The Young Miner | Page 4

that tongue of yours. This is a free country, and if I choose to decline
your whiskey, there's no law against it that I know of."
"You're a white-livered sneak!"
Missouri Jack did not proceed with his remarks, for John Miles, seizing
him by the shoulder, tripped him up, and strode away, leaving him
prostrate, and pouring out a volley of curses. Being a bully, and

cowardly as most bullies are, he did not pursue his broad-shouldered
enemy, but vowed vengeance whenever a good opportunity came.
In fact, the only one of the original miners who accepted Jack's
invitation was Lawrence Peabody.
"Step in, stranger, and have a drink!" said Jack, a little dubiously,
having met with such poor luck heretofore.
The young Bostonian paused. He was not a drinker at home, but in his
discontent and disappointment he was tempted.
"My dear sir, you are very polite," he said.
"I hope you ain't one of them temperance sneaks," said Jack, his brow
clouding in anticipation of a refusal.
"I assure you I am not," Peabody hastened to say. "I have participated
in convivial scenes more than once in Boston."
"I don't understand college talk," said Jack; "but if you want a glass of
prime whiskey, just say the word."
"I don't care if I do," said Peabody, following his new friend into the
saloon.
The draught of prime whiskey scorched his throat as he swallowed it
down, but it was followed by a sense of exhilaration, and Peabody's
tongue was loosened.
"You're a gentleman!" said Missouri Jack. "You ain't like them fellows
you're with. They're sneaks."
"Really, you compliment me, Mr.--, what may I call your name?"
"Missouri Jack--that's the peg I hang on to."
"My dear Mr. Jack, I am glad to know you. You are really quite an
accession to our settlement."

"Well, if I ain't, my saloon is. How you've managed to live so long
without liquor beats me. Why, it ain't civilized."
"It was pretty dull," admitted Peabody.
"No life, no amusement; for all the world like a parcel of Methodists.
What luck have you met with, stranger?"
"Beastly luck!" answered Peabody. "I tell you, Mr. Jack, California's a
fraud. Many a time I've regretted leaving Boston, where I lived in style,
and moved in the first circles, for such a place as this. Positively, Mr.
Jack, I feel like a tramp, and I'm afraid I look like one. If my
fashionable friends could see me now, they wouldn't know me."
"I ain't got no fashionable friends, and I don't want any," growled
Missouri Jack, spitting on the floor. "What I want is, to meet gentlemen
that ain't afraid to drink like gentlemen. I say, stranger, you'd better
leave them Methodist fellers, and join our gang."
"Thank you, Mr. Jack, you're very kind, and I'll think of it," said
Peabody, diplomatically. Though a little exhilarated, he was not quite
blind to the character of the man with whom he was fraternizing, and
had too much real refinement to enjoy his coarseness.
"Have another drink!"
"Thank you."
Peabody drank again, this time with a friend of Jack's, a man of his own
stripe, who straggled into the saloon.
"Do you play euchre?" asked Jack, producing a dirty pack of cards.
"I know little of it," said Peabody; "but I'll try a game."
"Then you and me and Bill here will have a game."
"All right," said Peabody, glad to while away the time.

"What'll you put up on your game, stranger?" asked Bill.
"You don't mean to play for money, do you?" asked Peabody, a little
startled.
"Sartain I do. What's the good of playin' for nothing?"
So the young Bostonian, out of his modest pile was tempted to stake an
ounce of gold-dust. Though his head was hardly in a condition to
follow the game intelligently, he won, or at least Bill and Jack told him
he had, and for the first time Lawrence felt the rapture of the successful
gambler, as he gathered in his winnings.
"He plays a steep game, Bill," said Jack.
"Tip-top--A No. 1."
"I believe I do play a pretty good game," said the flattered Peabody.
"My friends in Boston used to say so."
"You're hard to beat, and no mistake," said Bill. "Try another game."
"I'm ready, gentlemen," said Peabody, with alacrity.
"It's a great deal easier earning money this way," he reflected, regarding
complacently the two ounces of dust which represented his winnings,
"than washing dirt out of the river." And the poor dupe congratulated
himself that a new way of securing the favors of fortune had been
opened to him.
The reader will easily guess that Lawrence Peabody did not win the
next game, nor will he be surprised to hear that when he left the saloon
his pockets were