"Ye needn't ladle out any of your forty-rod whiskey to me," he said
querulously to Steptoe, as he filed out with the rest of the party
through the bar-room into the adjacent apartment. "I want to keep my
head level till our business is over, and I reckon it wouldn't hurt you
and your gang to do the same. They're less likely to blab; and there are
few doors that whiskey won't unlock," he added, as Steptoe turned the
key in the door after the party had entered.
The room had evidently been used for meetings of directors or political
caucuses, and was roughly furnished with notched and whittled armchairs
and a single long deal table, on which were ink and pens. The men sat
down around it with a half-embarrassed, half-contemptuous attitude of
formality, their bent brows and isolated looks showing little community
of sentiment and scarcely an attempt to veil that individual selfishness
that was prominent. Still less was there any essay of companionship or
sympathy in the manner of Steptoe as he suddenly rapped on the table
with his knuckles.
"Gentlemen," he said, with a certain deliberation of utterance, as if
he enjoyed his own coarse directness, "I reckon you all have a sort of
general idea what you were picked up for, or you wouldn't be here.
But you may or may not know that for the present you are honest,
hard-working miners,--the backbone of the State of Californy,--and that
you have formed yourselves into a company called the 'Blue Jay,'
and you've settled yourselves on the Bar below Heavy Tree Hill, on a
deserted claim of the Marshall Brothers, not half a mile from where
the big strike was made five years ago.
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