In Castle, over 100 years ago, shopkeepers supplied the miners, and by the time Castle's population reached several hundred, lot jumping was common. A man might find his town lot, purchased from the Castle Land Company, occupied by armed men who drove him off. A vigilance committee was formed, headed by the local postmaster. The lot-jumping toughs hung out in a log cabin on the slopes above town. The vigilantes rushed it one night. A man inside shouted out that the first man through the door would be shot, but the vigilantes broke down the door with a log. The toughs escaped through a back window, never to return.

Castle reached its peak in 1891, the year it was incorporated. It had nine stores, one bank, two barbershops, two butcher shops, two livery stables, two hotels, a photo gallery, a dance hall, a schoolhouse, 14 saloons, one church, and seven brothels. Aside from the vigilant postmaster, there were a deputy sheriff, a justice of the peace, a chapter of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, and four newspapers. There was a permanent population of 1,500 folks. By day, the main street was jammed with outbound ore wagons pulled by teams of horses, with inbound teams pulling produce, with buggies, with men on horseback, with coaches and pedestrians. People arrived daily on stagecoaches, among them prostitutes ready to work at the local "sporting houses."

The main drag was now a gravel road leading up into Lewis and Clark National Forest land, high above in the Castle Mountains. All the buildings that had lined the thoroughfare were gone. To the west was the three-story skeleton of a boardinghouse, and south of that were several more weathered buildings with large bay windows looking out at the mountains above. They must have seemed graceful and luxurious in their time.

To the east, across the gravel road, was what had been the disreputable part of town. Most of the saloons and brothels had been located there, and the remains of Minnie's Sporting House lay dreaming in a high meadow. My dog found a dead ground squirrel to roll in, and she lay on her back, paws in the air, wiggling about in what appeared to be an ecstasy of putrescence. She's a bird dog, and I believe she wants to disguise her odor. Somewhere, deep in her demented hunter's brain, she must imagine that sage hens and ruffed grouse, upon being presented with a creature streaking up on them from a distance, barking hysterically, must think, Hey, nothing to worry about here, it's just a dead squirrel.

The issue of disguise and birds was on my mind. The women who worked the brothels, such as Minnie's Sporting House, were euphemistically called "soiled doves." They each arrived in the booming town carrying a trunk. Almost without exception, folded neatly at the bottom of each of these trunks was an elaborate white wedding dress. It is true that sometimes whores married miners or shopkeepers, but more often the wedding dress became funeral garb. The soiled doves were often buried in these gowns, and so they went into that dark night as virginal brides.