Thompson over at Dry Creek sez that THAT'S where our reputation is playin' us! 'We've got her as a reward o' virtoo, and be d----d to us.' But," cautiously, "Thompson ain't drawed a sober breath since Christmas." The three men looked in each other's faces in silence.

The same thought occurred to each; the profane Thompson was right, and the woman's advent was the logical sequence of their own ethics.

Two years previously, the Buckeye Company had found gold on the South Fork, and had taken up claims.

Composed mainly of careful, provident, and thoughtful men,--some of cultivation and refinement,--they had adopted a certain orderly discipline for their own guidance solely, which, however, commended itself to later settlers, already weary of the lawlessness and reckless freedom which usually attended the inception of mining settlements.
Consequently the birth of Buckeye was accompanied with no dangerous travail; its infancy was free from the diseases of adolescent communities.

The settlers, without any express prohibition, had tacitly dispensed with gambling and drinking saloons; following the unwritten law of example, had laid aside their revolvers, and mingled together peacefully when their labors were ended, without a single peremptory regulation against drinking and playing, or carrying lethal weapons.
Nor had there been any test of fitness or qualification for citizenship through previous virtue.