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Show Typical Tarn of the Ohampion Liar of the Mining Region of the Sierras, AN ANTELOPE'S MIGHTY LEAPS. Deceptive False Curls Inventor of the Detective Camera The Editor Gave Up in Disgust. In one of tke old mining towns of t m part of California, away up on the slope uf the Sierra Nevadaa, there lived several sev-eral years ago, during the active working work-ing of the hydraulio mines, a celebrated character whose modesty, as he still lives in the land of the living, forbidB my giving bis nape. His justly celebrated cele-brated fame arose from his remarkable power of narration. He could take any trivial occurrence that happened in town, dress it up in such glowing colors and throw so many vivid sidelights upon it that not even the participants themselves them-selves could recognise it G. B. undoubtedly un-doubtedly wore for years the belt as champion liar of that mining region, and fine of his stories, that I happened to hear him relate, I think is worth prewiring. pre-wiring. I will let him tell it in his own fords: "It was in the spring of '00 that a train of sixty-five on us started across the plains for Californy. The most on us were young men an' able to rough it, but we had three famblies, with about a dozen young una among us, aa' one baby was born on the way. Wal, of course, fresh meat soon got mighty scase, as there was so many trains on the trail ahead on us that all the game had been killed or ecairt away. The young mother she kept kind o' pindlin like after her kid was born and got sick o' bacon an' sich like, an the young fellers that had hosses o' their own to ride, there being half a dozen on 'em in our train, used to scour out on the plains for fresh meat for her. "One day three on us got arter a couple o' antelope early in the mornin' when our hosses was fresh, an' we jest took after 'em, a yellin' like Comanches jest to see 'em run. There was a couple o' hills on the plain that stood seprit, with about twenty rods o' ground between be-tween 'em at the fur end, and the critters crit-ters made a break to go between 'em. We was comin' on arter 'em like we meant to catch 'em, when they see that this open place between the hills had grown np with tall chapparral. "Now an antelope won't run np a hill, nor into thick bresh if he knows it, so they stopped till we got a'most np to 'em, an' one on 'em tried to run back by us, but one o' the boys stopped him with a charge of buckshot. The other one, teein' what an almighty tight place he'd got into, jest made for the bresh an' tried to jump over it. Wal, sirs, he made the all firedest jump as ever I see; but when the critter got np into the air he seed he hadn't jumped far enough, an' I'm a liar if he didn't gather himself him-self in the air an' gin another o' the most tremenjous jumps that any critter ever did make, an' jest went a-sailin' right on over the bresh an' landed on t'other side on't slick and clean!" Cor. Forest and Stream. |