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"Qhiverin' lizards!" said Calamity O Anne, with force and conviction, "what else is there to this here world, anyhow? We bounce into it, an' then we spend fifty or sixty years dodgin' this way an' dodgin' that, a-tryin' to keep vittals in our stummicks an' shoes on our feet, an' then — blim! Up conies th' fool-killer an' swats us under th' offside ear, an' then they're walkin' slow behind us, an' gushin' a lot o' stuff about how nice we was an' all, while we 're a-lay in ' up in a pine box, no better off 'n when we started. Tell me about this here life ! Aint I seen forty-five years o' it? No, sirree, they aint nothin' in it. I know!"
Whereupon Calamity, having relieved herself of her morning burden of pessimism, flattened herself, a bit more against her little slant-board shack, gazed soulfully ahead, into the faces of her two girl listeners, and sighed. She waited a second for a reply, and, receiving none, she dolefully scratched a match and lit the stubby clay pipe which was her constant companion. Then she allowed her eyes to travel far over the rough, tumbled country and up to where the dumpy shed and aspiring shaft of the White Eagle Mine showed on the distant hill.
Calamity Anne wasn't much on style. She wasn't much on anything that pertained to the big world "back yonder," for Calamity had been a character of some mysticism and much interest for more years than
even old miners of Circle Ridge cared to count. Pessimistic, yet filled with a grim humor ; gruff, yet kindly, with a motherly something which seemed out of place in her rough being; shrewd, yet childish in her likes; essentially masculine in her dress and her habits, Calamity had occupied her little shack alone ever since Circle Ridge was Circle Ridge. Strong as the strongest man, she often took her place with the other miners who worked the White Eagle — and as she worked, she lived. They smoked, so did she. They wore slouch hats, she did likewise. They encased their feet in boots — Calamity was not behind. They played their games of draw and faro, and once Calamity had taken the left ear off a tinhorn from Denver with a forty-four bullet, and, since that day, respect for her had increased wonderfully. And thus it had come about that her place in Circle Ridge was just as great and just as important as that of anybody. She chose her friends from among whom she desired — and it had happened that her motherly instinct was working at its keenest the day she had met Lola Barton and Jane Baxter. Girls they were, it was true, young girls of the camp, pretty with the prettiness which life in the outdoor gives one, congenial — and, best of all, they seemed to respect Calamity Anne's views, no matter how pessimistic they might be. And, knowing this, the elderly one gave her slouch hat a forward twitch, dragged hard
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