“They told the greasers that they were playin the trump card with a full hand and to make the most of it, for said they it’ll be our turn next; and it came sooner than either party expected. They all stopped at O’Neil’s station, about twelve miles from Stockton, for breakfast. Now it happened that there were quite a number of travellers and teamsters who had stopped there the night before and when they saw them greasers drive in the boys for breakfast, they were not long in getting acquainted with the particulars, and whether right or wrong made no difference, for they were Americans at any rate. So they charged upon them while they were eating their breakfast and bound every one of ’em. Now the scene had changed, and the boys around Chili Gulch were astonished, a few days after, to see the American boys driving the Chileans before them into camp, all tied in a similar manner as the Americans had been. Kentuck said they gave them a fair trial, and sentenced four of them to be shot. Of course they didn’t know which ones killed their pardner, but it made no difference, to shoot about four of ’em would fill the bill anyhow. And said he, the rest of ’em left that part of the country in a hurry.
“‘Well,’ said I to old Kentuck, ‘I suppose that you and your company staid there and worked out Chili Gulch didn’t you?’
“‘Oh well, yas we didn’t,’ he replied.
“And I asked him why not, as there was a good show after they had driven out the Chileans.
“‘Oh yes,’ said he, ‘that was all right, and you see we did start in to work, but found the climate so kind er sultry round thar, that we all concluded to find a more salubrious clime further north.’
“I asked him to explain what he meant; and said he.
“‘A few days after we started in to work, some of the miners around thar had a sort of a miners’ meetin’ one day, and so they come over into Chili Gulch and stuck a paper up on a tree with some writing on it for us to read, and so we did.’
“I asked Kentuck if he remembered what it said.
“‘Oh yas,’ says he, ‘I do, first rate, for I’ve got an awful good memory. It said that if any of them fellers what driv out, and shot them Chileans, was found mining over there in Chili Gulch, that the miners round in them diggings would hang every derned one of em. Now wer’nt that too sultry for comfort old pard, and wer’nt it time to hunt for a more salubrous atmosphere?’”
Tennessee was asked if he was with Tex up in Tuolumne in ’56 or ’57, at the time he had the trouble with Sam Brown.