“What has happened to me?” he repeated, bitterly. “The worst that could happen has happened. My gold has been stolen, and your chum is the man who has cribbed it. I know that as well as if I had seen him do it. But I’ll hunt him down and have it out of him with interest; with interest, mark you—if I should have to go to the ends o’ the ’arth to find him.”
Without another word Gashford thrust the revolver into his pocket, flung aside the tent curtain, and strode away.
Meanwhile Tom Brixton, with the gold in a game-bag slung across his shoulder, was speeding down the valley, or mountain gorge, at the head of which the Pine Tree Diggings lay, with all the vigour and activity of youthful strength, but with none of the exultation that might be supposed to characterise a successful thief. On the contrary, a weight like lead seemed to lie on his heart, and the faces of his mother and his friend, Fred Westly, seemed to flit before him continually, gazing at him with sorrowful expression. As the fumes of the liquor which he had drunk began to dissipate, the shame and depression of spirit increased, and his strength, great though it was, began to give way.
By that time, however, he had placed many a mile between him and the camp where he had committed the robbery. The valley opened into a wide, almost boundless stretch of comparatively level land, covered here and there with forests so dense, that, once concealed in their recesses, it would be exceedingly difficult if not impossible, for white men to trace him, especially men who were so little acquainted with woodcraft as the diggers. Besides this, the region was undulating in form, here and there, so that from the tops of many of the eminences, he could see over the whole land, and observe the approach of enemies without being himself seen.
Feeling, therefore, comparatively safe, he paused in his mad flight, and went down on hands and knees to take a long drink at a bubbling spring. Rising, refreshed, with a deep sigh, he slowly mounted to the top of a knoll which was bathed at the time in the first beams of the rising sun.
From the spot he obtained a view of intermingled forest, prairie, lake, and river, so resplendent that even his mind was for a moment diverted from its gloomy introspections, and a glance of admiration shot from his eyes and chased the wrinkles from his brow; but the frown quickly returned, and the glorious landscape was forgotten as the thought of his dreadful condition returned with overwhelming power.
Up to that day Tom Brixton, with all his faults, had kept within the circle of the world’s laws. He had been well trained in boyhood, and, with the approval of his mother, had left England for the Oregon goldfields in company with a steady, well-principled friend, who had been a playmate in early childhood and at school. The two friends had experienced during three years the varying fortune of a digger’s life; sometimes working for long periods successfully, and gradually increasing their “pile;” at other times toiling day after day for nothing and living on their capital, but on the whole, making what men called a good thing of it until Tom took to gambling, which, almost as a matter of course, led to drinking. The process of demoralisation had continued until, as we have seen, the boundary line was at last overstepped, and he had become a thief and an outlaw.
At that period and in those diggings Judge Lynch—in other words, off-hand and speedy “justice” by the community of miners—was the order of the day, and, as stealing had become exasperatingly common, the penalty appointed was death, the judges being, in most cases, the prompt executioners.
Tom Brixton knew well what his fate would be if captured, and this unquestionably filled him with anxiety, but it was not this thought that caused him, as he reclined on the sunny knoll, to spurn the bag of gold with his foot.
“Trash!” he exclaimed, bitterly, repeating the kick.