Page:Jackson Gregory--joyous trouble maker.djvu/220

204 swarm on an upland above Steele's eighty acres. It sprang into being full fledged and noisy, complete and self-sufficient, the instant materialization of a word. It might have drawn its own characteristics from the turbulent stream on whose banks it stood, impatient of restraint, rebellious minded, lawlessly inclined but yielding with fierce grumblings to that which kept it in its rugged channel. Almost in the first hour of its existence Boom Town saw one of its denizens killed by another who later was to hang for the deed. Born from tumultuous blood it was to be in its joys as well as in its struggles violent. Good men came into it and remained and with them came other men, who also remained. In one thing only were all alike: each sought to come before the others to other gold.

"It's been washing down the river for a thousand years," they said, and their haste knew no bounds to come to the higher lands, to search eager eyed for other veins or pockets, to drive a triumphant pick fair and square down into the heart of the mother lode. And they were not without their quota of success; here in the wildest of the wild lands of the Thunder River country, claims were staked out, quarrelled over, held by right of might. The law had come with Jim Banks, sheriff … and Jim Banks was staking out his own claim.

Here came Flash Truitt, the gambler, and a ranger from Dutton Cañon and many a fire-blooded timber-jack whose knowledge of the ways of gold were infinitely less than his imaginings; here came men of most sorts and ages, lightly and sensibly equipped or heavily