Page:The Californian volume 1 issue 1.djvu/28

 “Gone—gone—all gone,” he moaned, gazing at his wife in a bewildered, half idiotic way.

“What’s gone, ye imp o’ Bedlam?” she hissed between her thin lips.

“The buro—my tools—everything,” he whim- pered.

“What! the buro—yer tools! Gone? An’ where’ve they gone to? Who’s got ’em?”

“T don’t know—they’re stolen, I reckon.”

“Stolen! Nigh onto a hundred dollars o’ my hard earnin’s stolen, eh! An’ who stole ’em? Tell me that, will ye?” The man stood in a half crouching posture, still firmly grasped by his infuriated wife, and his dull eyes, for an instant raised to the malevolent orbs of his cap- tor, gave her the answer he could not utter. With a powerful effort, she dashed his unresist- ing form from her against the cabin wall, scream- ing as she did so:

“Ye don’t know whe stole what I’ve dropped buckets o’ sweat to earn, eh! Look at those hands, ye crawlin’, sneakin’, lazy cur—look at em, an’ tell me who they’ve kep’ from starvin’. What’ve you ever done to keep body an’ soul together! What’ll you ever do? How long d’ye s’pose it’ll last? Look at the wash out on thet line, will ye. Look at it, an’ tell me how

long ther'll be anythin’ left in the camp to wash.

An’ now what’re ye layin’ there fur, like a dead man? Why ain’t ye out huntin’ up the thief? Ye reckon they’re stolen, do ye? Ye don’t know they're stolen. Maybe ye don’t know where they are. Maybe ye hevn’t sold the don- key an’ stuff, an’ salted the coin. Maybe ye don’t intend to git up an’ dust ez soon’s ye pull the wool over my eyes, a tryin’ to make me b’lieve somebody’s s¢o/en what I’ve raked an’ scraped, to let you squander. I reckon ye know mighty well who the thief is, Roger Peterson; an’ I reckon I know the poor, hard-workin’ wom- an thet’s bin robbed.”

These last charges seemed to infuse new life into the wretched man, and he staggered to his feet. He clung to the wall for a moment, and then, dashing his right hand across his brow, slowly left the cabin, followed by the coarse in- vective and cruel sarcasm of his termagant wife.

The next night, just as twilight was deepen- ing into darkness, two men met on a lonely trail leading down from the bluffs of the Stanis- laus River. One of them, a tall, grizzled, des- perate looking individual, was directing the movements of a little donkey, heavily laden with mining tools and provisions. He was evi- dently a prospector, seeking new diggings. The other was also tall and grizzled, but there was less of desperation in his manner than rigid de- termination and moody obstinacy. The meet- ing was evidently wholly unexpected on the part of the prospector, and he appeared some- what apprehensive of a deadly looking double barreled shot-gun, resting, with the muzzles toward him, upon the arm of the man who had so quietly, but firmly, ordered him to halt. The conversation between them was remarka- bly terse, and, aided by the shot-gun argument of the first speaker, resulted in both men taking the back track, over the bluffs, down to the river, and through the chaparral and grease- wood, to the western rim of Table Mountain.

It was not an uncommon procession that passed up the main street of Montezuma in the small hours of the morning—a tall, grizzled man, leading a buro loaded with mining tools, followed by another tall, grizzled man, bearing a shot-gun easily upon his arm, his hand rest- ing lightly upon the hammer. And yet this particular apparition excited first the curiosity, and then the wrath, of a crowd of half drunken roysterers who happened to be reveling in one of the saloons. They gathered around the two men, and by their loud, and violent execrations soon gathered half the inhabitants remaining in the camp. From denunciation of the cow- ardly thief who had stolen Roger Peterson’s hard-earned property, they came to threats; and it was finally proposed to lynch the man there and then, notwithstanding the latter’s protestations that he was innocent of any crime whatever, that he had bought the donkey and tools of a Mexican, and that he was willing to deliver the property to its rightful owner. Nei- ther did Peterson’s sullen refusal to acquiesce in extreme measures produce any effect upon the howling mob. They were willing to “have everything regular,” but as for allowing the thief to escape, or taking him to Sonora for trial by the authorities, that was out of the question. So they carried Sam Randolph to a quiet, out- of-the-way place, near which stood a queer-look- ing pine tree, one branch of which projected from the trunk, like the cross beam of an old- fashioned gibbet. They tried him by lantern light, they convicted him just as the first streaks of rosy dawn were creeping over the blue ridges of the high Sierra, and they condemned him to the awful death of strangulation as the first ray of sunlight gilded the shriveled bark of the pine-tree gallows. It was breakfast time when the rope was knotted about his neck, and the musical warble of a meadow-lark fluttering in a neighboring brush fence mingled with the order: “Take hold of that rope. All hands now—haul away.” It was rude justice, swift no doubt, but scarcely as sure as those who were so earnest in meting it out intended it should be.

The Sheriff of the county, in after years, loved to dwell upon what he considered the best day’s