They climbed out on solid ground.  The road swung to the left and back, following a contour to the slight elevation on which the houses stood.  Saleratus Bill, however, turned up a brief short-cut, which landed them immediately on the main street.

Bob saw two stores, an office building and a small hotel, shaded by wooden awnings.  Beyond them, and opposite them, were substantial bunk houses and dwelling houses, painted red, each with its elevated, roofed verandah.  Large trees, on either side, threw a shade fairly across the thoroughfare.  An iron pump and water trough in front of the hotel saved the wayfarer from the necessity of riding his animals down to the river.  The vista at the end of the street showed a mill building on a distant mountain side, with the rabbit-burrow dumps of many shafts and prospect holes all about it.

They rode up the street past two or three of the houses, the hotel and the office.  Bob, peering in through the windows, saw tables and chairs, old chromos and newer lithographs on the walls.  Under the tree at the side of the hotel hung a water olla with a porcelain cup atop.  Near the back porch stood a screen meat safe.

But not a soul was in sight.  The street was deserted, the houses empty, the office unoccupied.  As they proceeded Bob expected from one moment to the next to see a door open, a figure saunter around a corner.  Save for the jays and squirrels, the place was absolutely empty.

For some minutes the full realization of this fact was slow in coming.  The village exhibited none of the symptoms of abandonment.  The window glass was whole; the furniture of such houses as Bob had glanced into while passing stood in its accustomed places.  A few strokes of the broom might have made any one of them immediately fit for habitation.  The place looked less deserted than asleep; like one of the enchanted palaces so dear to tales of magic.  It would not have seemed greatly wonderful to Bob to have seen the town spring suddenly to life in obedience to some spell.  If the mill stamps in the distant crusher had creaked and begun to pound; if dogs had rushed barking around corners and from under porches; if from the hotel mine host had emerged, yawning and rubbing his eyes; if from the shops and offices and houses had issued the slow, grumbling sounds of life awakening, it would all have seemed natural and to be expected.  Under the influence of this strange effect a deathly stillness seemed to fall, in spite of the bawling and roaring of the river, and the trickle of many streamlets hurrying down from the surrounding hills.

So extraordinary was this effect of suspended animation that Bob again essayed his surly companion.

“What place do you call this?” he inquired.

Saleratus Bill had dismounted, and was stretching his long, lean arms over his head.  Evidently he considered this the end of the long and painful journey, and as evidently he was, in his relief, inclined to be better natured.