Rattlesnake Dick, pirate of the placers, prince of highwaymen!  Magical name — irridescent bubble from the pipe of romance.  Proud, imperious, bitter Dick!  What a splendid old name he had been born to, and what blows Fate had dealt him which led to his tragic end!

The others had come up by this time and we sat in a circle listening again to the story of the bold and brilliant Englishman whom two undeserved jail sentences had turned into such a picturesque dare-devil of a highwayman.  However, I disagreed with Otto’s version of the robber chief.

“But you have made him out all bad,” I told him.  “I have heard the story often, and he wasn’t all bad by any means.”

“He was a wild desperado.  Why, even after he was dead and lying on the sidewalk in Auburn, a man came up and kicked his face.”

“Yes, and they say that everybody in the county was mad about it, and when the man ran for supervisor more than a year later, no decent person would vote for him and he lost his election.”  Now, the true story of Rattlesnake Dick is this, and I never tire of hearing it: 

“Would you present me to your sister’s friend, then, George?”

“Why not.”

“I am an Ishmailite!  I, the son of an honorable English gentleman, have done a term in prison.”

“But these ideas are extreme, Dick.  There is no such general opinion of you.  Were you not exonerated from having stolen the wretched little Jew’s goods?  It is all forgotten,” and George Taylor paused in his restless pacing, before the long, graceful figure on the bunk against the wall.  Dick raised handsome eyes whose flashing light was made of pain.

“George, I wish — how I wish that it were forgotten.  But it is not.  They whisper it in doorways, and over the card tables and down in the drift tunnels.  Wherever I go it follows me like an evil spirit, rearing its unclean head between me and all fair things.”  His deep voice reflected the hurt in his dark eyes, and his broad shoulders drooped in despondency.

“Dick — Dick, the gay the debonair — this is not like you.  Brace up, man, and come with me to this opening of the new opera house, if only to add to my pleasure.  All the town will be there to hear the singer who has just landed in San Francisco from Boston.”

“She it was who brought you the letter from your sister?”

“Yes, yes.  They were school-mates.  She is beautiful, and you shall meet her after the concert.”

The “Opera House” was crowded, the front rows seating the leading men of the community and their richly clad wives and daughters.  In the back rows, seated on benches and around the side walls were, the roughly dressed miners and the usual flotsam of a mining town.  The singer was not of the hurdy-gurdy type so common in those days, but a “lady,” young, lovely and accomplished.  Her ballads were greeted with the greatest enthusiasm, and soon the stage began to be showered with gold.  The miners brought her back again and again, calling the names of songs they wished to hear.  Hundreds of dollars of gold were tossed up to her, whilst she smilingly complied with all their requests.