without a murmur.  I hesitate to record the many other instances of his sagacity, which rest, unfortunately, upon the statements of prejudiced friends.  Some of them were not without a tinge of superstition.  “I crep’ up the bank just now,” said Kentuck one day, in a breathless state of excitement “and dern my skin if he was a-talking to a jay bird as was a-sittin’ on his lap.  There they was, just as free and sociable as anything you please, a-jawin’ at each other just like two cherrybums.”  Howbeit, whether creeping over the pine boughs or lying lazily on his back blinking at the leaves above him, to him the birds sang, the squirrels chattered, and the flowers bloomed.  Nature was his nurse and playfellow.  For him she would let slip between the leaves golden shafts of sunlight that fell just within his grasp; she would send wandering breezes to visit him with the balm of bay and resinous gum; to him the tall redwoods nodded familiarly and sleepily, the bumblebees buzzed, and the rooks cawed a slumbrous accompaniment.

Such was the golden summer of Roaring Camp.  They were “flush times,” and the luck was with them.  The claims had yielded enormously.  The camp was jealous of its privileges and looked suspiciously on strangers.  No encouragement was given to immigration, and, to make their seclusion more perfect, the land on either side of the mountain wall that surrounded the camp they duly preempted.  This, and a reputation for singular proficiency with the revolver, kept the reserve of Roaring Camp inviolate.  The expressman—­their only connecting link with the surrounding world—­sometimes told wonderful stories of the camp.  He would say, “They’ve a street up there in ‘Roaring’ that would lay over any street in Red Dog.  They’ve got vines and flowers round their houses, and they wash themselves twice a day.  But they’re mighty rough on strangers, and they worship an Ingin baby.”

With the prosperity of the camp came a desire for further improvement.  It was proposed to build a hotel in the following spring, and to invite one or two decent families to reside there for the sake of The Luck, who might perhaps profit by female companionship.  The sacrifice that this concession to the sex cost these men, who were fiercely skeptical in regard to its general virtue and usefulness, can only be accounted for by their affection for Tommy.  A few still held out.  But the resolve could not be carried into effect for three months, and the minority meekly yielded in the hope that something might turn up to prevent it.  And it did.

The winter of 1851 will long be remembered in the foothills.  The snow lay deep on the Sierras, and every mountain creek became a river, and every river a lake.  Each gorge and gulch was transformed into a tumultuous watercourse that descended the hillsides, tearing down giant trees and scattering its drift and debris along the plain.  Red Dog had been twice under water, and Roaring Camp had been forewarned.  “Water put the gold into them gulches,” said Stumpy.  “It been here once and will be here again!” And that night the North Fork suddenly leaped over its banks and swept up the triangular valley of Roaring Camp.