Roaring Camp is a settlement of gold seekers in 1850 in which a new and unexpected event is going to happen.
There was commotion in Roaring Camp. It could not have been a fight, for in 1850 that was not novel enough to have called together the entire settlement. [...] Deaths were by no means uncommon in Roaring Camp, but a birth was a new thing [...] it was the first time that anybody had been introduced ab initio. Hence the excitement. [...]
The assemblage numbered about a hundred men. One or two of these were actual fugitives from justice, some were criminals, and all were reckless. Physically they exhibited no indication of their past lives and character. The greatest scamp had a Raphael face, with a profusion of blonde hair; Oakhurst, a gambler, had the melancholy air and intellectual abstraction of a Hamlet; the coolest and most courageous man was scarcely over five feet in height, with a soft voice and an embarrassed timid manner. [...] The strongest man had but three fingers on his right hand; the best shot had but one eye.
Bets were freely offered and taken regarding [whether] the child would survive [and] bets as to the sex and complexion of the coming stranger. [...]