elpless man, ez could neither cuss back nor shoot; and then
afterwards takin' you for his ghost layin' for me to get even." He
paused again, and then added, carelessly, "They say he never kem to
enuff to let on who he was or whar he kem from; and he was eventooally
taken to a 'Sylum for Doddering Idjits and Gin'ral and Permiskus
Imbeciles at Sacramento. I've heerd it's considered a first-class
institooshun, not only for them ez is paralyzed and can't talk, as for
them ez is the reverse and is too chipper. Now," he added, languidly
turning for the first time to his miserable questioners, "how did YOU
find it?"

[1] Don Ramon probably alluded to the eminent naturalist Douglas, who
visited California before the gold excitement, and died of an accident
in the Sandwich Islands.

CHAPTER II

When the news of the discovery of gold in Mulrady shaft was finally
made public, it created an excitement hitherto unknown in the history
of the country. Half of Red Dog and all Rough-and-Ready were emptied
upon the yellow hills surrounding Mulrady's, until their circling camp
fires looked like a besieging army that had invested his peaceful
pastoral home, preparatory to carrying it by assault. Unfortunately
for them, they found the various points of vantage already garrisoned
with notices of "preemption" for mining purposes in the name of the
various members of the Alvarado family. This stroke of business was due
to Mrs. Mulrady, as a means of mollifying the conscientious scruples of
her husband and of placating the Alvarados, in view of some remote
contingency. It is but fair to say that this degradation of his
father's Castilian principles was opposed by Don Caesar. "You needn't
work them yourself, but sell out to them that will; it's the only way
to keep the prospectors from taking it without paying for it at all,"
argued Mrs. Mulrady. Don Caesar finally assented; perhaps less to the
business arguments of Mulrady's wife than to the simple suggestion of
Mamie's mother. Enough that he realized a sum in money for a few acres
that exceeded the last ten years' income of Don Ramon's seven leagues.

Equally unprecedented and extravagant was the realization of the
discovery in Mulrady's shaft. It was alleged that a company, hastily
formed in Sacramento, paid him a million of dollars down, leaving him
still a controlling two-thirds interest in the mine. With an obstinacy,
however, that amounted almost to a moral conviction,