Читать книгу Buffalo Bill's Weird Warning; Or, Dauntless Dell's Rival онлайн

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Just where the trail crawled over the edge of the flat, there was a sign-board with the rudely lettered words: “No Shootin’ Aloud in Sun Dance.” As an indication of how seriously the sign was taken, it may be mentioned that the lettering could hardly be read for bullet-holes.

By day the camp was practically dead, all the miners being at work on their placers, and only storekeepers, gamblers, resort proprietors, and the man who “ran” the hotel being visible. For the most part, these worthies smoked their pipes and cigarettes during the day, or played cards among themselves merely to pass the time.

With night everything changed. The camp became a boisterous, rollicking place.

Miners flocked in, bet their yellow dust on the turn of a card or a whirl of the wheel, sampled the camp’s “red-eye,” and very often forgot the warning of the sign, and indulged in shooting that was very loud and occasionally fatal.

The name of the one hotel in the camp was the “Lucky Strike.” The proprietor was one Abijah Spangler, a leviathan measuring six foot ten, up and down, and ten foot six—or so it was said—east and west at his girth-line. Anyway, Abijah Spangler weighed 300 pounds, and when he sat down it took two chairs to hold him.