Down the Mother Lode

“Rattlesnake Dick”

IV

We were riding one day under the Digger pines, down an abandoned old road toward Mountaineer House. As usual, my spirited half-Arab, as white as she was fleet, had put me far in the lead. She loved a race as well as I did, but she ran it to suit herself. If I tried to interpose any theories of my own, she calmly took the bit in her teeth and after that I devoted most of my energies to hanging on!

Mammy Kate, own daughter of Nancy Gooch of Coloma, would scold when I came home with torn skirt and a bump on my forehead: “Now, den, look at dat chile! Been hoss-racin' agin su'ah as Moses was in Egypt! I shall suttenly enjine yo' fathah to done gin' yo' plow-hoss to ride so yo's gwi' git beat wiff yo' racin', and quit. Spects yo' had 'nothah tumble, didn't you'? You' wait till Katie gits de camph-fire an' put on dat haid.”

So did Katie's scoldings invariably end in renewed pampering of her “chile,” and so did I continue to race every horse in the community and usually to win.

With one small ear laid back to listen for the other horses, little white Flossie flew along the grassy track, darting around the chapparal bushes which had grown up and jumping the fallen tree trunks. Suddenly we came out of the woods and she shied violently at a man who was digging a fence-post hole, directly in the road. I always rode Indian fashion without stirrups of any kind, so of course I was catapulted neatly over her head.

“Hello. Otto,” I said, remaining seated in the road and catching at Floss' bridle rein, “what have you found?”

Otto was sifting the loose dirt in the hole through eager fingers.

“Hello! I've found some money here in the ground. I wonder—oh, yes, I've heard my mother tell about it! This was the old pioneer road and it was at this very spot that Rattlesnake Dick and some of his gang held up the Wells-Fargo stage coach and got such a lot of money. They say there's still $40,000 buried on Trinity Mountain, half of what was waiting when Rattlesnake Dick got killed.”

Rattlesnake Dick, pirate of the placers, prince of highwaymen! Magical name—irridescent bubble from the pipe of romance. Proud, imperious, bitter Dick! What a splendid old name he had been born to, and what blows Fate had dealt him which led to his tragic end!

The others had come up by this time and we sat in a circle listening again to the story of the bold and brilliant Englishman whom two undeserved jail sentences had turned into such a picturesque dare-devil of a highwayman. However, I disagreed with Otto's version of the robber chief.

“But you have made him out all bad,” I told him. “I have heard the story often, and he wasn't all bad by any means.”

“He was a wild desperado. Why, even after he was dead and lying on the sidewalk in Auburn, a man came up and kicked his face.”

“Yes, and they say that everybody in the county was mad about it, and when the man ran for supervisor more than a year later, no decent person would vote for him and he lost his election.” Now, the true story of Rattlesnake Dick is this, and I never tire of hearing it:

“Would you present me to your sister's friend, then, George?”

“Why not.”

“I am an Ishmailite! I, the son of an honorable English gentleman, have done a term in prison.”

“But these ideas are extreme, Dick. There is no such general opinion of you. Were you not exonerated from having stolen the wretched little Jew's goods? It is all forgotten,” and George Taylor paused in his restless pacing, before the long, graceful figure on the bunk against the wall. Dick raised handsome eyes whose flashing light was made of pain.

“George, I wish—how I wish that it were forgotten. But it is not. They whisper it in doorways, and over the card tables and down in the drift tunnels. Wherever I go it follows me like an evil spirit, rearing its unclean head between me and all fair things.” His deep voice reflected the hurt in his dark eyes, and his broad shoulders drooped in despondency.

“Dick—Dick, the gay the debonair—this is not like you. Brace up, man, and come with me to this opening of the new opera house, if only to add to my pleasure. All the town will be there to hear the singer who has just landed in San Francisco from Boston.”

“She it was who brought you the letter from your sister?”

“Yes, yes. They were school-mates. She is beautiful, and you shall meet her after the concert.”

The “Opera House” was crowded, the front rows seating the leading men of the community and their richly clad wives and daughters. In the back rows, seated on benches and around the side walls were, the roughly dressed miners and the usual flotsam of a mining town. The singer was not of the hurdy-gurdy type so common in those days, but a “lady,” young, lovely and accomplished. Her ballads were greeted with the greatest enthusiasm, and soon the stage began to be showered with gold. The miners brought her back again and again, calling the names of songs they wished to hear. Hundreds of dollars of gold were tossed up to her, whilst she smilingly complied with all their requests.

