, men
were drinking villainous liquor, smoking and talking, and paying but
scant attention to the strains of the fiddle or the accordion, save
when some well known air was played, when all would join in a boisterous
chorus. Some were always passing in or out of a door which led into a
room behind. Here there was comparative quiet, for men were gambling,
and gambling high.

Going backwards and forwards with liquors into the gambling room of the
Imperial Saloon, which stood just where Pine Tree Gulch opened into Yuba
Valley, was a lad, whose appearance had earned for him the name of White
Faced Dick.

White Faced Dick was not one of those who had done well at Pine Tree
Gulch; he had come across the plains with his father, who had died
when halfway over, and Dick had been thrown on the world to shift
for himself. Nature had not intended him for the work, for he was a
delicate, timid lad; what spirits he originally had having been years
before beaten out of him by a brutal father. So far, indeed, Dick was
the better rather than the worse for the event which had left him an
orphan.

They had been traveling with a large party for mutual security against
Indians and Mormons, and so long as the journey l