Oregon border to the southern lakes.

They will never tell all they know - these big old trees - of those who
went in by the door and "came out by the cellar" of Tom Bell's
stronghold. In the end the place fell, in the war between order and
lawlessness and, as the pessimists love to assert, a woman, as usual,
was the cause of it. The tale is told:

Rosa Phillips sat in the Mountaineer House strumming a Spanish guitar,
and singing,

"There's a turned down page, as some writer says, in every human life,
A hidden story of happier days, of peace amidst the strife.
A folded down leaf which the world knows not. A love dream rudely crushed,
The sight of a face that is not forgot. Although the voice be hushed."

She rose and stood at a window, holding the dusty curtain aside with one
white hand and peering cautiously forth into the dusk. A horse was
galloping up the Folsom road. The horseman was near - was under the
trees in front - was past - and gone down the river road without
slackening his animal's rapid gait.

"He does not stop at the Mountaineer House these days," said Tom Bell's
sneering voice at her elbow. "There is a new actress at the opera house
in Rattlesnake."

The woman's dark eyes flashed, but she answered evenly enough:

"He does not stop, the handsome Dick, so you, senor, have not the cause
to be jealous. Is it not so?"