“One more,” they shouted, “only one more, and her slippers shall be filled with gold dust.” She slipped out of her little sandals and stood, blushing modestly, hiding her silken feet under her long, wide skirts.

“You are very kind to a lonely stranger,” she called, to an instantly silenced audience, “and I will sing for you a song which has but lately come from London. 'Tis from a new opera called the Bohemian Girl, composed by Master Balfe,” and folding her little hands before her, she sang sweetly, “Then You'll Remember Me.”

“When other lips and other hearts their tales of love shall tell Of days that have as happy been, and you'll remember—you'll remember me.”

“Dick, why do you cover your eyes? You are surely not asleep?”

“By all the Gods, man, the accusation is an insult,” with a haughty flash of his great eyes.

“You are to be presented; have you forgotten?”

“Forgotten! While life lasts, I shall remember this night.”

“Hush, this is the last. She is singing, 'Home, Sweet Home'.”

“Yes, 'Home,' for these wanderers from all over the earth. See how silently they file out.”

“There is many a tear among them. They will lie, tonight on memory's couch of sad dreams.”

“You are wrong, my friend,” said Dick bitterly; “they are more like to hasten down to the gambling hells to kill the visions memory would recall.”

“Sweet Bird, you cannot believe this thing of me!” The Singer-Lady raised her bright head from Dick's shoulder, and met, steadfastly, his passionately adoring eyes.

“Richard, how can you for one moment doubt me? I know you to be good and true. Were you not exonerated from the last accusation of which you informed me before you asked for my hand in marriage. And do we not know that this man is actuated by the motive of jealousy?”

“The Mormon beast! He knows well that I did not steal his mule.”

“No' naughty boy,” tapping him playfully with her fan, “'Twas something else you stole from Master Crow the woman he wanted. Often have I noticed on the streets how all women, every one, turn to look after you.”

“I cared not for her.” He shook his tall and beautiful head, impatient of the silky black lock which fell across his forehead.

“Perhaps then 'tis your magnificent carriage they would admire,” laughed the girl, teasingly.

Dick swept her close to his heart. “My golden-throated dove, I cannot join in your sweet laughter, for I have a boding heart, this day. I have enemies. They will use my past record. The courts are new, and judgments swift and cold. If they should send me again to the penitentiary I—”

“Dearest I should know you to be innocent, and I should wait for you.”

He kissed her tenderly on cheeks, and eyes, and mouth. He took her hands from his shoulders, slipping off the little silken mitts and putting them in an inner pocket, and kissed the soft, pink palms.

“Ah, Lady-Bird, if I should not return you'll remember me?”

“Always.”

“My own pure love! No breath of shame shall ever sully your fair name through me.”

“Right well I know that, Richard. God bless you. I will pray for you every hour.”

At evening George Taylor brought her a note from Dick.

“Oh, George,” she wailed, “they have sentenced him?”

“Two years in prison.”

“But he was innocent!”

“Yes, and some day it will be proven.” He looked at her strangely, “I must tell you—Dick has broken jail and fled north to Shasta county, where he will begin life anew. Then, if you still wish it, he will come to you.”

After four years the Singer-Lady returned for a concert at the little Opera House in Rattlesnake. She went to her old quarters at the Widow Miller's, on the edge of town.

“Eh, Dearie,” cried the good woman, “what have they been doing to ye, so to dim your bright youth, and to bring the sad lines to your mouth?”

“Mrs. Miller, where is he?”

“Ah—so that's the answer.” The girl's eyes filled with tears.

“Four years—and for the last two, no word. I must find George Taylor. Perhaps he—”

“Dearie, George Taylor is with Dick, and the Skinners and Cherokee Bob and Lame Jim Driscoll. They say, too, that at times Dick rides with Tom Bell's gang.”

“Ah, he tried with all a strong man's power to win a new name for himself—and for you—but Fate was too strong. His false record followed him up and down the state from every idle throat, casting a blight over all he sought to, do. Every sheriff hounded him on. Each unproven crime was laid at his door.”

“But why did he not come to me? Oh, he had my whole heart, and he knew it.”

“He did come to you two years ago, to ask if you would return to Canada with him, hoping that it was too far for tales from California to travel. As soon as he reached San Francisco he was recognized by one of the authorities and 'shown up' by the Vigilante Committee in the Plaza, as they put up all dangerous characters for the police and the people to see.

“And whilst he was there you passed, walking with another man, and looked him in the eyes and knew him not. 'Twas that which broke his heart and made him the reckless and brilliant devil that he is today.”

