"While he hastily ate some breakfast and listened to the friendly gossip of his entertainers, one name, the name of her he loved, his promised wife, was mentioned. She was married. He staggered to his feet, asking the name of her husband; and when he heard it, he knew he had been betrayed by that man. He could recall a strange sensation in his brain, as if molten lead had been poured into it; that was the last of his recollections. Afterward, he learned that he had been weeks in a brain fever.
"When he had recovered, some of his old friends, thinking to do him honor, made an evening party for him. To this party came his love, and her husband; his betrayer. When she gave her hand to welcome him home, and looked in his eyes, he knew that she too had been betrayed. Again the molten lead seemed poured upon his brain. Turning to leave the room, fate placed in his path the man he now hated with a deadly hatred. With one blow of a knife, he laid him dead at his feet. A few hours later, in the desperation of trying to escape, he killed two other men. Then he eluded his pursuers, and got back to California. Since then he had reveled in murder, and every species of crime. Once he had seen, in the streets of Sacramento, the woman he loved. Up to that moment, it had never occurred to him that she was free. Following her to her home, he forced himself into her house, and reminded her of their former relations. She had denied all knowledge of him, finally calling upon her husband to satisfy him. The husband ordered him out of the house, and he shot him. Then the Vigilantes made it hazardous to remain in California. He fled to the mountains, where he was nearly starved out, when I took him in and fed and clothed him.
"Such was his story. My blood curdled in my veins, as I listened to the recitals of his atrocities. 'In God's name,' I said, 'who are you—what is your name?' 'I am Boone Helm.'"
"Who was Boone Helm?" I asked.
"One of the greatest desperadoes that ever was on this coast. He met his fate, afterward, up east of the mountains."
"What did you do with him? What could you do with him?"
"You ought to have shot him while you had him," my husband suggested.
"I didn't want to shoot him. He said, if I had been a coward, I would have killed him. To confess the truth, the wretch appealed to my sympathies. I don't think he had ever been sane since the time when he felt the 'molten lead poured into his brain.' I knew somebody was sure to kill him, before long; so, when morning came, I called Edwards to open the gate; and, when it was unbarred, escorted my visitor out, telling him that there was not room enough in that part of the country for both of us, and that the next time I pointed my rifle at him it would be to shoot. I never saw him again."
"Then he did not molest the Chinese camp?"
"No. Edwards got his four hundred dollars, and went home to Boston."