“It may be in that last court, the Great judge of all will look into my heart which strove to be honorable and will dismiss the accusations of mere, mortal man.”

* * * * *

As usual, Dick escaped the jail and with George Taylor attempted to get away, but Fate had dealt him her last blow and on the scroll of his precarious and bitter life had written finis.  A mile above Auburn they were overtaken by Assessor George W. Martin and Deputy Sheriffs Crutcher and Johnston.  In the terrible encounter which ensued Martin was instantly killed and Dick mortally wounded.

They rode more than a mile at a furious pace, from the scene of his last fight, before Dick lay down to die.  George put him on his great riding cloak and spread a saddle blanket over him.  Then when he read a fresh command in the highwayman’s dark eyes he faltered.

“Dick, old friend — I cannot.”

“I am shot through the breast, and again through the side.  You promised that when I came to this pass, you would grant the liberation I seek in death.”

“I cannot.  From any hand but mine may you find release.”

“Very well” answered Dick, resolutely, “my own hand shall be given the power to save my immortal soul.”  He wrote laboriously on a bit of paper, “Rattlesnake Dick dies but never surrenders, as all true Britons do.”

“Go, George,” he said gently, “but first give me my pistol.  I have in my pocket here a letter from the sweetest of women.  It says, ’I have grieved but never despaired, for I have prayed to the Father that he would restore you to the paths of rectitude, and I say faithfully, He will save you.  He sees in your heart a secret wish to be a better man.  ’Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all things shall be added thereunto.’  He will raise your head and make of you a new man’!  I go to Him, my brother.”  And, raising his gun, with a good woman’s adored name on his lips, he released his sorely tried heart from bondage into the unknown.

Indian Vengeance

V

“Those brave old bricks of forty-nine! 
What lives they lived!  What deaths they died! 
Their ghosts are many.  Let them keep
Their vast possessions.  The Piute,
The tawny warrior, will dispute
No boundary with these . . . . . . . . .

- Joaquin Miller.

High water on the American came, usually, when the first warm rains melted the snow on the mountains.

The placer miners toiled at furious pace all during the summer and fall.  The water, then not more than a rivulet, was deflected through flumes from the river bed, so that all the sand of the bars could be put through the sluices.

The men worked till the last possible moment in the narrow river bed, only leaving in time to save their lives, and abandoning everything to the sudden rush of the water.  Their sluices, logs, flumes, water-wheels, all their mining paraphernalia, sometimes even their living outfits, were swept away in the floods.