“But—but,” cried the Singer-Lady, recovering from the daze these words had placed upon her, “I did not pass. Oh, I should have fallen at his feet—lost to all maidenly reserve—there before the people. It must have been my sister, who had but lately come from Boston and so would not know him,” and she broke into uncontrollable weeping.

“There, child, dry your tears. Try to be brave. You care for him still?”

“Always. I have never ceased to pray for him. If I cannot become his, I shall go lonely to my grave. Tell me everything, kind Mrs. Miller.”

“He robs the stages of the Wells-Fargo box, but lets the passengers go free, and he has never been known to take anything from a woman. He says that since all the world is against him, his hand is against the world.

“His den is now at Folsom, they say, but he ranges far afield. He robs the sluices, and the bullion trains, but he does not take horses or mules except to get away with his booty. No cell can hold him. He has escaped from every jail in the northern mines. He has been known to say, 'I shall never rot in a prison as long as a revolver can keep me out.”'

“Oh, would he—”

“He would, indeed, Dearie, for the sake of his family name and the love he bears you. His last big raid was upon George Barstow's Wells-Fargo train from Yreka. They held them up on Trinity Mountain. Eighty thousand dollars in bullion, they got, even with twenty men guarding it.”

Mrs. Miller tiptoed to the window and looked out. Coming back to the girl she whispered, “The guards are tied to trees, and the gang is waiting for Dick and Cy Skinner to get back with new mules, as the Wells-Fargo mules all are branded and would give them away, but if he finds out that you are here he may—”

The Singer-Lady sprang to her feet! From the trees behind the house floated a snatch of song in a clear baritone.

“When coldness or deceit shall slight the beauty now they prize; When hollow hearts shall wear a mask, 'twill break your own to see. At such a moment I but ask that you'll remember me, you'll—”

By this time the girl was sobbing in Dick's arms, and the misunderstandings of four years were soon explained.

The Singer-Lady lifted her head at last to the sound of galloping horses. Dick was looking calmly in their direction. Terror seized her.

“What is that?”

“You must return to the house. They must not see you here.”

She clung to him with the wail of a breaking heart.

“It is the sheriff and his deputies. This morning George and I were on the Folsom stage. We were stopped by a deputy sheriff and sternly requested to alight. We entered into conversation with the gentleman of the law—whom I had met several times before” (with a grim smile), “and finally George, with due deference to authority, demanded to be shown the warrant for our arrest.

“Whilst the simple creature was fumbling for it, we opened fire and, springing from the top of the stage, escaped across Harmon Hill. The vain fellow carried only a derringer, and how was one little bullet to stop our race for liberty.”

“Yet you returned here! That was madness.”

“I heard of you and the longing to see you once more overcame every other feeling.”

“Do not fear, I knew that they would come. What was that to pay for the chance of seeing you again. They can but put me in Auburn jail, and no locks can hold me except the shining ones on this dear head. No prison can keep me till I am laid in that last one beneath the grass, and there I will wait for you dear love. I shall not hear the celestian singing till your sweet voice has joined the angel choir, and your two hands—see, I still carry the little mitts—shall open the door for me to Paradise, as they have held all of heaven for me on earth.

“It may be in that last court, the Great judge of all will look into my heart which strove to be honorable and will dismiss the accusations of mere, mortal man.”

As usual, Dick escaped the jail and with George Taylor attempted to get away, but Fate had dealt him her last blow and on the scroll of his precarious and bitter life had written finis. A mile above Auburn they were overtaken by Assessor George W. Martin and Deputy Sheriffs Crutcher and Johnston. In the terrible encounter which ensued Martin was instantly killed and Dick mortally wounded.

They rode more than a mile at a furious pace, from the scene of his last fight, before Dick lay down to die. George put him on his great riding cloak and spread a saddle blanket over him. Then when he read a fresh command in the highwayman's dark eyes he faltered.

“Dick, old friend—I cannot.”

“I am shot through the breast, and again through the side. You promised that when I came to this pass, you would grant the liberation I seek in death.”

“I cannot. From any hand but mine may you find release.”

“Very well” answered Dick, resolutely, “my own hand shall be given the power to save my immortal soul.” He wrote laboriously on a bit of paper, “Rattlesnake Dick dies but never surrenders, as all true Britons do.”

