Redskin and Cow-Boy

ollowed. In many cases first discoveries proved illusive, but it was not so at Cedar Gulch. The ground turned out well, and altho

flat, which in winter was the bed of a wide stream, but which in summer was

ung or rocked them, taking off the large stones that the motion brought to the surface, while the slush and mud ran out at the lower end. New-comers moved about watching the work with eager eyes, wishing that they had had the luck to get th

ett, and Limping Frank. Sim Howlett was perhaps the leader of the party. He had been one of the earliest gold-diggers, and was a square, powerfully built man. He was a man of few words, but the words when spoken were forcible. He w

ld have taken up with Limping Frank as a comrade was a matter of surprise to those who knew them. They were both men in the prime of life, while he was at least ten years their senior. His hair was already white; his face was that of a student rather than a miner, with a gentle and almost womanly expression. His frame was slight, and looked altogether incapable of hard work, and he walked with a distinct limp, th

ally came down and assisted to work the cradle and sort the stuff. They generally addressed him as doctor. Not that he made any profession of medical knowledge; but he was

who had recently arrived at the camp said to one who had been talking over with him the characteristics of several of the miners. "I ain't

your eyes ten times following, the length of the long saloon up the

he could speak up for h

e or two camps I have been at. When a chap gets too bad for anything, and takes to shooting over and above what is usual and right, 'specially if he draws on quiet sort of chaps and becomes a terror, then Limping Frank comes out. I was down at Dead Man's Gulch when there

had been sitting near him I thought what a gentle sort of face he had-more like a woman's than a man's. But now his eyes were wide open and his lips closed, and there was just a set look in his face that I knew meant mischief-for I had seen him once before when his dander was up-and I put my hand into my

, you little

ball in the shoulder, but the Texan fell dead with a bullet in the centre of his forehead. His two mates drew in a moment, but Frank's revolver cracked twice as quick as you could count them, and there were just three bodies lying dead in a heap. Then he put up his pistol, and said in his ordinary quiet voice, 'I don't like these things, but we mu

say?" the new

n there would have been a general fight, and several would have got hurt. When you have murderers like these you don't want

murdered by a half-breed Mexican. I did not hear the circumstances, but it was a shocking ba

low right down into New Mexico, and had shot him there. The man who told me said he never made any talk about it, but was at work as usual the morning after he came back. I tell you I would rather quarrel with Sim Howlett and English Bill together than I would get that little man's dander up. He is a peacemaker too, he is, and many a quarrel he has smoothed down. At one camp we were in we made him a sort of judge, and whenever there

, and sat down to a meal of tea, steak, and corn

im will be worked out. We have not done badly, on the whole. The question is, had we better

lies regular right through the gravel, and it is almost as bad as working for wages. You can always tell within an ounce or so wha

over and above slips through our fingers somehow. The gambling-tables take a large share of mine; and your weakness for champagne, Sim, when you break o

One cannot see people die for want of ordinary ne

not so well spent

I don't t

n the end. I don't want to lay by money

earning it for years yet; and you both know very well that if you had

ett laug

d. "But if your argument means anything, it means

we take up. No; I think we earn just enough. If you earned three times as much you would go three times as often to that cursed gambling-table, and it would be bad for your temper. If Sim earned three times as much he would go on the spree three times as of

," the Englishman said, "and I have seen some rum specimens du

dded as if it had

nk myself sometimes; there is a t

tly; while Sim Howlett growled that he

ot bent, or that there is a little twist in a crank, and the thing never works quite even. It just catches, you know-rattles now and then. You may look it all over as much as you like, b

l-shots rang out i

ietly. "That is another machine that wants regulating. Th

mp to be a sort of paradise, doctor, and all the bad men kept outside. Things

ds the gambler," the doctor said meditat

down to Frisco at the end of the week; and if he doesn't go, Bill and I will get a dozen other fellows to

m with a bullet mark in the centre of his forehead; but perhaps that was a mistake, or the mark will not

reen hands lost in a sage-bush. We started by talking about whethe

where do you pro

n, again, you know we have always had a fancy for a month's prospecting up at the head o

re up on those flats, 2000 feet above us, you always find gravel. Now those flats were once the bed of a great river, that was when the mountains round were tens of thousands of feet higher than they are now; they must have been all that or there would never be wate

ou will never find, as you all dream of doing, a quartz vein stuck full of gold. There may have been veins like that in the old mountains, but the quartz veins that you find now, and lots of them have been assayed, are all very poor; they have got gold in them, but scarce enough to pay for working even when they get the best machinery. I fancy gold goes off with depth, though why it should I cannot say, and th

find it richest of all if we were to sink

rally found pretty high up, as was natural they should be, for as soon as the new river washed them out of the old bed they would sink down in some convenient hole; and as in the course of ages the Yuba cut down deeper and deeper, they

