How
the component parts of the house, few and simple as
they were, had been assembled at that almost inac-
cessible point is a problem in the solution of which
there would be greater satisfaction than advantage.
Possibly the creek bed is a reformed road. It is
certain that the gulch was at one time pretty thor-
oughly prospected by miners, who must have had
some means of getting in with at least pack animals
carrying tools and supplies; their profits, apparently,
were not such as would have justified any consider-
able outlay to connect Macarger's Gulch with any
centre of civilization enjoying the distinction of a
sawmill. The house, however, was there, most of it.
It lacked a door and a window frame, and the
chimney of mud and stones had fallen into an un-
lovely heap, overgrown with rank weeds. Such
humble furniture as there may once have been and
much of the lower weather-boarding, had served as
fuel in the camp fires of hunters; as had also, prob-
ably, the kerbing of an old well, which at the time I
write of existed in the form of a rather wide but
not very deep depression near by.
One afternoon in the summer of 1874, I passed up
Macarger's Gulch from the narrow valley into which
it opens, by following the dry bed of the brook. I
was quail-shooting and had made a bag of about a
dozen birds by the time I had reached the house
described, of whose existence I was until then un-
aware.
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