Page:Life Amongst the Modocs.djvu/90

 fingers.

The old hero of many encounters with robbers and floods and avalanches in the Sierras, was dying now. His friends gathered around him to say farewell. He half raised his head, lifted his hands as if still at his post, and said :

" Boys, I am on the down grade, and can t reach the break!" and sank down and died.

And so it is that " the down grade," an express-ion born of the death of the old stage-driver, has a meaning with us now.

A Saturday or so after the conversation alluded to between Long Dan and the Prince, there were heard pistol-shots in the direction of the Howlin Wilder ness saloon, and most of the men rushed forth to see what Jonah fate had pitched upon to be thrown into the sea of eternity, and be the a man for breakfast" this time.

Nothing "draws" like a bar-room fight of Cali fornia. It is a sudden thing. Sharp and quick come the keen reports, and the affair has the advantage of being quite over by the time you reach the spot, and all danger of serving the place of barricades for a stray bullet is past.

I have known miners standing on their good be haviour, who resisted the temptations of hurdy- gurdy houses, bull-fights, and bull and bear en counters, who always wrote home on Sundays, read old letters, and said the Lord s Prayer ; but I never yet knew one who could help going to see the dead man or the scene of the six-shooter war-dance, when ever the shots were heard.