“Go, George,” he said gently, “but first give me my pistol. I have in my pocket here a letter from the sweetest of women. It says, 'I have grieved but never despaired, for I have prayed to the Father that he would restore you to the paths of rectitude, and I say faithfully, He will save you. He sees in your heart a secret wish to be a better man. 'Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all things shall be added thereunto.' He will raise your head and make of you a new man'! I go to Him, my brother.” And, raising his gun, with a good woman's adored name on his lips, he released his sorely tried heart from bondage into the unknown.

Indian Vengeance

V

High water on the American came, usually, when the first warm rains melted the snow on the mountains.

The placer miners toiled at furious pace all during the summer and fall. The water, then not more than a rivulet, was deflected through flumes from the river bed, so that all the sand of the bars could be put through the sluices.

The men worked till the last possible moment in the narrow river bed, only leaving in time to save their lives, and abandoning everything to the sudden rush of the water. Their sluices, logs, flumes, water-wheels, all their mining paraphernalia, sometimes even their living outfits, were swept away in the floods.

The river was known to rise from 20 to 60 feet in 24 hours, in its narrow and precipitous walls.

At flood time, then, we often went down to the river through the orchard of big old cherry trees planted by my grandfather, to watch the mass of wreckage rushing by. Great logs would go down end over end; mining machinery caught in the limbs of uprooted trees; quantities of lumber, and once a miner's bunk with sodden gray blanket and a wet and frantic squirrel upon it. I worried for days over the fate of that squirrel.

They tell the story of a Chinaman floating down upon a log.

“Hello, John, where you go?” was shouted. John shook his head, sadly.

“Me no sabe! Maybe Saclimento—maybe San Flancisco. No got time talkee, now.”

“Look, the water is up to the top of the old stone pier,” said one of the others.

“Mammy Kate's 'ghost' would have a hard time haunting it now,” I laughed. “He'd be under twenty feet of water.”

“What ghost?”

“Why, the tollkeeper's, of the old bridge. The one who hated the Indians so.”

“The Bear River tribe?”

“They were Diggers, but I think that nobody knew exactly which ones were guilty. It was a fine bridge, the first suspension bridge in Placer county.”

“It was washed away in the floods during the winter of '61 and '62, wasn't it?”

“Yes and they built the new one a mile up the river at Rattlesnake Bar, where it still hangs.”

“What about the tollkeeper?”

Here is the story—with a bit of a prologue.

Captain Ezekiel Merritt, one of the “Bear Flag” party in Sonoma, came in '49 to try his luck at mining on the Middle Fork of the American. His party came at last, through a deep canyon to a large bar on which they found among unmistakable evidences of a plundered camp both white man's and Indian's hair. A great ash heap containing calcined bones was undoubtedly the funeral pyre of white men and red men alike, and some yelling savages upon the upper bluff confirmed the tragedy which Captain Merritt's party had been too late to avert.

They drove the Indians away and Captain Merritt cut into the bark of an alder the name “Murderer's Bar,” by which the place has been called ever since.

The Merritt party stayed to work the bar. Before the summer passed the river swarmed with men, some of whom joined forces to make up mining companies. One of the rules of such a company: “Any shareholder getting drunk during the time he should be on duty, shall pay into the common treasury of the company a fine of one ounce of gold dust and shall forfeit all dividends during such time.” These fines, in some instances, became so frequent as to cause a total disruption of the company.

The Indians returned to their villages in the hills. The foothill Indians were not a particularly intelligent lot. They were Diggers, so named on account of their habits of digging in the ground for roots, and the larva of various insects for food. Eggs of ants, and the maggots found in wasp's nests were considered great delicacies.

They also ate dried grasshoppers and young clover plants cooked as greens. They ground acorns and manzanita berries into meal with the stone mortars and pestles so commonly found through the countryside and gathered and stored great caches of pine burrs full of nuts for the winter. They were not as a rule quarrelsome, but—.

“Good morning, Phineas. I have brought your grub from Auburn, and here is the bill.”

It was a bright day in June and Phineas Longley, tollkeeper for the new suspension bridge on Whiskey Bar, had had a busy morning. There was a barbecue that day at the town on the other side, and a stream of people had come down the Whiskey Bar turnpike and crossed the bridge. It was getting warm and he was tired, and he read the bill gloomily:

“1 bottle gin, $6.00; 2 lbs. biscuits, $2.50; 1 ham, $24.00; 1 bottle pickles, $6.00; 4 fathoms rope, $5.00; 1 watermelon, $4.00; 1 tin pan, $16.00; 2 apples, $3.00.”

