“I am shot through the breast, and again through the side. You promised that when I came to this pass, you would grant the liberation I seek in death.”
“I cannot. From any hand but mine may you find release.”
“Very well” answered Dick, resolutely, “my own hand shall be given the power to save my immortal soul.” He wrote laboriously on a bit of paper, “Rattlesnake Dick dies but never surrenders, as all true Britons do.”
“Go, George,” he said gently, “but first give me my pistol. I have in my pocket here a letter from the sweetest of women. It says, 'I have grieved but never despaired, for I have prayed to the Father that he would restore you to the paths of rectitude, and I say faithfully, He will save you. He sees in your heart a secret wish to be a better man. 'Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all things shall be added thereunto.' He will raise your head and make of you a new man'! I go to Him, my brother.” And, raising his gun, with a good woman's adored name on his lips, he released his sorely tried heart from bondage into the unknown.
Indian Vengeance
V
“Those brave old bricks of forty-nine!
What lives they lived! What deaths they died!
Their ghosts are many. Let them keep
Their vast possessions. The Piute,
The tawny warrior, will dispute
No boundary with these.........
—Joaquin Miller.
High water on the American came, usually, when the first warm rains melted the snow on the mountains.
The placer miners toiled at furious pace all during the summer and fall. The water, then not more than a rivulet, was deflected through flumes from the river bed, so that all the sand of the bars could be put through the sluices.