The man who had now rediscovered Hurdy-Gurdy was evidently not curious
as to its archæology. Nor, as he looked about him upon the dismal
evidences of wasted work and broken hopes, their dispiriting
significance accentuated by the ironical pomp of a cheap gilding by the
rising sun, did he supplement his sigh of weariness by one of
sensibility. He simply removed from the back of his tired burro a
miner's outfit a trifle larger than the animal itself, picketed that
creature and selecting a hatchet from his kit moved off at once across
the dry bed of Injun Creek to the top of a low, gravelly hill beyond.
Stepping across a prostrate fence of brush and boards he picked up one
of the latter, split it into five parts and sharpened them at one end.
He then began a kind of search, occasionally stooping to examine
something with close attention. At last his patient scrutiny appeared to
be rewarded with success, for he suddenly erected his figure to its full
height, made a gesture of satisfaction, pronounced the word "Scarry" and
at once strode away with long, equal steps, which he counted. Then he
stopped and drove one of his stakes into the earth. He then looked
carefully about him, measured off a number of paces over a singularly
uneven ground and hammered in another. Pacing off twice the distance at
a right angle to his former course he drove down a third, and repeating
the process sank home the fourth, and then a fifth. This he split at the
top and in the cleft inserted an old letter envelope covered with an
intricate system of pencil tracks. In short, he staked off a hill claim
in strict accordance with the local mining laws of Hurdy-Gurdy and put
up the customary notice.
It is necessary to explain that one of the adjuncts to Hurdy-Gurdy--one
to which that metropolis became afterward itself an adjunct--was a
cemetery. In the first week of the camp's existence this had been
thoughtfully laid out by a committee of citizens. The day after had been
signalized by a debate between two members of the committee, with
reference to a more eligible site, and on the third day the necropolis
was inaugurated by a double funeral. As the camp had waned the cemetery
had waxed; and long before the ultimate inhabitant, victorious alike
over the insidious malaria and the forthright revolver, had turned the
tail of his pack-ass upon Injun Creek the outlying settlement had become
a populous if not popular suburb. And now, when the town was fallen into
the sere and yellow leaf of an unlovely senility, the graveyard--though
somewhat marred by time and circumstance, and not altogether exempt from
innovations in grammar and experiments in orthography, to say nothing of
the devastating coyote--answered the humble needs of its denizens with
reasonable completeness. It comprised a generous two acres of ground,
which with commendable thrift but needless care had been selected for
its mineral unworth, contained two or three skeleton trees (one of which
had a stout lateral branch from which a weather-wasted rope still
significantly dangled), half a hundred gravelly mounds, a score of rude
headboards displaying the literary peculiarities above mentioned and a
struggling colony of prickly pears. Altogether, God's Location, as with
characteristic reverence it had been called, could justly boast of an
indubitably superior quality of desolation. It was in the most thickly
settled part of this interesting demesne that Mr. Jefferson Doman staked
off his claim. If in the prosecution of his design he should deem it
expedient to remove any of the dead they would have the right to be
suitably reinterred.