A Waif of the Mountains

A relentless blizzard has buried Dead Man’s Gulch in several feet of snow, turning the jagged Sierra canyon into a frozen maze where travel is nearly impossible. The tiny mining outpost, perched on a raised table‑land, houses just eleven shanties and a motley crew of thirty men—former clerks, college graduates, sons of wealthy families, a wandering parson, and even a few European strangers. Their daily lives are a precarious balance between the promise of a good strike and the ever‑present threat of avalanche‑filled torrents. Yet beneath the harsh elements, the settlers cling to a rugged optimism, carving out a slice of frontier life in the white‑out.

When the community finally decides it needs a proper name, the debate erupts into comic chaos inside Max Ortigies’s saloon, the Heavenly Bower. Three committee members champion wildly different titles—patriotic, ominous, and animal‑themed—while Budge Isham, a pipe‑smoking college graduate on the sidelines, cleverly provokes them into a stalemate. Their squabble reveals the town’s deeper struggle to define its identity, hinting at the alliances and tensions that will shape life in this isolated mountain enclave.