Flip and Found at Blazing Star | Page 3

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This etext was prepared by Donald Lainson, [email protected].

FOUND AT BLAZING STAR
by Bret Harte

The rain had only ceased with the gray streaks of morning at Blazing
Star, and the settlement awoke to a moral sense of cleanliness, and the
finding of forgotten knives, tin cups, and smaller camp utensils, where
the heavy showers had washed away the debris and dust heaps before
the cabin doors. Indeed, it was recorded in Blazing Star that a fortunate
early riser had once picked up on the highway a solid chunk of gold
quartz which the rain had freed from its incumbering soil, and washed
into immediate and glittering popularity. Possibly this may have been
the reason why early risers in that locality, during the rainy season,
adopted a thoughtful habit of body, and seldom lifted their eyes to the
rifted or india-ink washed skies above them.
"Cass" Beard had risen early that morning, but not with a view to
discovery. A leak in his cabin roof,--quite consistent with his careless,
improvident habits,--had roused him at 4 A. M., with a flooded "bunk"

and wet blankets. The chips from his wood pile refused to kindle a fire
to dry his bed-clothes, and he had recourse to a more provident
neighbor's to supply the deficiency. This was nearly opposite. Mr.
Cassius crossed the highway, and stopped suddenly. Something
glittered in the nearest red pool before him. Gold, surely! But,
wonderful to relate, not an irregular, shapeless fragment of crude ore,
fresh from Nature's crucible, but a bit of jeweler's handicraft in the
form of a plain gold ring. Looking at it more attentively, he saw that it
bore the inscription, "May to Cass."
Like most of his fellow gold-seekers, Cass was superstitious. "Cass!"
His own name! He tried the ring. It fitted his little finger closely. It was
evidently a woman's ring. He looked up and down the highway. No one
was yet stirring. Little pools of water in the red road were beginning to
glitter and grow rosy from the far-flushing east, but there was no trace
of the owner of the shining waif. He knew that there was no woman in
camp, and among his few comrades in the settlement he remembered to
have seen none wearing an ornament like that. Again, the coincidence
of the