Edward Ellis - A Waif of the Mountains

IT had been snowing hard for twenty-four hours at Dead Man’s Gulch. Beginning with a few feathery particles, they had steadily increased in number until the biting air was filled with billions of snowflakes, which whirled and eddied in the gale that howled through the gorges and cañons of the Sierras. It was still snowing with no sign of cessation, and the blizzard blanketed the earth to the depth of several feet, filling up the treacherous hollows, caverns and abysses and making travel almost impossible for man or animal.

The shanties of the miners in Dead Man’s Gulch were just eleven in number. They were strung along the eastern side of the gorge and at an altitude of two or three hundred feet from the bed of the pass or cañon. The site protruded in the form of a table-land, offering a secure foundation for the structures, which were thus elevated sufficiently to be beyond reach of the terrific torrents that sometimes rushed through the ravine during the melting of the snow in the spring, or after one of those fierce cloud-bursts that give scarcely a minute’s warning of their coming.

The diggings were in the mountain side at varying distances. The success in mining had been only moderate, although several promising finds raised hopes. The population numbered precisely thirty men, representing all quarters of the Union, while five came from Europe. The majority were shaggy, bronzed adventurers, the variety being almost as great as the numbers. Some had been clerks, several were college graduates, a number were the sons of wealthy parents, and one was a full-fledged parson, while there was a certain percentage who had left their homes to escape the grip of the offended law.

With that yearning for picturesqueness which is a peculiar trait of Americans, the miners felt that when their settlement had attained the dignity of nearly a dozen dwellings, it was entitled to an appropriate name. The gorge, which seemed to have been gouged out of the solid mass of boulders and rocks, when the mountains were split apart in the remote past, was known from the first by the title already given, which also clung to the diggings themselves.

The single saloon presided over by Max Ortigies, was the Heavenly Bower,–so that point was settled, but when it came to naming the settlement itself, the difficulties were so numerous that days and weeks passed without an agreement being reached. No matter how striking and expressive the title offered by one man, the majority promptly protested. It was too sulphurous, or too insipid or it lacked in that nebulous characteristic which may be defined as true Americanism. It looked as if the problem would never be solved, when Landlord Ortigies, taking the bull by the horns, appointed a committee of three to select a name, the others pledging themselves to accept whatever the committee submitted.

But the mischief was to pay when on the night of the blizzard the committee met at the Heavenly Bower to make their report. The chairman insisted upon “E Pluribus Unum,” the second member’s favorite was “Murderer’s Holler,” while the third would not listen to anything except “Wolf Eye,” and each was immovably set in his convictions.

Budge Isham was not a member of the committee, but he was known as a college graduate. From his seat on an overturned box at the rear of the room, where he was smoking a pipe, he asked troublesome questions and succeeded in arraying the committeemen so fiercely against one another that each was eager to vote, in the event of failing to carry his own point, in favor of any name objectionable to the rest.

The chairman as stated favored the patriotic name “E Pluribus Unum,” and boldly announced the fact.

“It has a lofty sound,” blandly remarked Isham; “will the chairman be good enough to translate it for us? In other words, what does ‘E Pluribus Unum’ mean?”

“Why,” replied the chairman with scorn in his manner; “everybody oughter know it means, ‘Hurrah for the red, white and blue.’”

“Thank you,” returned Isham, puffing at his pipe.

Vose Adams, the second committeeman, felt it his duty to explain his position.

“The trouble with that outlandish name is in the fust place that it has three words and consequently it’s too much to manage. Whoever heard of a town with three handles to its name? Then it’s foreign. When I was in college (several disrespectful sniffs which caused the speaker to stop and glare around in quest of the offenders); I say when I was in college and studying Greek and Chinese and Russian, I larned that that name was made up of all three of them languages. I b’leve in America for the Americans, and if we can’t find a name that’s in the American language, why let’s wait till we can.”

This sentiment was delivered with such dramatic force that several of the miners nodded their heads in approval. It was an appeal to the patriotic side of their nature–which was quick to respond.

“Mr. Chairman,” said Budge Isham, addressing the landlord, who, by general consent, was the presiding officer at these disputations, and who like the others failed to see the quiet amusement the educated man was extracting, “if it is agreeable to Mr. Adams, to whose eloquent speech we have listened with much edification, I would like him to give us his reasons for calling our handsome town ‘Murderers’ Hollow.’”

The gentleman appealed to rose to his feet. Turning toward the man who had called upon him, he gave him a look which ought to have made him sink to the floor with mortification, preliminary to saying with polished irony:

“If the gentleman had paid attention as he oughter, he would have obsarved that I said ‘Murderer’s Holler,’ not ‘Murderers’ Hollow .’ I would advise him not to forget that he ain’t the only man in this place that has received a college eddycation. Now as to the name: it proclaims our stern virtue and love for law.”

The orator paused, but the wondering expression of the bronzed faces turned toward him showed that he would have to descend to particulars.

“When violators of the law hear that name, what does it say to them? It says that if any murderer shows his face in this place, he will receive such rough handling that he will have to holler ‘enough,’ and will be glad to get out–I don’t see what there is to laugh at!” exclaimed Vose angrily, looking threateningly around again with his fists clenched and his gaze fixed specially upon the grinning Budge Isham.

“There’s some sense in what Vose says, which ain’t often the case,” remarked Ike Hoe, the other member of the committee, “but the trouble will be that when folks hear of the name, they won’t think to give it the meanin’ that he gives it. They’ll conclude that this place is the home of murderers, and, if it keeps on, bime by of hoss thieves. If it warn’t for that danger, I might go in for backing up Vose with his name, but as it stands it won’t do.”

The argument of Ike had produced its effect. There was little sympathy in the first place for the title, and that little was destroyed by the words of Ike, who proceeded to plead for his own choice.

“Now as to ‘Wolf Eye.’ In the first place, it is short and easy to say. There ain’t any slur in the name, that might offend a new comer, who would think the ‘Murderer’s Holler’ contained ungentlemanly allusions to his past. It is warning, too, that the place has got an eye on everybody and has teeth as sharp as a wolf. Then there is poetry in the name. Gentlemen,” added Ike in a burst of enthusiasm, “we oughter go in for poetry. How can any one live in such a glorious country as this with the towering kenyons around him, with the mountains thousands of feet deep, with the grand sun kissin’ the western tips in the morning and sinking to rest at night in the east,–with the snow storms in summer and the blazing heat in winter–with the glo–”