|THE most quiet, unobtrusive man I ever knew," said Buck Bramel to a
Boomekang man, "was a young fellow who went into North Park in an early
day from the Salmon river. He was also reserved and taciturn among the
miners, and never made any suggestions if he could avoid it. He was also
the most thoughtful man about other people's comfort I ever knew.
"I went into the cabin one day where he was lying on the bed, and told
him I had decided to go into Laramie for a couple of weeks to do some
trading. I put my valise down on the floor and was going out, when he
asked me if my clothes were marked. I told him that I never marked my
clothes. If the washerwoman wanted to mix up my wardrobe with that of a
female seminary, I would have to stand it, I supposed.
"He thought I ought to mark my clothes before I went away, and said he
would attend to it for me. So he took down his revolver and put three
shots through the valise.
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"After that a coolness sprang up between us, and the warm friendship
that had existed so long was more or less busted. After that he marked
a man's clothes over in Leadville in the same way, only the man had them
on at the time. He seemed to have a mania on that subject, and as they
had no insanity experts at Leadville in those days, they thought the
most economical way to examine his brain would be to hang him, and then
send the brain to New York in a baking powder can.
"So they hung him one night to the bough of a sighing mountain pine.
"The autopsy was, of course, crude; but they sawed open his head and
scooped out the brain with a long handled spoon and sent it on to
New York. By some mistake or other it got mixed up with some sample
specimens of ore from 'The Brindle Tom Cat' discovery, and was sent to
the assayer in New York instead of the insanity smelter and refiner, as
was intended.
"The result was that the assayer wrote a very touching and grieved
letter to the boys, saying that he was an old man anyway, and he wished
they would consider his gray hairs and not try to palm off their old
groceries on him. He might have made errors in his assays, perhaps--all
men were more or less liable to mistakes--but he flattered himself that
he could still distinguish between a piece of blossom rock and a can
of decomposed lobster salad, even if it was in a baking-powder can. He
hoped they would not try to be facetious at his expense any more, but
use him as they would like to be treated themselves when they got old
and began to totter down toward the silent tomb.
"This is why we never knew to a dead moral certainty, whether he was O.
K. in the upper story, or not."