A singular genius known as “Slippery Joe,” whose character reflected the twofold qualities of bummer and loafer, hung around the saloons and restaurants in the early days of Bannack. He worked when compelled by necessity, and was never known to buy “a square meal.” One evening he was an on-looker at a party of miners who were playing euchre in Kustar’s bakery. Their frequent potations, as was often the case, developing first noise, then dispute, then quarrel, finally culminated in a fight and general row. Pistols and knives were drawn, one man was badly stabbed, and several shots fired. The by-standers stampeded through the door and into the street, to avoid injury. One man was prostrate, and another bent over him, with an upraised knife. Kustar and his bartender were engaged in quelling the _mêlée_. Seizing this opportunity, Slippery Joe stole behind the counter, and taking a couple of pies from the shelf, mashed them out of shape with his knuckles, and laid them, still in the tin plates, on the floor near the combatants. He did not dare to steal the pies, knowing that detection would result in his banishment from the gulch. Kustar, discovering them after the fight was over, supposed from the appearance they presented, that they had been jarred from the shelf and trodden upon. He was about casting them into the street, when Joe stepped forward, and offered twenty-five cents for them, pies at the time being sold at a dollar apiece. Glad to sell them at any price, Kustar regarded the quarter of a dollar as clear gain, and the sneak owed his supper to his criminal ingenuity. This same slippery individual was the hero of another foraging exploit, which, however we may regard it in a moral aspect, was not discreditable to his strategic perspicacity. Two partners in a mining claim had quarrelled, fought, and so far reconciled differences as to agree to live together. One day a load of potatoes, the first that we had had for eight months, and a great luxury at sixty cents per pound, arrived from the Bitter Root Valley. The two miners bought several pounds, and agreed upon having a holiday, with an old-fashioned stew for dinner at three o’clock P.M. Joe had epicurean tastes, and longed for a dish of the stew. He stationed himself near the door of the cabin. Just after it was taken from the pan, and placed, steaming hot, between the partners, and one was in the act of slicing the loaf, Joe entered, and with much adroitness introduced the subject of former difference. This brought on a dispute, and the two men rose from the table and rushed into the street to engage in a fist fight. While thus employed, Joe made a single meal of the entire stew.