I
There was an entire lack of interest in the latest arrival at
Hurdy-Gurdy. He was not even christened with the picturesquely
descriptive nick-name which is so frequently a mining camp's word of
welcome to the newcomer. In almost any other camp thereabout this
circumstance would of itself have secured him some such appellation as
"The White-headed Conundrum," or "No Sarvey"--an expression naively
supposed to suggest to quick intelligences the Spanish _quien sabe_. He
came without provoking a ripple of concern upon the social surface of
Hurdy-Gurdy--a place which to the general Californian contempt of men's
personal history superadded a local indifference of its own. The time
was long past when it was of any importance who came there, or if
anybody came. No one was living at Hurdy-Gurdy.
Two years before, the camp had boasted a stirring population of two or
three thousand males and not fewer than a dozen females. A majority of
the former had done a few weeks' earnest work in demonstrating, to the
disgust of the latter, the singularly mendacious character of the person
whose ingenious tales of rich gold deposits had lured them thither--
work, by the way, in which there was as little mental satisfaction as
pecuniary profit; for a bullet from the pistol of a public-spirited
citizen had put that imaginative gentleman beyond the reach of aspersion
on the third day of the camp's existence. Still, his fiction had a
certain foundation in fact, and many had lingered a considerable time in
and about Hurdy-Gurdy, though now all had been long gone.
But they had left ample evidence of their sojourn. From the point where
Injun Creek falls into the Rio San Juan Smith, up along both banks of
the former into the cañon whence it emerges, extended a double row of
forlorn shanties that seemed about to fall upon one another's neck to
bewail their desolation; while about an equal number appeared to have
straggled up the slope on either hand and perched themselves upon
commanding eminences, whence they craned forward to get a good view of
the affecting scene. Most of these habitations were emaciated as by
famine to the condition of mere skeletons, about which clung unlovely
tatters of what might have been skin, but was really canvas. The little
valley itself, torn and gashed by pick and shovel, was unhandsome with
long, bending lines of decaying flume resting here and there upon the
summits of sharp ridges, and stilting awkwardly across the intervals
upon unhewn poles. The whole place presented that raw and forbidding
aspect of arrested development which is a new country's substitute for
the solemn grace of ruin wrought by time. Wherever there remained a
patch of the original soil a rank overgrowth of weeds and brambles had
spread upon the scene, and from its dank, unwholesome shades the visitor
curious in such matters might have obtained numberless souvenirs of the
camp's former glory--fellowless boots mantled with green mould and
plethoric of rotting leaves; an occasional old felt hat; desultory
remnants of a flannel shirt; sardine boxes inhumanly mutilated and a
surprising profusion of black bottles distributed with a truly catholic
impartiality, everywhere.