ct
that I had a right to control the road, and they would generally ride up
to the gate and ask permission to go through. Once in a while the chief
of a band would think compensation for the privilege of going through
in order, and would make me a present of a buckskin or something of that
sort.

"My Mexican patrons were the hardest to get along with. Paying for the
privilege of travelling over any road was something they were totally
unused to, and they did not take to it kindly. They were pleased with my
road and liked to travel over it, until they came to the toll-gate. This
they seemed to look upon as an obstruction that no man had a right to
place in the way of a free-born native of the mountain region. They
appeared to regard the toll-gate as a new scheme for holding up
travellers for the purpose of robbery, and many of them evidently
thought me a kind of freebooter, who ought to be suppressed by law.

"Holding these views, when I asked them for a certain amount of money,
before raising the toll-gate, they naturally differed with me very
frequently about the propriety of complying with the request.

"In other words, there would be at such times probably an honest
difference of opinion between the man who kept the toll-gate and the man
who wanted to get through it. Anyhow, there was a difference, and such
differences had to be adjusted. Sometimes I did it through diplomacy,
and sometimes I did it with a club. It was always settled one way,
however, and that was in accordance with the toll schedule, so that I
could never have been charged with unjust discrimination of rates."

Soon after the road was opened a company composed of Californians and
Mexicans, commanded by a Captain Haley, passed Uncle Dick's toll-gate
and house, escorting a large caravan of about a hundred and fifty
wagons. While they stopped there, a non-commissioned officer of the
party was brutally murdered by three soldiers, and Uncle Dick came very
near being a witness to the atrocious deed.

The murdered man was a Mexican, and his slayers were Mexicans too. The
trouble originated at Las Vegas, where the privates had been bound
and gagged, by order of the corporal, for creating a disturbance at a
fandango the evening before.

The name of the corporal was Juan Torres, and he came down to Uncle
Dick's one evening while the command was encamped on the top of the
mountain, accompanied by the three privates, who had already plotted to
kill him, t