Longley stuffed the bill in his pocket, and returned for his noon meal to his log cabin on shore.

It was quite palatial—boasting a real floor made of puncheons, or hewn logs. A bunk, against the wall, was made of a second log set four feet from the log wall, with a hammock mattress of sacking stuffed with dried bracken stretched between them. There was the usual huge fireplace of granite rocks used for both warmth and cooking, and a box pantry-cupboard nailed to the wall.

His cup and plate and saucer were of tin, and his cutlery was an iron spoon, a three-tined fork and a hunting dagger. The dishes had not been washed for weeks.

In warm weather he kept a few things in a small palisade driven in the shallow water at the river's edge, which was cool the year 'round.

Longley put his raised bread dough in a frying pan, put a second pan on top, raked the ashes off some coals, and started it baking. A man on horseback, driving two pack animals before him, stopped at the low doorway.

“Hello, John! Glad to see you,” called Longley.

“Glad to get here. Like to sleep in a house again. Tired of shaking the lizards out of my blankets every morning.”

“Ever shake out a rattler?”

“Not yet, though they say it's been done more than once.”

“You're just in time. Turn the beasts into the corral. And then will you just ride back to Kitty Douglas' for me? She promised me a pie, and I need a new starter for my sour dough (batter). By that time everything will be ready to eat.”

“You mean the 'Kitty Douglas' of the signs I've just passed?” asked John, grinning.

“Yes. What were they, today?”

“'Fresh pies, by Kitty Douglas,' 'Bread made every day, by Kitty Douglas,' 'New-laid eggs every day, by Kitty Douglas'!”

“Kitty's cooking is as fair as the reputation of her house is not. She charges two dollars for a meal of pork and beans.”

“'Tis the regular price everywhere. I'll be back soon.” After the meal John went to, the barbecue, imbibing rather freely of the fire-water barrel and making a night of it.

Heavy travel continued over the bridge all afternoon—a prairie schooner with three oxen, two mules and a bronco pulling it; a prospector in his red flannel undershirt, driving a laden donkey; a hurdy-gurdy troupe on its way to the barbecue; a stage-coach drawn by six half-broken wild horses; an old Spanish settler on a beautiful, black thoroughbred; a late arrival from Oregon, mounted upon a sturdy mule with his young wife upon a pillion behind him, and a whole drove of China-men being taken out to work a white man's claim up on the Divide.

There passed Welch miners, who were to be the fore-runners of quartz mining; miners from Australia, who were to replace the wooden “bateas” of the Mexicans with the rocker and the iron gold-pan, and the term of “specimen” with “nugget.”

Finally came a hale, old voyaguer whom Longley greeted heartily as he swung open the toll gate:

“Greetings, Monsieur Francois Gendron, and from whence came you today?” The big Frenchman handed over the “six-bits” toll for himself and his horse.

“From New Helvetia.”

“Ah—Sacramento.”

“And I am bound for the North Fork Dry Diggings.”

“Auburn?” smiled Longley.

“Bah! the new names! In my day we called them differently. I came across the Rockies in '32, Monsieur. But I must be en route—here are sheep coming.”

After the sheep were counted and gone, Longley glanced scowlingly across the bridge and hastily closed the tollgate. A band of Indians, several on ponies but most of them on foot, crossed the bridge and halted before him.

“Go back, ye varmints!” growled Longley.

“No Indian pay,” said the old chief. “He go the bridge and the road—no pay.”

“Well, the Chinamen paid.”

“But the Indians, no! No pay. Me go Whiskey Bar—big pow-wow. Plenty ox, plenty bear meat, plenty firewater—”

“You go back!” roared the tollkeeper, swearing, “and go ford the river. That's good enough for a Digger! The ferry's been taken off, but the water is not so high.”

The old Indian scowled, and the young bucks began a guttural complaint which he silenced with a gesture and a grunt of command.

“Water is cold, and those,” pointing to the sheep, “have passed.”

“You go back, I tell you! I hate every filthy brute of you! My best pal was sent to glory in that funeral fire on Murderer's Bar, and no Indian will ever get aught from me.”

“Me pay,” said the Indian leader slowly, “Me pay cayuse, me pay boy.”

“No, you won't pay! You'll go back and wade the river like the low beasts that you are.”

The chief began a fierce oration. Longley ran into the tollhouse and came out with a sawed-off shotgun.

“Now, will you go?” he cried, defiantly.

