Where they came from no one knew. Among the farmers near the Bend there
was ample ability to conduct researches beset by far more difficulties
than was that of the origin of the Pikes; but a charge of buckshot which
a good-natured Yankee received one evening, soon after putting questions
to a venerable Pike, exerted a depressing influence upon the spirit of
investigation. They were not bloodthirsty, these Pikes, but they had
good reason to suspect all inquirers of being at least deputy sheriffs,
if not worse; and a Pike's hatred of officers of the law is equaled in
intensity only by his hatred for manual labor.

But while there was doubt as to the fatherland of the little colony of
Pikes at Jagger's Bend, their every neighbor would willingly make
affidavit as to the cause of their locating and remaining at the Bend.
When humanitarians and optimists argued that it was because the water
was good and convenient, that the Bend itself caught enough drift-wood
for fuel, and that the dirt would yield a little gold when manipulated
by placer and pan, all farmers and stockowners would freely admit the
validity of these reasons; but the admission was made with a countenance
whose indignation and sorrow indicated that the greater causes were yet
unnamed. With eyes speaking emotions which words could not express, they
would point to sections of wheatfields minus the grain-bearing heads--to
hides and hoofs of cattle unslaughtered by themselves--to mothers of
promising calves, whose tender bleatings answered not the maternal
call--to the places which had once known fine horses, but had been
untenanted since certain Pikes had gone across, the mountains for game.
They would accuse no man wrongfully, but in a country where all farmers
had wheat and cattle and horses, and where prowling Indians and Mexicans
were not, how could these disappearances occur?

But to people owning no property in the neighborhood--to tourists and