dry one, and at the junction of the two is a level space of two or
three acres, and there a few years ago stood an old board house
containing one small room. How the component parts of the house, few
and simple as they were, had been assembled at that almost
inaccessible point is a problem in the solution of which there would
be greater satisfaction than advantage. Possibly the creek bed is a
reformed road. It is certain that the gulch was at one time pretty
thoroughly prospected by miners, who must have had some means of
getting in with at least pack animals carrying tools and supplies;
their profits, apparently, were not such as would have justified any
considerable outlay to connect Macarger's Gulch with any center of
civilization enjoying the distinction of a sawmill. The house,
however, was there, most of it. It lacked a door and a window frame,
and the chimney of mud and stones had fallen into an unlovely heap,
overgrown with rank weeds. Such humble furniture as there may once
have been and much of the lower weatherboarding, had served as fuel
in the camp fires of hunters; as had also, probably, the curbing of
an old well, which at the time I write of existed in the form of a
rather wide but not very deep depression near by.

One afternoon in the summer of 1874, I passed up Macarger's Gulch
from the narrow valley into which it opens, by following the dry bed
of the brook. I was quail-shooting and had made a bag of about a
dozen birds by the time I had reached the house described, of whose
existence I was until then unaware. After rather carelessly
inspecting the ruin I resumed my sport, and having fairly good
success prolonged it until near sunset, when it occurred to me that I
was a long way from any human habitation--too far to reach one by
nightfall. But in my game bag was food, and the old house would
afford shelter, if shelter were needed on a warm and dewless night in