Bob Hampton of Placer

Mr. Jack Moffat, president of the Bachelor Miners' Pleasure Club, had

embraced the idea of a reception for Miss Spencer with unbounded

enthusiasm. Indeed, the earliest conception of such an event found

birth within his fertile brain, and from the first he determined upon

making it the most notable social function ever known in that portion

of the Territory.

Heretofore the pastime of the Bachelors' Club had been largely

bibulous, and the members thereof had exhibited small inclination to

seek the ordinary methods of social relaxation as practised in

Glencaid. Pink teas, or indeed teas of any conceivable color, had

never proved sufficiently attractive to wean the members from the

chaste precincts of the Occidental or the Miners' Retreat, while the

mysterious pleasure of "Hunt the Slipper" and "Spat in and Spat out"

had likewise utterly failed to inveigle them from retirement. But Mr.

Moffat's example wrought an immediate miracle, so that, long before the

fateful hour arrived, every registered bachelor was laboring

industriously to make good the proud boast of their enthusiastic

president, that this was going to be "the swellest affair ever pulled

off west of the Missouri."

The large space above the Occidental was secured for the occasion, the

obstructing subdivisions knocked away, an entrance constructed with an

outside stairway leading up from a vacant lot, and the passage

connecting the saloon boarded up. Incidentally, Mr. Moffat took

occasion to announce that if "any snoozer got drunk and came up them

stairs" he would be thrown bodily out of a window. Mr. McNeil, who was

observing the preliminary proceedings with deep interest from a pile of

lumber opposite, sarcastically intimated that under such circumstances

the attendance of club members would be necessarily limited. Mr.

Moffat's reply it is manifestly impossible to quote literally. Mrs.

Guffy was employed to provide the requisite refreshments in the

palatial dining-hall of the hotel, while Buck Mason, the vigilant town

marshal, popularly supposed to know intimately the face of every

"rounder" in the Territory, agreed to collect the cards of invitation

at the door, and bar out obnoxious visitors.

These preliminaries having been duly attended to, Mr. Moffat and his

indefatigable committee of arrangements proceeded to master the details

of decoration and entertainment, drawing heavily upon the limited

resources of the local merchants, and even invading private homes in

search after beautifying material. Jim Lane drove his buckboard one

hundred and sixty miles to Cheyenne to gather up certain needed

articles of adornment, the selection of which could not be safely

confided to the inartistic taste of the stage-driver. Upon his rapid

return journey loaded down with spoils, Peg Brace, a cow-puncher in the

"Bar O" gang, rode recklessly alongside his speeding wheels for the

greater portion of the distance, apparently in most jovial humor, and

so unusually inquisitive as to make Mr. Lane, as he later expressed it,

"plum tired." The persistent rider finally deserted him, however, at

the ford over the Sinsiniwa, shouting derisively back from a safe

distance that the Miners' Club was a lot of chumps, and promising them

a severe "jolt" in the near future.