nd struck it rich; but when
the gold wagon was going down to the settlements, it was stuck up by
those cursed rangers, and not a red cent left."

"That was a bad job," I says.

"Broke me--ruined me clean. Never mind, I've seen them all hanged for
it; that makes it easier to bear. There's only one left--the villain
that gave the evidence. I'd die happy if I could come across him. There
are two things I have to do if I meet him."

"What's that?" says I, carelessly.

"I've got to ask him where the money lies--they never had time to make
away with it, and it's _cached_ somewhere in the mountains--and then
I've got to stretch his neck for him, and send his soul down to join the
men that he betrayed."

It seemed to me that I knew something about that _cache_, and I felt
like laughing; but he was watching me, and it struck me that he had a
nasty, vindictive kind of mind.

"I'm going up on the bridge," I said, for he was not a man whose
acquaintance I cared much about making.

He wouldn't hear of my leaving him, though. "We're both miners," he
says, "and we're pals for the voyage. Come down to the bar. I'm not too
poor to shout."

I couldn't refuse him well, and we went down together; and that was the
beginning of the trouble. What harm was I doing any one on the ship?
All I asked for was a quiet life, leaving others alone and getting left
alone myself. No man could ask fairer than that. And now just you listen
to what came of it.

We were passing the front of the ladies' cabin, on our way to
the saloon, when out comes a servant lass--a freckled currency
she-devil--with a baby in her arms. We were brushing past her, when she
gave a scream like a railway whistle, and nearly dropped the kid. My
nerves gave a sort of a jump when I heard that scream, but I turned and
begged her pardon, letting on that I thought I might have trod on her
foot. I knew the game was up, though, when I saw her white face, and her
leaning against the door and pointing.

"It's him!" she cried; "it's him! I saw him in the court-house. Oh,
don't let him hurt the baby!"

"Who is it?" asked the steward and half a dozen others in a breath.

"It's him--Maloney--Maloney, the murderer--oh, take him away--take him
away!"

I don't rightly remember what happened just at that moment. The
furniture and me seemed to get kind of mixed, and there was cursing,
and smashing, and some one shouting for his gold, and a general stamping
round. When I got stead