John Ermine _Frontispiece_ PAGE The Chairman 5 A Crow 15 "In the middle of the bunch sat Weasel" 31 "He called the boy to him and put his arm around him" 47 Wolf-Voice 84 "'Halt! Who goes there?'" 97 Captain Lewis 105 Major Ben Searles 117 "Bullets kicked up the dust" 127 Katherine 142 The Englishman 144 "'Will you please carry my parasol for me?'" 157 Shockley 182 "He bore the limp form to the sands" 209 "A tremendous bang roared around the room" 239 Ramon 254 JOHN ERMINE CHAPTER I VIRGINIA CITY One fine morning in the fall of '64 Alder Gulch rolled up its shirt sleeves and fell to the upheaving, sluicing, drifting, and cradling of the gravel. It did not feel exactly like old-fashioned everyday work to the muddy, case-hardened diggers. Each man knew that by evening he would see the level of dust rise higher in his long buckskin gold-bags. All this made for the day when he could retire to the green East and marry some beautiful girl--thereafter having nothing to do but eat pie and smoke fragrant cigars in a basking sunshine of no-work. Pie up at Kustar's bake-shop was now one dollar a pie, and a pipe full of molasses and slivers was the best to be had in the market. Life was hard at Alder in those days--it was practical; and when its denizens became sentimental, it took these unlovely forms, sad to relate. [Illustration] Notwithstanding the hundreds who toiled in the gulches, Virginia City itself held hurrying crowds,--Mormon freighters, pack trains, ponies, dirty men off the trails, wan pilgrims, Indians, Chinese, and almost everything else not angelic. Into this bustle rode Rocky Dan, who, after dealing faro all night at the "Happy Days" shebang, had gone for a horseback ride through the hills to brighten his eyes and loosen his nerves. Reining up before this place, he tied his pony where a horse-boy from the livery corral could find it. Striding into that unhallowed hall of Sheol, he sang out, "Say, fellers, I've just seen a thing out in the hills which near knocked me off'en my horse. You couldn't guess what it was nohow. I don't believe half what I see and nothin' what I read, but it's out thar in the hills, and you can go throw your eyes over it yourselves."