The Indians were sober, and they went. As they came abreast of the pier under the bridge the toll-keeper jeered and laughed at them, and pelted them with rocks.

They looked up with hate, but went stolidly on their way.

With darkness, the roistering at the barbecue became louder. The Indians' money was gone by this time, and the fun was getting rougher. The toll-keeper, after a weary day, was dozing beside his candle. He did not see nor hear the stealthy forms which crept up the bridge. A board creaked, and he jumped up and swung about, to find himself quickly overpowered by a dozen lithe redskins.

They robbed the till, then held a palaver as to the disposition of their prisoner. They finally left him tied with his own new rope to a huge drift log at the base of the pier, and went back to buy more firewater.

It was a wild night!

John noticed, very late, that the Indians seemed to be having a special pow-wow of their own on the river bank near the bridge. There was a great fire, and mad dancing and war whooping. He started toward them.

“Don't go there, pardner,” called an old trapper. “Them bucks is crazy with drink, an' if I knows anything about Injuns, it won't be no safe place for a white man.”

So passed Longley's last chance for his life! His cries for aid were mingled with the savage whoops of his ferocious enemies. Even the people living across the river who heard his continued shouts, took them to be part of the celebration.

Maddened by drink and by the ever mounting excitement of their incantations, one of the most ghastly deeds ever perpetrated by Indians upon the whole river was finished before daylight.

The condition of Longley's body upon its discovery roused the entire settlement, but the Indians had vanished over the hills and across Bear river. The chief had gone home at sundown, and it was as impossible to find those who were on the bar that night, as to distinguish one grain of sand from another.

The old pier stands to this day, notwithstanding the fierce battering of the floods of nearly seventy years; a monument enduring long after the Digger Indians are gone off the face of the earth, as though to commemmorate the power of the white race and that member of it who gave up his life at its base.

Grizzley Bob of Snake Gulch

VI

Names of settlements in the '49 days were often as “Rough an Ready” as the reasons for their being!

Most of them spoke, more or less eloquently, for themselves and no man picked by fame in glowing wise from the heterogeneous mass of persons could hope to escape a nickname.

A miner was discovered roaming down a river bed minus his nether garments, and lives to this day in the appellation of Shirt Tail canyon. Two men fought. One of them lost an eye in the manner indicated by Gouge Eye. Hundreds of wild geese were wont to gather on a sunny mesa above the river. It made a splendid level town called Wild Goose Flat. The plains were covered with “Antelope.” The end gate of a prairie schooner was lost on a hill, and Tail Gate mountain came into being.

Humbug Creek panned light with gold. Red Dog, Hangtown, Round Tent Claims, Dry Diggings, Let 'Er Rip, You Bet, Yuba Dam, One Horse Town, and Hell's Delight shriek for themselves, or should!

This, then, is the tale of Grizzley Bob, who mined in Snake Gulch at the foot of Bear Mountain.

“The bear made straight for me! Old Bull-doze was hangin' onto him below, somewhere, but I dropped my Killer (gun) and grabbed my knife, 'cause I knew if I didn't get in on him with Slasher it was all up with both of us. Bear and I took a tight grip on each other and I hit straight for his heart just as he gave me a swipe in the face.

“We both fell, the bear on top, and then I didn't remember anything for awhile. When I woke I felt something heavy on my stomach, but I couldn't see anything for blood.”

“Hu-ray!” cheered old Solly Jake, thinking the tale was finished.

Sick Jimmy, from behind the bar, prodded him good-humoredly.

“Dry up, Soll.”

“I am dry,” whimpered old Soll, “I'm dryer'n before I got drunk!”

“Here, then,” pushing a bottle across the redwood slab used for a bar, “the drinks are on Grizzley Bob and Handsome Harry, tonight.”

“Was it such a big strike they made?”

“It sure was. Go on, Bob,” he called to the tall, magnificently built young spokesman, “then what?”

“After awhile I managed to crawl from under that old grizzley and when I'd wiped the one good eye that was left, I saw him lying there as stiff and dead as a mackerel, with Slasher sticking in his heart clean up to the handle. It was pretty near dark then, but the sun was just showing hisself over the top of Bear mountain when I got to Rattlesnake Bill's cabin, and you'll scarcely believe me but I didn't have enough grit left to signal Bill I was there. I just settled down all of a heap-like and that's the way they found me. Bill, he got a doctor from Angel's and after awhile I pulled out all right, but I ain't been much of a beauty since. Well, what th—,” as the door banged open to reveal an exceedingly handsome blond youngster dragging in a cringing newcomer.

