"
These were the snatches of his talk that reached us, and they had a
damning significance. We, the lords of Silverado, had come face to
face with our superior. It is the worst of all quaint and of all
cheap ways of life that they bring us at last to the pinch of some
humiliation. I liked well enough to be a squatter when there was
none but Hanson by; before Ronalds, I will own, I somewhat quailed.
I hastened to do him fealty, said I gathered he was the Squattee,
and apologized. He threatened me with ejection, in a manner grimly
pleasant--more pleasant to him, I fancy, than to me; and then he
passed off into praises of the former state of Silverado. "It was
the busiest little mining town you ever saw:" a population of
between a thousand and fifteen hundred souls, the engine in full
blast, the mill newly erected; nothing going but champagne, and
hope the order of the day. Ninety thousand dollars came out; a
hundred and forty thousand were put in, making a net loss of fifty
thousand. The last days, I gathered, the days of John Stanley,
were not so bright; the champagne had ceased to flow, the
population was already moving elsewhere, and Silverado had begun to
wither in the branch before it was cut at the root. The last shot
that was fired knocked over the stove chimney, and made that hole
in the roof of our barrack, through which the sun was wont to visit
slug-a-beds towards afternoon.
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