There would be nothing
strange in that. The constable of Calistoga is, and has been for
years, a bed-ridden man, and, if I remember rightly, blind. He had
more need of the emoluments than another, it was explained; and it
was easy for him to "depytize," with a strong accent on the last.
So friendly and so free are popular institutions.
When I had done my scrivening, Hanson strolled out, and addressed
Breedlove, "Will you step up here a bit?" and after they had
disappeared a little while into the chaparral and madrona thicket,
they came back again, minus a notice, and the deed was done. The
claim was jumped; a tract of mountain-side, fifteen hundred feet
long by six hundred wide, with all the earth's precious bowels, had
passed from Ronalds to Hanson, and, in the passage, changed its
name from the "Mammoth" to the "Calistoga." I had tried to get
Rufe to call it after his wife, after himself, and after Garfield,
the Republican Presidential candidate of the hour--since then
elected, and, alas! dead--but all was in vain. The claim had once
been called the Calistoga before, and he seemed to feel safety in
returning to that.
And so the history of that mine became once more plunged in
darkness, lit only by some monster pyrotechnical displays of
gossip. And perhaps the most curious feature of the whole matter
is this: that we should have dwelt in this quiet corner of the
mountains, with not a dozen neighbours, and yet struggled all the
while, like desperate swimmers, in this sea of falsities and
contradictions.
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