Page:Life Amongst the Modocs.djvu/108

 burnt!!"

In one of the saloons where men were wont to meet at night, have stag-dances, and drink lightning, a short, important man, with the print of a glass- tumbler cut above his eye, arose and made a speech.

" Fellow- miners (he had never touched a pick in his life), I am ready to die for me country! (He was an Irishman sent out to Sydney at the Crown s expense.) What have I to live for? (Nothing whatever, as far as anyone could tell.) Fellow- miners, a man has been kilt by the treacherous savages kilt in cold blood! Fellow-miners, let us advance upon the inemy. Let us let us fellow- miners, let us take a drink and advance upon the inemy."

This man had borrowed a pistol, and held or flourished it in his hand as he talked to the crowd of idlers, rum-dealers, and desperadoes to all of whom any diversion from the monotony of camp -life, or excitement, seemed a blessing.

" Range around me. Rally to the bar and take a drink, every man of you, at me own ixpense." The bar-keeper, who was also proprietor of the place, a man not much above the type of the speaker, ventured a mild remonstrance at this wholesale generosity ; but the pistol, flourished in a very sug gestive way, settled the matter, and, with something of a groan, he set his decanters to the crowd, and became a bankrupt.

This was the beginning ; they passed from saloon to saloon, or, rather, from door to door; t