promised; his continued
intimacy with Tennessee after the affair above quoted could only be
accounted for on the hypothesis of a copartnership of crime. At last
Tennessee's guilt became flagrant. One day he overtook a stranger on his
way to Red Dog. The stranger afterward related that Tennessee beguiled
the time with interesting anecdote and reminiscence, but illogically
concluded the interview in the following words: "And now, young man,
I'll trouble you for your knife, your pistols, and your money. You see
your weppings might get you into trouble at Red Dog, and your money's a
temptation to the evilly disposed. I think you said your address was San
Francisco. I shall endeavor to call." It may be stated here that
Tennessee had a fine flow of humor, which no business preoccupation
could wholly subdue.

This exploit was his last. Red Dog and Sandy Bar made common cause
against the highwayman. Tennessee was hunted in very much the same
fashion as his prototype, the grizzly. As the toils closed around him,
he made a desperate dash through the Bar, emptying his revolver at the
crowd before the Arcade Saloon, and so on up Grizzly Canyon; but at its
farther extremity he was stopped by a small man on a gray horse. The men
looked at each other a moment in silence. Both were fearless, both
self-possessed and independent, and both types of a civilization that in
the seventeenth century would have been called heroic, but in the
nineteenth simply "reckless." "What have you got there?--I call," said
Tennessee see, quietly. "Two bowers and an ace," said the stranger, as
quietly, showing two revolvers and a bowie-knife. "That takes me,"
returned Tennessee; and, with this gambler's epigram, he threw away his
useless pistol, and rode back with his captor.

It was a warm night. The cool breeze which usually sprang up with the
going down of the sun behind the chaparral-crested mountain was that
evening withheld from Sandy Bar. The little canyon was stifling with
heated resinous odors, and the decaying driftwood on the Bar sent forth
faint, sickening exhalations. The feverishness of day and its fierce
passions still filled the camp. Lights moved restlessly along the bank
of the river, striking no answering reflection from its tawny current.
Against the blackness of the pines the windows of the old loft above the
express-office stood out staringly bright; and through their curtainless
panes, the loungers below could see the forms of those