But though our business flourished, and we might, had we exercised ordinary prudence, have grown rich and lived honestly, our propensities for gambling, carousing, and every sort of vile dissipation, ran away with our ill-gotten gains, and by the time eighteen months had elapsed, we were forced to abandon our hotel and take to our old business of robbing and murdering, until we were forced to fly to escape punishment, and once more took to the highway.
The scene of our operations was the road leading from the mines, where we stopped the mules, murdered the conductors, and took such silver as they had in charge.
We came by these means into possession of large amounts of silver in bars, which being altogether too heavy for transportation, we were obliged to bury, and went back to Valparaiso.
At Mazatlan there lived a Chinaman by the name of Bill Cassa. He kept a public house, and being a reckless, unprincipled sort of fellow, and fond of money, although he was already rich, we selected him to become the purchaser of our hidden wealth. So, putting up at his hotel, we commenced sounding him, and finding his curiosity and avarice excited by our hints of hidden treasure, we at last offered to guide him to the spot where it was buried, provided he would pay us a sufficient sum of money in gold for the secret.
He agreed to this proposition, but the cunning fellow refused to take any money with him upon the journey, so that we were obliged to depend upon his honor for keeping any bargain he might make with us after seeing the amount of silver we had for sale. Had he taken the money with him, we should have been obliged to look for another customer, for we should have murdered him and possessed ourselves of all he had. I suppose his confidence in us was not over large, and so he would not consent to give us anything until after we had shown him the spot where the silver was buried, and should have returned to Mazatlan. We started with him at night, and by morning reached the spot. After examining the silver, which must have been worth at least a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, he agreed to give us $25,000 in gold for it. We consented to this, and going back to Mazatlan we received our money, and went to Valparaiso, where we opened a boarding-house, but at the end of a year we had gambled and spent nearly all our money, and so took again to our old career, working on the road between Valparaiso and the mines, where we robbed the mule trains as before, murdering the conductors, and thus coming into possession of a very large amount of silver in bars. After we had accumulated as much as we thought would serve our purpose, we went to a small village called Sueda, in the neighborhood of the mines, and there sold the buried metal to a Spanish merchant, named Don Juan Alte, for $15,000, when we returned to Valparaiso and took passage on board the bark Maria, of Baltimore, Captain Mattison, bound to Rio Janeiro.
Nothing of particular interest occurred on our voyage to Rio, but after staying there six or seven weeks, and spending nearly all our money in gambling and debauchery, we took the road between Rio and Montevideo, where we robbed all worth robbing, and murdered all who resisted us.
There is many a whitened skeleton bleaching by that roadside now, on the same spot where it fell by my murderous hand; and the traveller, as he rides along, sees many a place where the grass grows taller and greener than that which surrounds it; but he little dreams that its roots are enriched by the blood shed by me. If I should travel that road now I should have plenty of ghostly company, for, though dead men tell no tales, and are but dead to all the world beside, to me they are now living horrors, and will insist in keeping company with me.
I remember one day that, a few miles from Montevideo, we attacked a man and three women, all of them being on horseback. We robbed them, and should have killed them all, but the women were beautiful, and for once I allowed my heart to yield to the soft feeling of pity, and we did not murder them.
I shall never forget the look of these poor frightened creatures kneeling at my feet, praying me to be merciful, while my partner, Tom Stone—that was his name, I do not think I have mentioned it before—stood a few feet off, with his pistol at the head of the man who was gradually divesting himself of everything valuable he had about him.
One of the women wore half-a-dozen magnificent diamond rings, and the other carried two gold watches set with diamonds, besides other trinkets of great value. These I made them take off, and give to me; after which, I intended to have ravished and then killed them; I hallooed to Tom to get rid of the man, and come and toss for the choice of the women—but the younger one of the two, though I spoke in English, seemed to be aware, as if by instinct, of our designs; she started suddenly up, and with a bound sprang to the side of her husband, and clung to him in such a way that Tom could not kill him without killing her also. I seized the other woman, and was about to execute my hellish purpose upon her, when, with tears and prayers she besought my pity, and begged for mercy, but I was deaf to all her prayers, and was again about to seize her, when she sprang from me, and like her companion, clung to the man. I followed her, and both the women, as if by one impulse, again fell on their knees, and besought us to spare them.