On December 24, 1863, a gentle rain was still falling over the length and breadth of the Lone Star claim.  It had been falling for several days, had already called a faint spring color to the wan landscape, repairing with tender touches the ravages wrought by the proprietors, or charitably covering their faults.  The ragged seams in gulch and canyon lost their harsh outlines, a thin green mantle faintly clothed the torn and abraded hillside.  A few weeks more, and a veil of forgetfulness would be drawn over the feeble failures of the Lone Star claim.  The charming derelicts themselves, listening to the raindrops on the roof of their little cabin, gazed philosophically from the open door, and accepted the prospect as a moral discharge from their obligations.  Four of the five partners were present.  The Right and Left Bowers, Union Mills, and the Judge.

It is scarcely necessary to say that not one of these titles was the genuine name of its possessor.  The Right and Left Bowers were two brothers; their sobriquets, a cheerful adaptation from the favorite game of euchre, expressing their relative value in the camp.  The mere fact that Union Mills had at one time patched his trousers with an old flour sack legibly bearing that brand of its fabrication, was a tempting baptismal suggestion that the other partners could not forego.  The Judge, a singularly inequitable Missourian, with no knowledge whatever of the law, was an inspiration of gratuitous irony.

Union Mills, who had been for some time sitting placidly on the threshold with one leg exposed to the rain, from a sheer indolent inability to change his position, finally withdrew that weather-beaten member, and stood up.  The movement more or less deranged the attitudes of the other partners, and was received with cynical disfavor.  It was somewhat remarkable that, although generally giving the appearance of healthy youth and perfect physical condition, they one and all simulated the decrepitude of age and invalidism, and after limping about for a few moments, settled back again upon their bunks and stools in their former positions.  The Left Bower lazily replaced a bandage that he had worn around his ankle for weeks without any apparent necessity, and the Judge scrutinized with tender solicitude the faded cicatrix of a scratch upon his arm.  A passive hypochondria, born of their isolation, was the last ludicrously pathetic touch to their situation.

The immediate cause of this commotion felt the necessity of an explanation.

“It would have been just as easy for you to have stayed outside with your business leg, instead of dragging it into private life in that obtrusive way,” retorted the Right Bower; “but that exhaustive effort isn’t going to fill the pork barrel.  The grocery man at Dalton says—­what’s that he said?” he appealed lazily to the Judge.

“Said he reckoned the Lone Star was about played out, and he didn’t want any more in his—­thank you!” repeated the Judge with a mechanical effort of memory utterly devoid of personal or present interest.