It certainly _was_ hard. What was the freedom of a country in which the
voice of the original founders was spent in vain? Had not they, the
"Forty" miners of Bottle Flat, really started the place? Hadn't they
located claims there? Hadn't they contributed three ounces each,
ostensibly to set up in business a brother miner who unfortunately lost
an arm, but really that a saloon might be opened, and the genuineness
and stability of the camp be assured? Hadn't they promptly killed or
scared away every Chinaman who had ever trailed his celestial pig-tail
into the Flat? Hadn't they cut and beaten a trail to Placerville, so
that miners could take a run to that city when the Flat became too
quiet? Hadn't they framed the squarest betting code in the whole
diggings? And when a 'Frisco man basely attempted to break up the camp
by starting a gorgeous saloon a few miles up the creek, hadn't they gone
up in a body and cleared him out, giving him only ten minutes in which
to leave the creek for ever? All this they had done, actuated only by a
stern sense of duty, and in the patient anticipation of the reward which
traditionally crowns virtuous action. But now--oh, ingratitude of
republics!--a schoolteacher was to be forced upon Bottle Flat in spite
of all the protest which they, the oldest inhabitants, had made!

Such had been their plaint for days, but the sad excitement had not been
productive of any fights, for the few married men in the camp prudently
absented themselves at night from "The Nugget" saloon, where the matter
was fiercely discussed every evening. There was, therefore, such an
utter absence of diversity of opinion, that the most quarrelsome
searched in vain for provocation.

On the afternoon of the day on which the opening events of this story