Forty-one Thieves / A Tale of California

of a

fornia came over him. How vividly he remembered his arrival, at the age of eighteen, in this land of romance and adventure! He had reached Moore's Flat on the Fourth of July, 1860, when bronzed miners were celebrating in reckless fashion. The saloons were crowded, and card games were in progress, with gold coins stacked at

owing wild. It had seemed good to him, a stranger in this strange land, to see old friends in the squirrels that scampered through the woods and crossed his path, to find alders, and blossoming dog-wood, the mountain brake, and his childhood's friend the mullen stalk. Even to this day when he came upon an orchid

Palmer" to talk over the death of Cummins. He was comforted a little when the old man's small black dog, Bruce, came frisking down the trail to meet him; and

And then in a changed voice, "You're fagged

himself upon a chair in the door-yard. "It's pl

said Palmer, "ever since th

fe and boy, I'd pull up stake

ng are enough to discourage anybody. Too bad they can

ling to hang those fellows with my own hands. It wouldn't hel

thing, Cummins was a bachelor,

l ought to have married years ago. His life might have counted

k my life's bee

ould never think that, after

ouble with Will was his temper, which was no better than mine. Every bad man in t

yourself. I wish he hadn't carried a pistol that day

was going to carry a pistol at all, he ough

they had got safely away from the South Yuba. The ro

s who don't stop at any meanness, ready to commit murder for fifteen cents. They ought to be treated worse than rattlesnake

y so. I've pretty near lost fa

course,-they are just as true as ?sop's fables, for all that. They hit off human nature. But man isn't all. I've never belonged to any churc

feeling in the matter don't alter the

raction. And I love both the scamps, I certainly do. But what is that to your affection for your partner, John Keeler? It is a good old world, I say. Then the Power that's in it and back of it, 'in whom we live and move and have our being,' is a good Pow

inister say that grief comes to open our hearts to God. It was at my mother'

if weighing him in the balance. Then, as if c

t attend to the business myself. You're still a young man. I'll see that Mrs. Keeler and the boy lack for nothing while you are gone.

o on. The robbers have cleared out, and nob

lmer. "If decent people don't k

ess as babes with 'the other kind.' We've a

ler you're attending to important business for me, that I'm grub-staking you, and that there's something in it for you and the family. If the

t, if I only knew h

start. And while we eat some dinner I'll

f a kind; but then, two of a kind, thou