Squirrels hastened to
gain a secure outlook from higher boughs; and the blue-jays, spreading
their wings, fluttered before them like outriders, until the outskirts
of Sandy Bar were reached, and the solitary cabin of Tennessee's
Partner.
Viewed under more favorable circumstances, it would not have been a
cheerful place. The unpicturesque site, the rude and unlovely outlines,
the unsavory details, which distinguish the nest-building of the
California miner, were all here, with the dreariness of decay
superadded. A few paces from the cabin there was a rough enclosure,
which, in the brief days of Tennessee's Partner's matrimonial felicity,
had been used as a garden, but was now overgrown with fern. As we
approached it we were surprised to find that what we had taken for a
recent attempt at cultivation was the broken soil about an open grave.
The cart was halted before the enclosure; and rejecting the offers of
assistance with the same air of simple self-reliance he had displayed
throughout, Tennessee's Partner lifted the rough coffin on his back, and
deposited it, unaided, within the shallow grave.
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