Chicken Bill was not beautiful with his shock of coarse hair and foul pipe in mouth. Doubtless, Chicken Bill was likewise an uncompromising villain. Indeed, Pike’s Peak Martin, expert both of men and mines, one evening in the Four Flush saloon, casually, but with insulting fullness, set these things forth to Chicken Bill himself; and while Pike’s Peak Martin was always talking, he was not always wrong.

On this occasion of Pike’s Peak Martin’s frankness, Chicken Bill, albeit he carried contradiction at his belt in the shape of a six-shooter, walked away without attempting either denial or reproof. This conduct, painful to the sentiment of Timberline, had the two-fold effect of confirming Pike’s Peak Martin’s utterances in the minds of men, and telling against the repute of Chicken Bill for that personal courage which is the great first virtue the Southwest demands.

Old Man Granger found the earliest gold in Arizona Gulch. And hot on the news of the strike came Chicken Bill. It was the latter’s boast about the bar-rooms of Timberline that he was second to come into the canyon; and as this was the only word of truth of which Chicken Bill was guilty while he honored the camp with his presence, it deserves a record.

Following Old Man Granger’s discovery of his Old Age mine, came not only Chicken Bill, but others; within a week there arose the bubbling camp of Timberline. There were saloons and hurdy-gurdies and stores and restaurants and a bank and a corral and a stage station and an express office and a post-office and an assay office and board sidewalks and red lights and many another plain evidence of civilization. Even a theatre was threatened; and, to add to the gayety as well as the wealth of the baby metropolis, those sundry cattlemen having ranges and habitats within the oak-brushed hills about, began to make Timberline their headquarters and transact their business and their debauches in its throbbing midst.



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Chicken Bill was reasonably perfect in all accomplishments of the Southwest. He could work cattle; he could rope, throw, and hog-tie his steer; he could keep up his end at flanking, branding, and ear-marking in a June corral; he could saddle and ride a wild, unbroken bronco; he could make baking-powder biscuit so well flavored and light as to compel the compliments of those jealous epicures of the cow-camps who devoured them.

Yet Chicken Bill would not work on the ranges. There were no cards permitted in the camps, and whiskey was debarred as if each bottle held a rattlesnake. Altogether a jovial soul, and one given to revelry, would fly from them in disgust.

“It’s too lonesome a play for me, this punchin’ cattle,” observed Chicken Bill, and so eschewed it.

While Pike’s Peak Martin expounded this aversion on the part of Chicken Bill, as well as the latter’s refusal to pick and dig and drill and blast in the Timberline mines, as mere laziness, public feeling, though it despised the culprit, was inclined to tolerate him in his shiftlessness. American independence in the Southwest is held to be inclusive of the personal right to refuse all forms of labor. Wherefore Chicken Bill was safe even from criticism as he hung about the saloons and faro rooms and lived his life of chosen vagabondage.

Our low-flung hero made shift in various ways. Did he find a tenderfoot whom he could cheat at cards, he borrowed a stake—sometimes, when the subject was uncommonly tender, from the victim himself—and therewith took a small sum at poker or seven-up. Another method of trivial fraud, now and then successful with Chicken Bill, was to plant a handful of brass nuggets, each of about an ounce in weight, under a little waterfall that broke into the canyon just below the windmill. There was a deal of mineral in this feeble side-stream, and the brass nuggets became coated and queer of color.

One of these Chicken Bill was able at intervals to impose at a profit upon a stranger, by swearing doughtily that it was virgin gold.

It came to pass, however, that Chicken Bill, despairing of fortune by the cheap processes of penny-ante and spurious nuggets, decided on a coup. He would stake out a claim, drift it and timber it, and then salt it to the limit of all that was possible in the science of claim-salting. Then would he sell it to the first Christian with more money than sagacity who came moved to buy a mine.

