Susanville had somewhat declined from its old prosperity. If the settlement round Honey Lake had been growing at all, it was certainly not doing so, at its right end. Montana had sprung into sudden prominence, Idaho was greatly increasing in wealth and the number of its inhabitants, while other places in the surrounding section of the country, to the south and west, were rapidly outstripping us. Many of my old comrades had gone to the two places I have more distinctly named, while some of them had struck on beyond, as far as Lower California.
When this outrage occurred, I chanced to be at Reno, a small town on the line of the Central Pacific Railroad, which was then completed as far as Salt Lake City. It is at Reno the junction is now formed with the line for Virginia City, Nevada.
Some months had passed subsequent to the death of Partridge and Coburn, when I encountered three red-skins in the vicinity of this place, and recognized the horse on which one of them was mounted as Hiram's property. Beside this, they all of them wore articles of clothing which were decidedly not made by the Indians. Had anything else been wanting to convince me of their being the criminals, this was supplied by my personal knowledge of the faces of two of them. These had been in the actual employment of the murdered men.
They started on their return to the mountains, and I followed them.
My pursuit only counted one white, all told—myself. Their number was triple mine. The odds were sufficient to justify the weaker party in employing stratagem. Suffice it that I did so, and counted three scalps against the deaths of my old playmate and recent partner.
If any doubt had been entertained by me of the justice of this action, it would have been speedily dispelled by the additional proof shortly after afforded me. It was only a few days after my return to the Humboldt, that a red-skin, known by me as Pah-ute Jim, accused me of killing his brother, one of the two Indians who had been employed by my murdered friends.
"Yes!" I unhesitatingly answered. "I did kill him, because he helped to kill Partridge and Coburn."
"Umph!" he ejaculated. "Natches heap tell 'um kill. No kill, Natches heap kill Injin."
Natches, I ought possibly to mention, was, at this time, the chief of the Pah-utes.