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.  Wherever a man is, there will be a lie.

TOILS AND PLEASURES

I must try to convey some notion of our life, of how the days passed and what pleasure we took in them, of what there was to do and how we set about doing it, in our mountain hermitage.  The house, after we had repaired the worst of the damages, and filled in some of the doors and windows with white cotton cloth, became a healthy and a pleasant dwelling-place, always airy and dry, and haunted by the outdoor perfumes of the glen.  Within, it had the look of habitation, the human look.  You had only to go into the third room, which we did not use, and see its stones, its sifting earth, its tumbled litter; and then return to our lodging, with the beds made, the plates on the rack, the pail of bright water behind the door, the stove crackling in a corner, and perhaps the table roughly laid against a meal,—­and man’s order, the little clean spots that he creates to dwell in, were at once contrasted with the rich passivity of nature.  And yet our house was everywhere so wrecked and shattered, the air came and went so freely, the sun found so many portholes, the golden outdoor glow shone in so many open chinks, that we enjoyed, at the same time, some of the comforts of a roof and much of the gaiety and brightness of al fresco life.  A single shower of rain, to be sure, and we should have been drowned out like mice.  But ours was a Californian summer, and an earthquake was a far likelier accident than a shower of rain.