‘Caint see rightly. Ah, reckon you’re readen ’baout Jim, ain’t yer?’
‘Who’s Jim?’
‘Him as they sus-spended yesterday mornin’. Jim was a purticler friend o’ mine, and I help’d to hang him.’
‘A friendly act! What was he hanged for?’
‘When did you come to Sacramenty City?’
‘Day before yesterday.’
‘Wal, I’ll tell yer haow’t was then. Yer see, Jim was a Britisher, he come from a place they call Botany Bay, which belongs to Victoria, but ain’t ’xactly in the Old Country. I judge, when he first come to Californy, ’baout six months back, he warn’t acquainted none with any boys hereaway, so he took to diggin’ by hisself. It was up to Cigar Bar whar he dug, and I chanst to be around there too, that’s haow we got to know one another. Jim hadn’t been here not a fortnight ’fore one of the boys lost 300 dollars as he’d made a cache of. Somehow suspicions fell on Jim. More’n one of us thought he’d been a diggin’ for bags instead of for dust; and the man as lost the money swore he’d hev a turn with him; so Jim took my advice not to go foolin’ around, an’ sloped.’
‘Well,’ said I, as my friend stopped to adjust his tobacco plug, ‘he wasn’t hanged for that?’
‘’Tain’t likely! Till last week nobody know’d whar he’d gone to. When he come to Sacramenty this time, he come with a pile, an’ no mistake. All day and all night he used to play at faro an’ a heap o’ other games. Nobody couldn’t tell how he made his money hold out, nor whar he got it from; but sartin sure the crowd reckoned as haow Jim was considerable of a loafer. One day a blacksmith as lives up Broad Street, said he found out the way he done it, and ast me to come with him and show up Jim for cheatin’. Naow, whether it was as Jim suspicioned the blacksmith I cain’t say, but he didn’t cheat, and lost his money in consequence. This riled him bad, so wantin’ to get quit of the blacksmith he began a quarrel. The blacksmith was a quick-tempered man, and after some language struck Jim in the mouth. Jim jumps up, and whippin’ out his revolver, shoots the t’other man dead on the spot. I was the first to lay hold on him, but ef it hadn’t ’a’ been for me they’d ’a’ torn him to pieces.
‘“Send for Judge Parker,” says some.