132 Reminiscences of 



twenty rods — when I heard a pistol shot ring out from 

 the place I had left him, but being quite out of range 

 I presiimed that in the half-maudlin state he was in 

 he perhaps had taken a stray shot at one of the red 

 squirrels, which were plentiful along the ravine. 



When I arrived at Brune's I told him of the occur- 

 rence, and he said the man was one of the bush- 

 whackers who belonged to a gang which was camped 

 up the stream a mile or so above, and that the chap 

 had passed the house not long before and had stopped 

 to ask for a drink, which could not be furnished. We 

 had supper, and after taking a quiet smoke and talking 

 over the inexhaustible subject of fishing, a man en- 

 tered with a lantern, being a neighbor, saying that he 

 had just come down the cafion and that there was a 

 dead man lying in the road not far above the bend, 

 who had evidently been shot and robbed, judging from 

 the loose papers lying about him. Our glances were 

 significant, and we saw that the man following me had 

 been shot and robbed. We got two or three men to 

 accompany us and all went up there, and found the 

 dead man lying on his back as left in the road, with 

 his face upturned and as placid in the full moonlight 

 as if sleeping. Near, on the side of the road, where it 

 had been carelessly thrown, was a long breast pocket- 

 book, which had been stripped and from which the 

 loose papers had been thrown out. We rigged up 

 some boards from the floor of the old cabin, carried 

 him down to the Bar, depositing the body in an 

 adjacent shed, and hunted up the Assistant Sheriff of 

 the place, who declined to go after the murderer that 

 night, but would in the morning, and did, but found no 

 trace of him, and the matter was dropped. 



