OTHER STORIES AND SKETCHES


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THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP


There was commotion in Roaring Camp. It could not have been a fight,
for in 1850 that was not novel enough to have called together the
entire settlement. The ditches and claims were not only deserted, but
"Tuttle's grocery" had contributed its gamblers, who, it will be
remembered, calmly continued their game the day that French Pete and
Kanaka Joe shot each other to death over the bar in the front room.
The whole camp was collected before a rude cabin on the outer edge of
the clearing. Conversation was carried on in a low tone, but the name
of a woman was frequently repeated. It was a name familiar enough in
the camp,--"Cherokee Sal."

Perhaps the less said of her the better. She was a coarse and, it is
to be feared, a very sinful woman. But at that time she was the only
woman in Roaring Camp, and was just then lying in sore extremity, when
she most needed the ministration of her own sex. Dissolute, abandoned,
and irreclaimable, she was yet suffering a martyrdom hard enough to
bear even when veiled by sympathizing womanhood, but now terrible in
her loneliness. The primal curse had come to her in that original
isolation which must have made the punishment of the first