“Hi,” he called, while two frolicsome imps danced in his splendid blue eyes. “Any of you chaps got a rope handy? Time this fellow was strung up over a limb to be a picture for coyotes to bark at!”

“Hall, you let go, there. There'll be no chaffing a tenderfoot whilst I'm around and you know it.”

“Who says so?” laughed Handsome Harry.

“My foppish friend,” spoke up The Senator, “the reputation of Grizzley Bob says so. A reputation that is the terror and admiration of every mining camp in the mountains. A dead shot, a sure thing with the knife, a heart to succor the oppressed and often to protect the shiftless,” acridly.

“I thank you, Senator! Your species of implication is worthy the splendor of your mighty apparel. The old swallow-tail retains its pristine glory, I perceive, though your other habiliments have one by one yielded to the ravages of time, and been replaced by the rough and ready garments of the frontier. Perchance—”

“Hall, have I got to make you let go of this pore devil!” Bob's powerful figure came forward into the full light of the huge fireplace. One-half the face above the comely form was hideously repulsive. It had been literally torn away and what remained was so scarred and seamed that it scarcely bore any resemblance to a human countenance.

His one remaining eye was large, dark and glowing with kindness as he bent over the victim of his partner's latest joke.

“Ye-ah,” drawled old Doc Smithers, precipitating a large mouthful of brown liquid into the fireplace. “Bob, he'll pet 'im, an' that ol' bulldog o' his'n 'ull lick im, an' next thing we know Bob'll be givin' 'im a claim, just like he took in Handsome Harry hisself goin' on two years ago. Look at the dandy, struttin'! Bob buys 'im all them fancy togs an' loves to see 'im wearin' 'em. White hands, an' red cheeks, an' straight nose like a gal. Swan, ef he wasn't so ornery an' long-limbed I'd a mind to call 'im one. Ef 'twant for his hidin' behind Bob so, I'd—”

What he'd have done was never known, for the whole room-full of prankish, loud-voiced, roistering men was suddenly struck dumb by the unwonted sound of a lady's voice out in the darkness.

Bull-doze reached her first, Bob next, and Handsome Harry third. She was only a slip of a young thing and the fright she got from the kindly rush of the old bulldog was immeasurably increased by Bob's frightful caricature of a face. She turned, shuddering, to the handsome, richly-decked young Englishman.

“My father and mother, sir, are very ill. I was going after a doctor, but I am tired out. I can go no further. Oh, could one of you go on to Angel's, whilst I rest with some lady of your town?”

Harry was apparently speechless from the thrall of her fresh young beauty, because it was Bob who answered.

“You certainly can, Miss! Grizzley Bob's word on that. Where'd you come from?”

“From Roundtree's, sir,” timidly. Bob had turned to call orders through the open door and the girl gasped as the strong, manly profile of the unscarred half of his face was turned toward her. Bull-doze licked her white fingers, and she stooped to pat his ugly head so that the long curls at her temple might hide her face from the look in Hal's bold eyes.

“Hey, Antelope Bill, saddle that ewe-necked cayuse of yours and vamoose, pronto, after the doctor. Plug Hat Pete, you've got the best cabin in town. We'll want it for the lady.”

“Help yourself, Grizzley,” answered the gambler. “It is a privilege.”

“I am to stay with Mrs.—Pete?” asked Becky, anxiously.

“Child, you're a-going to be as safe as if there was a lady in this law-evadin' camp; which there isn't, exceptin' your own sweet and lovely self.”

“Oh!”

“You're a-going to have old Bull-doze watchin' inside the cabin and ten decent and sober men watchin' outside it and nothin' short of a messenger from up-skies could touch one pretty, red-gold curl on your proud little head.”

“Bob, I'll take her home to her mother,” spoke up Harry who had never once taken his bold gaze from the girl.

“No, you won't take her home to her mother, neither!”

Beckey was strangely comforted by the protective drawl of the big man's voice. Accustomed as she had grown to the rapid transitions of the West, she realized the fallacy of her first impression from his appearance. That night laid the foundation of her regard for him, which was deeper than a mere surface appeal, and which was never to waver.

“H'm,” snorted Cornish Jack, shuffling a greasy pack of cards in Sick Jimmie's place and watching two men go by, “that's the most willin' pair on the gulch! Bob, he's willin' to do all the work, an' Handsome Harry, he's willin' to let 'im. Fine house Bob's just built. Must of cost a heap.”

