A bank had caved on a man--only a prospecter, a German, who lived away in a little cabin on the hill-side--and crushed him frightfully. The man was penniless and alone, and help had to come from the camp.
Some one went to Dolores. She was in her room or cabin, out a little way from any one, alone and ill, sitting up in bed, looking "wild enough," as the man afterwards stated. He told her what had happened. She leaned her head on her hand a moment, and then lifted it, looked up, and drew a costly ring from her finger, the only one on her pale, thin hand, and gave it to the man, who hurried away to get other aid elsewhere.
Now there was nothing very odd or unusual in a woman giving a ring. That was often done. In fact, there was scarcely any coin on the Creek. In cases of this kind a man generally gave the biggest nugget or specimen he had in his pocket, a ring if he could not do better, sometimes a six-shooter, and so on, and let them make the best of it, but always something, if that something was possible. Let this be said and remembered of these brave old men of the mountains.
A few days after this, it came out that Dolores was dead. Then it was whispered that she had starved to death. This last was said with a sort of a shudder. It came out with a struggle between the teeth, as if the men were afraid to say it.
On investigation, it was found that the poor woman had been ill some time, had lost her bloom and freshness; and what becomes of a woman of this kind, who has no money, when she has lost her bloom and strength? never had much money, always gave it away to the needy as fast as she got it, and so had nothing to fight the world with when she fell ill.
Then the man with the rent, the lord of the log cabin--a cross between a Shylock-Jew and a flint-faced Yankee--took her rings and jewels, one by one. The baker grew exacting, and finally the butcher refused to bring her meat. And that was all there was of it. That was the end.
That butcher never succeeded there after that. Some one wrote "Small Pox" over his shop every night for a month, and it was shunned like a pest-house. But all that did not bring poor Dolores back to life. The ring was an antique gold, with a costly stone, and a Spanish name, which showed her to have been of good family. A wedding ring.