Joe Gorsline, a graduate of Columbia, with a background of wealth, came to Ballarat during the rush, looked over the town. “Wouldn’t spend another day in this dump for all the gold in the mint,” he announced. He had a few drinks, heard a few yarns, eyed a few girls in the honkies. It was all new to Joe, but something about the informalities of life appealed to him and in a little while he was renamed Joe Goose. Then the town’s constable shot its Judge and Ballarat chose him to succeed the deceased. Not liking the laws of the code, he made a batch of his own, which were never questioned. While watching the flow of time and liquor, he “went desert” and put aside the things that might have been for the more alluring things-as-they-are. When Ballarat became a ghost town, Joe Gorsline took his body to the city, but his soul remained and years afterward when he died, a hearse came down the mountain and in it was Joe Gorsline, home again. He is buried in a little cemetery out on the flat and in the spring the golden sun cups, grow all around and you walk on them to get to his grave. Adding a cultural touch to Ballarat was an English nobleman who “going desert” tossed his title out of the window, donned overalls and brogans and promptly earned the approving verdict, “An all right guy.” Soon he was drinking with the toper and dancing with the demimonde. Like others, he did his own cooking and washing. He lived in a ’dobe cabin which, because it was on the main street, had its window shades always down. But there was one little custom of his British routine he never abandoned and this was discovered by accident. He stopped in John Lambert’s saloon one evening before going to his cabin for dinner. He left his watch on the bar and had gone before Lambert noticed it. An hour later Lambert, having an opportunity to get away, took the watch to the cabin. John thus reported what he saw: “He was eating his dinner and bigod—he had on a white shirt, wing collar, and swallow tail.” Ballarat chuckled but no one suggested a lynching party. They knew how deep grow the roots in the soil one loves. “Maybe,” said Lambert, “that’s why John Bull always wins the last battle. They give up nothing.” A familiar figure throughout Death Valley country was Johnny-Behind-the-Gun—small and wiry and as much a part of the land as the lizard. His moniker was acquired from his habit of settling disputes without cluttering up the courts. Johnny, whose name was Cyte, accounted for three or four sizable fortunes. Having sold a claim for $35,000 he once bought a saloon and gambling hall in Rhyolite, forswearing prospecting forever. Johnny advertised his whiskey by drinking it and the squareness of his game, by sitting in it. One night the gentleman opposite was overwhelmed with luck and his pockets bulged with $30,000 of Johnny’s money. Having lost his last chip, Johnny said, “I’ll put up dis place. Ve play vun hand and quit.”