He came to my office and sobbed out his gratitude till I told him it was of no consequence, and begged him not to mention it, although it was the proudest moment of my life. He went to work for a citizen of Laramie, with the old, industrious, patient air, and I pointed him out with pride to my friends as a man whom I had rescued and brought back to a useful life.
One morning, however, before the pale dawn had streaked the eastern sky he took his employer's team and what money there was in the house and struck out for the Gunnison country. He did not know anything about mining, but he had such implicit confidence in himself that he started out alone and without letters of introduction to leading men in that country. It was a good thing that he did have perfect confidence in himself, for no one else had much confidence in him after that.
During that day a good many of my friends came around to see me. I didn't know I had so many friends. They all seemed to be in first-rate spirits. They seemed glad to see me, and laughed a good deal. Sometimes I couldn't see what they were laughing at, for my horizon was shrouded in gloom. It don't take much to make some people laugh.
I have never felt perfectly at ease with Governor Thayer since that. I know that he regards me as a confederate with that man, and he thinks that I got part of the money realized from the sale of that team, but I didn't. If it were the last statement I should make on earth I would still say?
As Heaven is my witness, that I have never realized a single dollar from the sale of that team.
HE WENT OUT WEST FOR HIS HEALTH.
In my capacity of justice of the peace and general wholesale and retail dealer in fresh, new-laid equity and evenhanded justice, I often meet with those who have seen better days, and who, through the ever-changing fortunes of the west, have fallen lower and lower in the social scale, until they stand up and are assessed as "common drunks," or "vags," or "assault and batteries," with that natural and easy grace which comes only to those who have been before the public in that capacity, so numerously, that it has ceased to indicate itself by the usual embarrassment of the amateur.