Rutland weekly herald. [volume] (Rutland, Vt.) 1859-1877, 1870-01-13
Bakers Cat.

A CALIFORNIA STORY BY MARK TWAIN.
Whenever Dick Baker of Deadhorse
Gulch was out of luck and little down
hearted, he would fall tc mourning over
the loss of wonderful cat he used to own
(for where woman and children are not,
men of kindly impulses take up with pets,
for they must love something). And he
always spoke of the strange sagacity Of
that cat with the air of man who be-
! lieyed in his secret hear, thsst there was
something human about it--maybe even
supernatural.
I heard him talking about this animal
once. He said;
Gentlemen, l used to have cat here,
by the name of Tom Quartz, which you'd
took an interest in, reckon-most any
body would. | had him here 8 years
and he was the remarkablest cat / ever
see. He was a large gray one of the
Tom specie, and he had more hard, nat
ural sense than any man in his camp-and
power of dignaty-he wouldn't let
the gov'ner of California be familiar with
him. He never ketched rat in his life -
'peared to be above it. He never cared
for nothing but mining. He knowed more
about mining, that cat did, than any man
l ever see. You couldn't tell him moth
ing about placer digging - and as for
pocket mining, why he was just born for
it. He weuld dig out after me and Jim
when we went over the hills prospecting,
and he, would trot along behind us for as
much as five mile, if we went so far. And
he had the best judgement about mining
groUnd---why, you never see anything like
it. When we went to work, he'd scatter
a glance around, and if he didn't think
much Of the indications, he would give a
look as much as to say, "Well I'll have
to get you to excuse me, and without
another cord he'd hyste his nose into the
air and shove for home. But if the ground
suited him, he would lay low and keep
dark till the first pan Gas washed, and
then he would sidle up and take q look,
and if there was about six or seven grains
of gold he was satisfedo- he didn't want
no better prospectN thap that--and then
he'd lay down on our coats and snere
like steamboat till we'd struck the
pocket, and then get up and superintend.
Well, by-and-bye, up comes this quartz
excitement. And every sody was snto ito
everybody was picking aod blasting in
stead Of shoveling dirt On the hillside
everybody was putting pown shaft irp
stead of scraping the surface. Nothing
would do Jim but we must tackle the
lodges, too, and SO we did. We COM
menced putting down a shaft, and Tom
Quartz he begin to wonder what in the
Dickens it was all about He hadn't ever
seen any mining like that before and he
was all upset, as you may say = he
couldn't come to a right understanding of
it no way it was too manyepr him. He
was doVD on i too, you bet you--- he
was down on It powerful always
to consider it the cussedeSt fool
ishness out. But that cat, you know, he
was always agin neW-fangled arrange
menS-somehow he could never abide
EN-. You know how it is with old habits.
But by-aud-bye Tom Quartz begin to get
little, though he never could
altogether understand that eternal sinking
of a shaft and never panning cut any
thing. At last be got to coming down in
the shaft, hisself, to try to cypher it out. |
And when he'd got the blues, and feel
kind O. scrufy, aggravated and disguised I
knowing, as he did, that the bills was
running up all the time aud we warn't
making a cent-he would curl up on
gunny sack in the corner and GO to sleep.
Well, one day when the shaft was down
about eight foot, the rock got so hard
that we had to put in hlast-the first
blasting we'd ever done since Tom. Quartz
was born. And then we lit the fuze and