Sitting about the customary table were a half-dozen or more choice spirits—­George Augustus Sala, Henry Sampson, Tom Hood the younger, Captain Mayne Reid, and others less known to fame.  I am sorry to say my somber news affected these sinners in a way that was shocking.  Their levity was a thing to shudder at.  As Sir Boyle Roche might have said, it grated harshly upon an ear that had a dubious check in its pocket.  Having uttered their hilarious minds by word of mouth all they knew how, these hardy and impenitent offenders set about writing “appropriate epitaphs.”  Thank Heaven, all but one of these have escaped my memory, one that I wrote myself.  At the close of the rites, several hours later, I resumed my movement against the bank.  Too late—­the old, old story of the hare and the tortoise was told again.  The “heavy news” had overtaken and passed me as I loitered by the wayside.

All attended the funeral—­Sala, Sampson, Hood, Reid, and the undistinguished others, including this present Sole Survivor of the group.  As each cast his handful of earth upon the coffin I am very sure that, like Lord Brougham on a somewhat similar occasion, we all felt more than we cared to express.  On the death of a political antagonist whom he had not treated with much consideration his lordship was asked, rather rudely, “Have you no regrets now that he is gone?”

After a moment of thoughtful silence he replied, with gravity, “Yes; I favor his return.”

* * * * *

One night in the summer of 1880 I was driving in a light wagon through the wildest part of the Black Hills in South Dakota.  I had left Deadwood and was well on my way to Rockerville with thirty thousand dollars on my person, belonging to a mining company of which I was the general manager.  Naturally, I had taken the precaution to telegraph my secretary at Rockerville to meet me at Rapid City, then a small town, on another route; the telegram was intended to mislead the “gentlemen of the road” whom I knew to be watching my movements, and who might possibly have a confederate in the telegraph office.  Beside me on the seat of the wagon sat Boone May.

Permit me to explain the situation.  Several months before, it had been the custom to send a “treasure-coach” twice a week from Deadwood to Sidney, Nebraska.  Also, it had been the custom to have this coach captured and plundered by “road agents.”  So intolerable had this practice become—­even iron-clad coaches loopholed for rifles proving a vain device—­that the mine owners had adopted the more practicable plan of importing from California a half-dozen of the most famous “shotgun messengers” of Wells, Fargo & Co.—­fearless and trusty fellows with an instinct for killing, a readiness of resource that was an intuition, and a sense of direction that put a shot where it would do the most good more accurately than the most careful aim.  Their feats of marksmanship were so incredible that seeing was scarcely believing.