Page:Boys Life of Mark Twain.djvu/173

 faithful companion, Stoker; and Stoker never denied them, but would smoke and look into the fire, smiling a little sometimes, but never saying a word. A number of the tales later used by Mark Twain were first told by Jim Gillis in the cabin on Jackass Hill. "Dick Baker's Cat" was one of these, the jay-bird and acorn story in A Tramp Abroad was another. Mark Twain had little to add to these stories.

"They are not mine, they are Jim's," he said, once; "but I never could get them to sound like Jim—they were never as good as his."

It was early in December, 1864, when Mark Twain arrived at the humble retreat, built of logs under a great live-oak tree, and surrounded by a stretch of blue-grass. A younger Gillis boy was there at the time, and also, of course, Dick Stoker and his cat, Tom Quartz, which every reader of Roughing It knows.

It was the rainy season, but on pleasant days they all went pocket-mining, and, in January, Mark Twain, Gillis, and Stoker crossed over into Calaveras County and began work near Angel's Camp, a place well known to readers of Bret Harte. They put up at a poor hotel in Angel's, and on good days worked pretty faithfully. But it was generally raining, and the food was poor.

In his note-book, still preserved, Mark Twain wrote: "January 27 (1865).—Same old diet—same old weather—went out to the pocket-claim—had to rush back."

So they spent a good deal of their time around the rusty stove in the dilapidated tavern at Angel's 143