from the lungs of every prospector within a mile of it.
He paused in his flight at a new camp near La Paz, and there had better luck for the moment. He located on a small vein, or deposit, of "silver-copper glance," and sold it to a San Francisco capitalist for three hundred dollars. With this money he started a modest and unpretending "dead-fall," proposing to supply the honest miners with liquor and cards at a handsome advance on original cost. The first day's business was a success, and he began to entertain high hope of a change for the better. Vain hope! On the second day a stranger came into his shanty for a drink, and fell down dead with heart disease before reaching the counter. Bad news travels fast. In half an hour the rumor had gone abroad through the whole camp that the respected and lamented deceased (who had emigrated from Northern California or Southern Oregon on account of a lawsuit involving the question of title to a horse) had died just after, instead of just before, imbibing a glass of Concatenation Bill's best whisky.
It was the warm season, and the gold and copper-seekers of that district were an excitable set at any time, with no wholesome restraint upon their actions in the shape of courts and legal enactments. In an hour fifty men had assembled, and were engaged in sampling his liquor, and testing it as a Committee of the Whole, with a view of deciding whether it would kill or not. It did not directly kill those who drank it then and there, without paying a cent for it, but it led to a fight, in which two honest miners were laid
