gger pines, down an abandoned old
road toward Mountaineer House. As usual, my spirited half-Arab, as white
as she was fleet, had put me far in the lead. She loved a race as well
as I did, but she ran it to suit herself. If I tried to interpose any
theories of my own, she calmly took the bit in her teeth and after that
I devoted most of my energies to hanging on!

Mammy Kate, own daughter of Nancy Gooch of Coloma, would scold when I
came home with torn skirt and a bump on my forehead: "Now, den, look at
dat chile! Been hoss-racin' agin su'ah as Moses was in Egypt! I shall
suttenly enjine yo' fathah to done gin' yo' plow-hoss to ride so yo's
gwi' git beat wiff yo' racin', and quit. Spects yo' had 'nothah tumble,
didn't you'? You' wait till Katie gits de camph-fire an' put on dat
haid."

So did Katie's scoldings invariably end in renewed pampering of her
"chile," and so did I continue to race every horse in the community and
usually to win.

With one small ear laid back to listen for the other horses, little
white Flossie flew along the grassy track, darting around the chapparal
bushes which had grown up and jumping the fallen tree trunks. Suddenly
we came out of the woods and she shied violently at a man who was
digging a fence-post hole, directly in the road. I always rode Indian
fashion without stirrups of any kind, so of course I was catapulted
neatly over her head.

"Hello. Otto," I said, remaining seated in the road and catching at
Floss' bridle rein, "what have you found?"

Otto was sifting the loose dirt in the hole through eager fingers.

"Hello! I've found some money here in the ground. I wonder--oh, yes,
I've heard my mother tell about it! This was the old pioneer road and it
was at this very spot that Rattlesnake Dick and some of his gang held
up the Wells-Fargo stage coach and got such a lot of money. They say
there's still $40,000 buried on Trinity Mountain, half of what was
waiting when Rattlesnake Dick got killed."

Rattlesnake Dick, pirate of the placers, prince of highwaymen! Magical
name--irridescent bubble from the pipe of romance. Proud, imperious,
bitter Dick! What a splendid old name he had been born to, and what
blows Fate had dealt him which led to his tragic end!

The others had come up by this time and we sat in a circle listening
again to the story of the bold and brilliant Englishman whom two
undeserved jail sentences had turned into such a picturesque dare-devil
of a highwayman. Howe