‘My meaning is this,’ continued Ben. ‘You know I am clearing out, and shall leave the camp in a day or two, so that we are realising all our property, and this gold-dust was a part of what I am going East with. So, I kinder felt like riled at losing it; and when my pardner told me, as cool as maybe, that he concluded this stranger had vamoosed with my dust’——
‘And mine!’ interjected Rube.
‘Wal, let every man speak of his own business,’ returned Ben, who was evidently in anything but a good temper. ‘I say he had cleared out with mine, anyhow; and I was riled, I tell you. But at that minute, I saw, crossing the Mule Back Ridge, two men on horseback. The Ridge is distant a good piece; but I could swear one was that stranger. “Send some of the boys on,” said I to Rube. “I shall go through the cañon, so shall meet them. They must cross there, if they don’t mean to go into the mountains.” And I was sure they did not want the mountain road. So I sot off. But I was waited for. There are as bad men left in the camp as have gone out of it; and at the very entrance of the cañon, when them horsemen must have been a good two miles away, some desperadoes fired at me from behind a rock. There was more than one shot fired at the same time, I know; and—see here, Mr President!—they took good aim.’ As he said this, he threw off his long outer coat, and handed it to the president, who, after a momentary examination, held it up, and exhibited an unmistakable bullet-hole in the skirt.
‘That was near—that is a fact!’ exclaimed the president. ‘And what did you do then?’
‘I turned back,’ said Ben. ‘It was of no use my pushing on alone, with the rocks lined with murderers, with men who expected me, and were in league with Californy Jones.’
‘And where was Rube?’ asked the president.
‘I was at the head of a bunch of boys of the right sort, seven or eight of them, that I had looked up in the camp. They are here now: Long Sim, Missouri Rob, Major Dimey and friend, with some others, all first-class citizens.’
An assenting exclamation from each of those he named confirmed the speaker.
‘I could not do more than that,’ continued Rube. ‘And when I found my pardner on the return-track, it was no use my proceeding. I came back to the city, and then right away to this here convention.’
‘I could have raised twice the force in a quarter of the time he took!’ cried Ben, intercepting some remark which it was evident the president was about to make. ‘And why I did not come straight here was because there was something in my tent I thought I had best look after. I had left my tent in the care of a friend; but you don’t know what may happen, with such loafers and scoundrels hanging around.’