Year: 1873

AmonG neFN the aH' iariners iaii;s near the Bend
there was ample ability to conduct
researches beset by far more difficulties
than was that Of the origin of the
Pixies but charge of buckshot which
a good-natured Yankee received one
evening. soon after putting questions
TO q venerable Pike, eXerted great
depressing influence upon the spirit Of
investigation. They were not blood.
thirsty, these Pixies but they had good
reason to suspect all inquirers of being
at least deputy sheriiis, if not worse,
and a Pixies hatred of officers of the
law is equalled in intensity only by his
hatred of manual labor.


But while there was doubt As TO the
father-land of the little colony of Pixies
at Jagger's Bend, their every neighbor
would willingly make affidavit as to
the cause of their locating and their
remaining at the Bend. When human
itarians and optimists argued that it
was because the water was good and
convenient, that the Bend itself caught
enough drift-wood, and that the dirt
would yield little gold when manipu-
lated by placer and pan. all farmers
and stock owners would freely admit
the validity of these reasons but the
admission was made with counte-
nance whose Indignation and sorrow
indicated that the greater causes were
yet unnamed. With eyes speaking
emotions which words could not ex-
press, they would point to sections of
wheat fields minus their grain-bearng
heads to hides and hoofs of cattle un-
slaughtered by themselves to mothers
of promising calves, whose tender
bleatings answered not the maternal
call to the places which had once
known fine horses, but had been un-
tenanted since certain Pixies had gone
across the mountains for game. They
would accuse no man wrongfully but
in country where all farmers had
wheat and cattle and horses, and were
prowling Indians and Mexicans were
not, how could these disappearance
occur?


But to people owning no property in
the neighborhood-to tourists and
artists-the Pike settlement at the
Bend was as interesting and ugly as a
| Skye terrier. The architecture of the
village was of original style, and nc
duplicate existed. OF the half dozen
residences. one was composed exclu-
sively of sod, another of bark, yet
another Of poles, rooted with a wagon
cover, and plastered on the outside
with mud; the fourth was of slabs,
nicely split from logs which had drift
ed into the Bend the fifth was of hide
stretched over frame, strictly Gothic
from foundation TO ridgepole; while
the sixth, burrowed into the hillside
displayed only the barrel which formed
its chimney


A more aristocratic community did
not exist on the Pacific coast. Visit
the Pixies when you would, you coult
never see any one working. d
churches, school-houses, stores, ant
other plebeian institutions, there were
none, and no Pike bemeaned himsel
by entering trade or soiling his hand:
by agriculture.


Yet into this peaceful, contented
neighborhood there found his way 6
visitor who had been everywhere in thu
world without once being made wei
come. He came to the house built o
slabs, and threatened the wife Of San
Trotwine, owner of the house ant
Sam, after summing himself uneasil,
for day or two, mounted pony ant
rode off for a doctor to drive the in
truder away.


, When he returned he found all tn
men in the camp seated on log il
} front Of his own door, and then b


knew he must prepare for the worst