An Irishman named Pat O'Halloran was a prospector and miner, and like most of the early day miners, was fond of a drink now and then. He would frequently sit around the saloons watching the card games until a very late hour, or rather, early morning hour. One dark night he started for home, loaded a little beyond his capacity. Not being able to keep the road, he fell into a prospect hole. The hole was about forty feet deep and Pat went to the bottom. The next morning the ditch-tender going his rounds, heard someone calling and finally located old Pat in the bottom of the prospect hole. He went for help. The men got a windless and bucket and after some effort drew him near the surface. Now Pat was an uncompromising Democrat, and as he approached the top he noticed that a preacher, who was the leading Republican in the neighborhood, was one of his rescuers. He commanded them to lower him again and "go and get some Democrats to haul me out," saying "I don't want that black abolitionist to help me out." So they had to lower him until they could find Democrats enough to pull him out. We were eating breakfast when a man came to get my husband to assist in pulling the Irishman to the surface and he came back laughing heartily at Pat's political stubbornness. The editor of the Democratic paper gave him a life subscription to his paper and Pat lived fifteen years to read it; he then decided he had enjoyed it long enough and suicided. We had many interesting neighbors, men and women of considerable force of character. In the early days of the gold excitement in southern Oregon and northern California a man and his wife, by the name of Redfield, located a homestead on Cow Creek. They built a house and ran a station where travelers were accommodated with lodging and food. Attacks by Indians were frequent, but they stayed and fought it out with them. In one of these attacks, Mrs. Redfield was severely wounded in the hip, but even this did not dismay them and they staid with their home and continued to fight it out. During the civil war she was a Union sympathizer and he was equally strong on the rebel side. Whenever they would get news of a Union victory, she would give a banquet and invite all their friends to celebrate; when news of a Rebel victory came, he, in turn, would give a banquet and call all the friends together. After the close of the war, he was told that he would not be allowed to vote and that if he attempted to do so, his vote would be challenged. He said, "All right"; but on election day he was at the polls. He had a long muzzle-loading gun and was known to be a sure shot. He folded his ballot and stuck it in the muzzle of "old Betsy" and handed it to the clerk, who took it without protest and no one else challenged his vote.