Chicken Bill was no amateur of mines. He knew the business as he knew the cow trade, and avoided it for the same reason of indolence. In his time, and after some windfall at faro-bank, Chicken Bill had grub-staked prospectors who were to “give him half” and who never came back. In his turn Chicken Bill was grub-staked by others, in which event he never came back. But it went with other experiences to teach him the trade, and on the morning when with pick and paraphernalia Chicken Bill pitched camp in Arizona Gulch a mile beyond the farthest, and where it was known to all no mineral lurked, he brought with him a knowledge of the miner’s art, and began his digging with intelligent spirit. Moreover, the heart of Chicken Bill was stout for the work; for was he not planning a swindle? and did not that thought of itself swell his bosom with a mighty peace?

Once upon a time Chicken Bill had had a partner.

This partner was frequently on the lips of Chicken Bill, especially when our hero was in his cups. He was always mentioned with a gush of tears, this partner, and his name as furnished by Chicken Bill was Flim Flam Murphy. Flim Flam had met death somewhere in the Gunnison country while making good his name, and passed with the smoke of the Colt’s-44 that dismissed him. But Chicken Bill reverenced the memory of this talented man and was ready to honor him, and, having staked out his claim with the fraudulent purpose aforesaid, filed on it appropriately as “The Flim Flam Murphy.”

It would be unjust to the intelligence of Timberline to permit one for a moment to suppose that the dullest of her male citizenry lived unaware of the ignoble plans of Chicken Bill. That he proposed to salt a claim and therewith ensnare the stranger within the local gates were truths which all men knew. But all men cared not; and mention of the enterprise when the miracle of Chicken Bill at work found occasional comment over the bars, aroused nothing save a sluggish curiosity as to whether Chicken Bill would succeed. No thought of warning the unwary arose in the Timberline heart.

“It’s the proper play,” observed Pike’s Peak Martin, representative of Timberline feeling, “to let every gent seelect his own licker an’ hobble his own hoss. If Chicken Bill can down anybody for his bankroll without making a gun play to land the trick, thar’s no call for the public to interfere.”

It was about this time that Chicken Bill added to his ornate scheme of claim-salting—a plain affair of the heart. The lady to thus cast her spell over Chicken Bill was known as Deadwood Maggie and flourished a popular waitress in the Belle union Hotel. Timberline thought well of Deadwood Maggie, and her place in general favor found suggestion in a remark of Pike’s Peak Martin.

“Deadwood Maggie,” observed that excellent spirit, as he replaced his glass on the Four Flush bar and turned to an individual who had been guilty of words derogatory to the lady in question; “Dead-wood Maggie is a virchoous young female, an’ it shore frets me to hear her lightly allooded to.”

As Pike’s Peak Martin’s disapproval took the violent form of smiting the maligner upon the head with an 8-inch pistol, the social status of the lady was ever after regarded as fixed.

Chicken Bill was not the one to eat his heart in silence, and his passion was but one day old when he laid hand and fortune at Deadwood Maggie’s feet. That maiden for her part displayed a suspicious front, born perhaps of an experience of the perfidy of man. Deadwood Maggie was inclined to a scorn of Chicken Bill and his proffer of instant wedlock.

“Not on your life!” was Deadwood Maggie’s reply.

But Chicken Bill persisted; he longed more ardently because of this rebuff. To soften Deadwood Maggie he threw a gallant arm about her and drew her to his bosom.

“Don’t be in sech a hurry to lose me,” said Chicken Bill on this sentimental occasion.

Deadwood Maggie was arranging tables at the time for those guests who from mine and store and bar-room would come, stamping and famishing, an hour later. Chicken Bill and she for the moment had the apartment to themselves. Goaded by her lover’s sweet persistency, and unable to phrase a retort that should do her feelings justice, Deadwood Maggie fell to the trite expedient of breaking a butter-dish on the head of Chicken Bill.

“Now pull your freight,” said she, “or I’ll chunk you up with all the crockery in the camp.”

Fin............