I sat next to Higgins. The old music box on the table between the windows just behind me had a way of going off unexpectedly with three bars of "Annie Laurie" and then petering out. Every man within a hundred miles had shaken bits of "Annie Laurie" out of that old box, which was one of the stories of Maytown, together with the worsted-worked pictures of Koenig Wilhelm and a stuffed crocodile out of the Mitchell River. The piano in the corner was a compound fractured instrument, of German origin, that emitted nothing but Wagnerian noises whether you played "God Save the Queen" or "Hail, Columbia!" on it. Ahlers had lent it to Isaac Brown for a dance some ten years before. It had been dropped on the way down hill, and the sounding board broken in two. Bob Jenkins, blacksmith from the "Comet," had come to its rescue and a sailorman "who knew how to splice wire," had fixed the other part. Then a traveling dentist who did something to Mrs. Ahlers' teeth had a go at it.
This made it ready for Miss Ahlers to play. Miss Ahlers was a big girl with a "musical ear." Where the music box left off with "Annie Laurie" she went on and thumped out the rest on "Old Wagner." She helped the "black gin" make the beds when she wasn't busy playing "Annie Laurie," but that wasn't often. My first recollection of Maytown, is rolling out of my saddle to "Annie Laurie" and, as I rode down hill on my way "home" among the "so longs!" "come back some days" and "don't forget us alls," I caught the strain of "Annie Laurie" with every other tooth out.
But to go back to Higgins: He had confided with me that he believed that Hughes and his gang had pegged out the wrong ground at Buchanan, and that the lode lay more to the eastward. So I had promised to go out with him and take up the more promising ground on the following Monday.
