“Of course, I soon understood that I had been caught in the simplest sort of a blackmailer’s trap.  But I had betrayed my father’s trust in me and had gambled away his money, and—­what was as crushing to my vanity as this other was to my sense of honor—­I had been duped in a way that any greenhorn ought to have seen through.  So I put it all behind me and was glad to be alone among strangers.

“I rushed off to the mines, of course, as soon as I could get there, and I made piles of money, especially at first.  And I was probably the most hot-headed, reckless, devil-may-care young rascal on the whole Coast.  I made many enemies and had many a narrow escape, as most everybody did in those days.

“Perhaps the closest call I had was at Foley’s Gulch.  A fellow had lately come there who thought he could sing.  Op’ry Bill, we called him.  We got him started to singing in a saloon one night, and I led the boys on in making fun of him.  We got him wild, but he did n’t offer to shoot, not even when I sent a bullet spinning through his hat.  He knew I was the leader in it all, but he just waited for a good chance before he hinted at revenge.  It was a week or two before the chance came, and in the meantime he pretended to be friendly with me.

“One afternoon I was in a saloon, and the barkeeper had just told me how Shirty Smith and Op’ry Bill had had a quarrel, and how Shirty was tearing around like a mad bull and swearing he ’d shoot Bill on sight, when in walked Op’ry himself.  He came up almost behind me, slapped me on the shoulder with his left hand, asked me to take a drink with him, slipped his hand down on my right arm and began feeling of it and praising my muscle.  My eye happened to fall on a broken bit of a mirror behind the bar, and I saw that his right hand was cocking a pistol at the back of my head.  I called out loudly and angrily, ‘Shirty, don’t shoot him in the back!’

“Op’ry Bill was so taken aback by what he supposed to be his own danger that he wheeled around and turned his pistol the other way.  Shirty was n’t there, but I had him covered when he turned back, red hot at having been deceived.

“Did I kill him?  No, I thought I ’d give him a lecture first, as I had him well covered, about being so ornery mean, and while I was talking Shirty rushed in, hot on the trail, and swore he ’d let daylight through me if I did n’t give him first chance at the sneak.

“A good many of the young fellows, like me, for instance, and plenty of the older ones, too, were utterly reckless about how much money we made and how much we lost.  Everything went at a fast and furious rate, and it was all the same to us whether we were raking in or pouring out the dust.  It was many a year after those stirring days before I tried to figure up how much I took out of the ground and might have got for my mine locations if I had had a particle of thrift—­such as I ought to have had, considering my New England birth and ancestry.  It footed up past the million mark, and, if I had had sense enough to handle it properly, would have made me worth several times that amount by the time I reached middle age.