“They say that Miss Beckey and her mother are going to live in it,” answered Plug Hat Pete. “I'll raise you ten.”

“Handsome Harry's bin a-dancin' round that gal ever since they moved here, six months ago.”

“Yes, and the look in her eyes in another direction, is plainly to be read.” The implication was lost on Cornish Jack.

“Ol' Bob, he does all he can to throw 'em together. Air ye goin' to the house warmin' tonight?”

“Certainly,” said The Senator. “Particularly if we manage to keep old Tommy Norton and Black Joe from getting intoxicated, so there will be a pair of fiddlers on the gulch. Tommy, on such occasions, always has an attack of religion which precludes the possibility of his assisting at any profane scene of mirth, and Joe falls into a deep sleep from which nothing can rouse him for twenty-four hours.”

“There's Antelope back. I hear his roan.”

“Well, who do you think I met down around the curve of Blackjack Hill? That gal o' Bob's on her pinto and that sneakin' Handsome Harry on his black mustang, ridin' full-bent-for-leather!”

The men rushed with one accord to Bob's cabin, where he sat before his fireless hearth.

“We al'ays knew he was a sneakin' thief, but you wouldn't hear nothin' agin him. Took all the bags of gold dust from your claim, too, didn't he?”

“Now, boys, that isn't fair to call him a thief. He was my partner and what was mine was his, and a man has a right to take his own wherever he finds it.”

“But the gal?” asked a chorus of voices.

“That girl wasn't in any way bound to me, and you can't expect a pretty creature like her to care for such a beauty as I am, when there's a fellow like Handsome Harry around. It don't stand to reason.”

“Come, fellows,” said Poker Bill, “if Bob's satisfied I reckon we ought to be. Time to get into our biled shirts for the house warmin', anyway.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, boys, but there won't be a house warming. I built it for them and they're gone. It'll stay locked till they come again. This old cabin is good enough for me.”

So they left him. Bob relit his pipe and settled back on his bench. Once he roused a moment to mutter. “But they'd ought to know me better. They needn't have run away from their best friend.”

Soon after dark a pinto paced home through the quiet, mourning camp with a very weary bulldog at her heels. Beckey slid from her side saddle and crept to Bob's open door. By the light of a full moon she could see the big lax figure in an attitude of utter despair.

“Bob!”

“You! Girl, I thought you'd gone.”

“I went because—because I thought you'd come after me. I'd tried everything else that a woman can do to make you understand * * * He's begged me so many times to run off. When he understood, he was beastly. He put me off the horse and told me to walk, then. It was the dog who fought him, and then I ran for Pinto and came back.” Her low voice failed her, but she controlled herself, and went on, “I thought if I pretended to go you'd see—”

“See! Girl, you've known ever since you came creeping into Snake Gulch that night that you were the very heart and soul of me.”

“Yes, yes,” she sobbed, “that is not what I would have you know.”

“You mean—no, I am a great fool. No woman could bring herself to—A face like mine! Even if you did, it would be from gratitude. I could not permit such a sacrifice,” he finished, with a touch of pride.

The girl waited, then when he was silent she turned with a sob to go to her mother's cabin. The soft footfalls died away. Bob stood motionless. Suddenly a scream rang out on the still night air. Bulldoze scrambled off the door-stone with a snarl of battle-rage and charged for the sound, but he was easily outdistanced by the huge miner, who ran with the lithe grace of an Indian. In an incredibly short time the little form was safe in his arms.

“Oh, there's a terrible animal in the mining ditch. I heard it! It's coming this way! A grizzley, I know!” Bob peered into the ditch.

“Why, girl, it's only drunken old Solly Jake going home holding his jug out of the water. He gets into the ditch so he won't lose the way.”

“But how does he know when to get out?”

“Well, when he bangs his head on the overbrace of the first flume, he knows he's home and crawls out.” Bob began gently to withdraw his arms.

“If you let me go now,” she whispered, “I'll wish that it had been a grizzley.”

“I must take you home.”

“Oh, you have! I am home,” clinging to him desperately, “I want no other in the world than this one.”

“But my scarred—”

The girl reached up, drawing down his tall, dark head in her arms. She kissed his mutilated cheek, then pressed it tenderly against her soft, bare throat. It did not stay long, as Bob felt that such kisess should be returned without delay.

“Hu-ray,” cheered Solly Jake, waving his whisky jug, “tale ended right! Time f'r 'nother drink, boys!” and standing up to his middle in water he proceeded to demonstrate his idea.