Many of the denizens of Borealis came and laid siege to the barber-shop as early as six in the morning.  Hardly a man in the place, except Parky, the gambler, had been dressed in extravagance so imposing since the 4th of July as was early apparent in the street.  Bright new shirts, red, blue, and even white, came proudly to the front.  Trousers were dropped outside of boots, and the boots themselves were polished.  A run on bear’s-grease and hair-oil lent a shining halo to nearly every head the camp could boast.  Then the groups began to gather near the open shop of the smith.

“We’d ought to have a bell,” suggested Lufkins, the teamster.  “Churches always ring the bell to let the parson know it’s time he was showin’ up to start the ball.”

“Well, I’ll string up a bar of steel,” said Webber.  “You can get a crackin’ fine lot of noise out of that.”

He strung it up in a framework just outside the door, ordinarily employed for hoisting heavy wagons from the earth.  Then with a hammer he struck it sharply.

The clear, ringing tone that vibrated all through the hills was a stirring note indeed.  So the bell-ringer struck his steel again.

“That ain’t the way to do the job,” objected Field.  “That sounds like scarin’ up voters at a measly political rally.”

“Can you do it any better?” said the smith, and he offered his hammer.

“Here comes Doc Dennihan,” interrupted the barkeep.  “Ask Doc how it’s done.  If he don’t know, we’ll have to wait for old If-only Jim hisself.”

The brother of the tall Miss Doc was a small man with outstanding ears, the palest gray eyes, and the quietest of manners.  He was not a doctor of anything, hence his title.  Perhaps the fact that the year before he had quietly shot all six of the bullets of his Colt revolver into the body of a murderous assailant before that distinguished person could fall to the earth had invested his townsmen and admirers with a modest desire to do him a titular honor.  Howsoever that might have been, he had always subsequently found himself addressed with sincere respect, while his counsel had been sought on every topic, possible, impossible, and otherwise, mooted in all Borealis.  The fact that his sister was the “boss of his shack,” and that he, indeed, was a henpecked man, was never, by any slip of courtesy, conversationally paraded, especially in his hearing.

Appealed to now concerning the method of ringing the bar of steel for worshipful purposes, he took a bite at his nails before replying.  Then he said: 

“Well, I’d ring it a little bit faster than you would for a funeral and a little bit slower than you would for a fire.”

“That’s the stuff!” said Field.  “I knowed that Doc would know.”

But Doc refused them, nevertheless, when they asked if he would deign to do the ringing himself.  Consequently Field, the father of the camp, made a gallant attempt at the work, only to miss the “bell” with his hammer and strike himself on the knee, after which he limped to a seat, declaring they didn’t need a bell-ringing anyhow.  Upon the blacksmith the duty devolved by natural selection.