It Began Around The Bully
Boy And Theresa Group Of Mines Midway Up Squaw Gulch, Spreading
Down To The Smelter At The Mouth Of The Ravine.
The freight wagons
dumped their loads as near to the mill as the slope allowed, and
Jimville grew in between.
Above the Gulch begins a pine
wood with sparsely grown thickets of lilac, azalea, and odorous
blossoming shrubs.
Squaw Gulch is a very sharp, steep, ragged-walled ravine, and
that part of Jimville which is built in it has only one street,--in
summer paved with bone-white cobbles, in the wet months a frothy
yellow flood. All between the ore dumps and solitary small cabins,
pieced out with tin cans and packing cases, run footpaths drawing
down to the Silver Dollar saloon. When Jimville was having the
time of its life the Silver Dollar had those same coins let into
the bar top for a border, but the proprietor pried them out when
the glory departed. There are three hundred inhabitants in
Jimville and four bars, though you are not to argue anything from
that.
Hear now how Jimville came by its name. Jim Calkins
discovered the Bully Boy, Jim Baker located the Theresa. When Jim
Jenkins opened an eating-house in his tent he chalked up on the
flap, "Best meals in Jimville, $1.00," and the name stuck.
There was more human interest in the origin of Squaw Gulch,
though it tickled no humor. It was Dimmick's squaw from Aurora
way. If Dimmick had been anything except New Englander he would
have called her a mahala, but that would not have bettered his
behavior. Dimmick made a strike, went East, and the squaw who had
been to him as his wife took to drink. That was the bald
way of stating it in the Aurora country. The milk of human
kindness, like some wine, must not be uncorked too much in speech
lest it lose savor. This is what they did. The woman would have
returned to her own people, being far gone with child, but the
drink worked her bane. By the river of this ravine her pains
overtook her. There Jim Calkins, prospecting, found her dying with
a three days' babe nozzling at her breast. Jim heartened her for
the end, buried her, and walked back to Poso, eighteen miles, the
child poking in the folds of his denim shirt with small mewing
noises, and won support for it from the rough-handed folks of that
place. Then he came back to Squaw Gulch, so named from that day,
and discovered the Bully Boy. Jim humbly regarded this piece of
luck as interposed for his reward, and I for one believed him. If
it had been in mediaeval times you would have had a legend or a
ballad. Bret Harte would have given you a tale. You see in me a
mere recorder, for I know what is best for you; you shall blow out
this bubble from your own breath.
You could never get into any proper relation to Jimville
unless you could slough off and swallow your acquired prejudices as
a lizard does his skin. Once wanting some womanly attentions, the
stage-driver assured me I might have them at the Nine-Mile House
from the lady barkeeper. The phrase tickled all my
after-dinner-coffee sense of humor into an anticipation of Poker
Flat. The stage-driver proved himself really right, though
you are not to suppose from this that Jimville had no conventions
and no caste. They work out these things in the personal equation
largely. Almost every latitude of behavior is allowed a good
fellow, one no liar, a free spender, and a backer of his friends'
quarrels. You are respected in as much ground as you can shoot
over, in as many pretensions as you can make good.
That probably explains Mr. Fanshawe, the gentlemanly faro
dealer of those parts, built for the role of Oakhurst, going
white-shirted and frock-coated in a community of overalls; and
persuading you that whatever shifts and tricks of the game were
laid to his deal, he could not practice them on a person of your
penetration. But he does. By his own account and the evidence of
his manners he had been bred for a clergyman, and he certainly has
gifts for the part. You find him always in possession of your
point of view, and with an evident though not obtrusive desire to
stand well with you. For an account of his killings, for his way
with women and the way of women with him, I refer you to Brown of
Calaveras and some others of that stripe. His improprieties had a
certain sanction of long standing not accorded to the gay ladies
who wore Mr. Fanshawe's favors. There were perhaps too many of
them. On the whole, the point of the moral distinctions of
Jimville appears to be a point of honor, with an absence of
humorous appreciation that strangers mistake for dullness. At
Jimville they see behavior as history and judge it by facts,
untroubled by invention and the dramatic sense. You glimpse a
crude equity in their dealings with Wilkins, who had shot a man at
Lone Tree, fairly, in an open quarrel. Rumor of it reached
Jimville before Wilkins rested there in flight. I saw Wilkins, all
Jimville saw him; in fact, he came into the Silver Dollar when we
were holding a church fair and bought a pink silk pincushion. I
have often wondered what became of it. Some of us shook hands with
him, not because we did not know, but because we had not been
officially notified, and there were those present who knew how it
was themselves. When the sheriff arrived Wilkins had moved on, and
Jimville organized a posse and brought him back, because the
sheriff was a Jimville man and we had to stand by him.
I said we had the church fair at the Silver Dollar.
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