the thick of it; if one isn't pretty early at a new place, one may just as well stay away altogether. There is the horn. The mail is late to-night. I will go out and see if I can get hold of a Sacramento paper-one sees all about the new places there. Not that one need swallow all they say, for the lies about what is being got are tremendous. One fellow strikes it rich, and th

l, you may as well do the reading. I am out of practice, and the doctor

slope must have been making a fortune, so brilliant were the accounts of the gold that was being obtained in every mining camp. "John Wilkins and party obtained at thei

mising regions. Little was said of the fabulous prices of provisions, of the fever that decimated some of the camps, of the total abandonment of others; and yet even the miners, although knowing by frequent experience that no dependence could be placed on these reports, were prone to cling to the hope

said with a quiet smile whe

y are thundering lies. What do they s

s to their earnings; but there is little doubt that all are doing well, and that while those working in companies

making from three to four ounces a day, not regular. Of course if he comes on a pocket, or strikes the bed rock, he may earn a good bit

g in that lot of notices. We have tried a good many of them in the last two years, and at any rate we have got another week before we need make up our minds. I expect it will come again, Bill, to what it has come to

finished, and then he ran his eye over the advertisements. These principally related to articles in demand by miners-patent rockers and cradles, picks and shovels, revolvers and bowie-knives, iron houses for stores, tents, clothing, waterproof boo

he said

h a start. He had just laid his

e say your name

I have pretty well for

dvertisement here th

f with a horse, or shooting a sheriff, so I

him information as to the whereabouts of William Tunstall, who was last heard of four years ago in California. The said Willia

ight and staring at the doctor. "Well, well,

l, Bill, I was going to congratulate you," he said; "

ose I should have ever seen him again any way; but it is a shock to know that he has gone. It never was his fault, and I am sorry now I held off so. I never thought of this. It has come to me

his past history. The answer might sometimes be a pistol-shot. Here we three have been living together for more than two years and not one of us has wanted to know what the others were before we met. It is quite an accident that I know your name. You gave it when you gave evidence

and-owners in Cumberland. I was his eldest son. We never got on well together. He was cold and haughty, a hard landlord, and a despot at home. We should have quarrelled earlier than we did; but I was sent to Rugby, and often did not even come home

nt off to college. However, when my father swore that if I ever spoke to her again he would turn me out of the house, I said he might do as he liked, and that I would marry her when I came of age. He ordered me to leave the house and never see his face again; said that I was no longer his son, and might go to the devil, or words to that effect

me, and I answered. He wrote most affectionately, and lamented that our father had died without forgiving me, and had not only cut me entirely out of his will, but had, knowing his affection for me, inserted a clause that should he endeavour to alter the purport of the will, or to hand over by deed or otherwise any

l letters, but I was just as obstinate as my father had been. I was too busy or too lazy for letter-writing. Somehow no one writes here, and then one is constantly on the move. Anyhow, I had one or two letters from him which I never answered. The la

de no remark

ought to go down to Fri

r relighting his pipe, he lay back on the blank

g it will be a thousand pounds or so. I should sink that in buying a snug little place on the foothills, and I should put somebody on to work it and plant it up with fruit-trees or vines, or that sort of thing, and then some day when I get too old for knocking about I shall settle down there; and I needn't say that my home wil

ket, I allow that is not the time for thinking. You have got to act, and to act mighty sharp too, or you will get a bullet in you before you have drawn; but in a thing of this sort it makes no difference whether you decide now or six months hence. You need only write and say that you are found, and ask for particulars and so on, and when you have got them you can take your time about giving an answer. Many men before now have refused a good thing and been sorry for it afte

ghted their pipes after their meal that evening. "It seems kinder

d I don't think as he is going. What

ing a letter or two, coming back here, waiting for his money to come over, investing it in a farm, and going on

ent his carrying

s mixed up in a will, or in any kind of l

o be what

say my brother has left me a good lot, but I don't want it. Just write and tell them to send me on five thousand dollars, that's all I want out of it. I am going back to

n't he? What is

sed for.' Bill will say, 'Oh, yes! here are my brother's letters.' Then the lawyer will smile and nod and say, 'Most satisfactory,' and then he will add, 'Of course, you are in a position to prove that you are the person to whom these letters were sent? Of course, I don't doubt it for a moment, but letters do get lost, you know, and fall into other people's hands. In a matter of this kind we must proceed in a legal and business way.' Then Bill will say, 'Of course, I can prove that. There is Sim Howlett and Frank Bennett, my mates. They know I am Bill Tunstall.' 'They knew you before y

Sim Howlett asked as

a penny of the money left to him he will have to go back to England to prove who he is, and it is like enough he may not succeed when he gets there. By what he says he was only at home just occasionally