THE WEST ' SHORE.
Htii Yeah.
FEBRUARY, 1888.
No. 1
A LAW UNTO HERSELF.
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Y first meeting with Roy Ma
son took placo near a small
mining town in Eastern
Oregon, in 18G1. My last
meeting with him, up to
date, occurred more than a
quarter of a century later,
on the 8th day of Novem
ber, 1887, when, among the
thousands who flocked to the
various polling places of Ore
gon, my eyes chanced to single
--w nnt his nnforcottpn form. In a
U ' M l -J .moment I was erasping his hand,
vS'Sj scanning his worn face and silvery
UNliF vsNin nair, wun a queer pain ai my ut-an,
as a whole flood of old-time recollections came surg
ing up through the dim vistas of the half-forgotten
past But of this latter meeting, more anon.
I am a plain, old-fashioned story teller, and pos
sess not the modern trick of beginning my story at
its ending, only to skip back, presently, over half a
lifetime, and fill in the interim with the patchwork of
events. I must needs do my skipping ere I begin,
and thus find myself borne back, in fancy, to the
long, snowy winter of 'CI, and a certain little mining
town that nestled at the foot of one of the loftiest
spurs of the Blue mountains.
From this town which I will call Yum Yum,
principally because that doesn't sound anything like
its real name a well-worn pack trail wound up and
around the mountain to the northward, and it was
near this trail, about two miles from town, on a lofty
perch in the rugged canyon wall, that I halted one
sunny October afternoon in C1, and proceeded to
build a cabin for my winter quarters.
I had been prospecting in the vicinity through
out August and September, and believed I had seen
enough to justify me in sticking to that locality and
resuming my operations the following season.
" But," I think I hear the reader exclaim, " I
thought miners always flocked to the nearest towns
to take up their winter quarters! "
As a rule, yen, they do; but all rules aro subject
to exceptions, and occasionally thero is a miner who
declines to "flock," who doesn't boo auy thing manly
or scnsiblo in pouring each summer's earnings into
the whisky tills and faro banks of tho "nearet
town." I was one of thoso exceptions, principally
because of a certain true and trusting liUlo woman,
away down in California, waiting patiently for mo to
" strike something " and return to her. Then, too, I
have an innato lovo of Nature in her mountain soli
tudes. Tho spot I selected for my building sito was pic
turesquely beautiful in its ruggodness. True, tho
" lay of tho land " was pretty steep for building pur
poses, and I being, perforce, contractor, carjwnter
and builder combined, with no recollection of over
having served an apprenticeship in cither branch,
found my task a rather arduous ono.
From tho very first, tho foundation of my edifico
evinced a perverse determination to follow tho Homo
what precipitous slopo of tho mountain side, and al
though I extemporized quite a satisfactory careu.
ter's level by filling my frying pan with water, and
pcrseveringly blocked up my sills until tho water
ceased to overflow on tho lower sido of tho pan; yet,
strango to say, when my mansion was completed, tho
floor was not level; in fact, tho down grado toward
tho front door was so marked that I found it net-en-sary
to "down brakes" every timo I started for that
point of egress, a, without that precaution, I would
havo been liablo to continue my way dowu tho meun.
tain sido indefinitely. Asido from this slight sourco
of annoyance, I was rather proud of tho result of
my handiwork, with iU ono slatted and framelcs
window, its thatched roof, and towering chimney of
sticks and mud. Tho fircplaco was broad and deep,
and I noticed with a thrill of prido that when I filled