Gun-toting men with mutton chops appeared as a newfangle open-air motorized carriage drove leaving a dust trail that looked like a comet along the banks of the tributary. The sputtering quadricycle came to an abrupt halt. Its identification plate read WHTDVL. The prospector gave an unbelieving look to his helpmate. "White devil?"
A distinguished-looking autoist climbed out of the newest rage. "Geez. Did I just drive through your living room?" He pulled a deed from his pocket proclaiming that he bought a plat of land including most of the townsite and the cliff which meant the mountaineer was trespassing. The armed subordinates searched the wanderer's faded threadbare vest. The wood carving was tossed into the babbling water where it followed the path of the winding rivulet before wedging between stones.
The alluring gold nugget was given to the shady snake in the grass rent collector. The morally bankrupt industrialist said they were going to blast a mine in the far side of the bluff and the prospector needed to depart this land and stay off. "What is your goal here? I mean how good can squirrel meat even be? Is this some 'would you rather rule in hell or serve in heaven' thing?"
"More like performance art."
The purse-proud tycoon gestured with the deed at his blistering fifteen miles per hour automobile while he told the unhoused pioneer that it was a new age, the tin-panner was an anachronism -- the landless drifter was for all intents and purposes, a ghost.
The stubble-faced outlier shared a look with his four-legged friend, "Can't tell if this dude thinks he's God above or the fiend from below."
"Nature boy, standing here and just realized I don't care about anything you have to say. Why don't we just not talk," the cold-hearted developer raised an eyebrow slightly to push his point. Speeding off in the electric, instant self-start, silent operation car by the seat of his pants with the accelerator on the floor the irredeemable landlord loured at his lackeys, "That mine isn't going to blast itself. Shoo!"
The mountain man's blue spotted horse became restive with a snort and would not leave. Soon a blast cloud mushroomed behind the ridge. The ground shook sending a surge of stones tumbling down the sheer face of the escarpment. The nameless outsider swung onto the saddle taking the reins to desperately race from the brook, but both were buried in an avalanche of falling rocks.
uffs of curling steam trailed after a train pulling into the boom town of Molson, in the gold-producing territory of the fledgling state of Washington. The spectral wisps of white vapor dissipated into the atmosphere like the legends filtered through ceremonial pipe smoke from noble Okanagan tribal chiefs for generations before the covered wagons of how all living things were made of the same clay, and the sacred earth was the Great Mother which could not be bought or sold.