Then I came to other signs, signs announcing that the trail was closed
by landslides, signs which gave detours up bare mountain sides, signs
which were all in the crude lettering of uneducated hands. And past all
these signs, straight down the trail, led the tracks of the horseman I
had met.
I followed those tracks, followed them until I came within sight of a
group of rough buildings huddled together at the head of a little
valley. On the sides of the mountains which rimmed the valley showed the
great scars of mining operations, the white piles of rock at the ore
dumps. The setting sun glinted from galvanized iron roofs, shone redly
on board shacks, cast long shadows from grazing cattle, showed a long
line of rutted roadway running to the north, a roadway which would
probably connect with the railroad.
The sun swung behind the mountains to the west; a chill of the high
places swept subtly through the still air. Darkness came, and lights
began to glow from the clump of buildings.
A ride up and down the main street of the town told me all that I needed
to know.
There was no hotel, but one restaurant worthy of being called such, and
any number of pool-halls, card-rooms, dance-halls and saloons. There are
hundreds of such places scattered through the West, places where
prohibition simply has not penetrated because the people do not wish it.
Mining communities out in the desert, in the heart of the mountains, are
a law unto themselves. Delving underground is a cheerless business, and
men who work in the mines must have such enjoyment as the body craves if
they are to be held in camps out in the wilds, out where there is none
of the diversions of civilization.
I left my horse before the entrance of the restaurant and entered. It
was a rather pretentious place for a mining camp feeding house. There
was a long counter, a row of oilcloth-covered tables, and then a doorway
leading to a corridor, from which opened booths. The lumber was all
homemade, cut from slabs of the sugar pines which grew on the high
mountains to the west.
Several men sat at the counter, and one or two were sprawled over the
tables. They were a hard-looking lot, men who wolfed their food with
shoulders hunched forward, knife and fork in constant motion, eyes fixed
vacantly ahead, jaws working rapidly.
I sat at a table and looked past the line of oil lamps to the murky
mystery of the corridor where were located the booths; booths from which
came an occasional shrill of feminine laughter.
A Chinaman came shuffling through the curtained doorway. His beady eyes
glanced about the place, spotted me as a newcomer, and he made his way
toward me with a heavy tumbler filled with water, a knife and fork.
“H’lo. You likum eat?”
There was a steady impassivity about his stare, an impersonal something
in his tone which seemed a mask, more of a mask than the Oriental
habitually wears.