g camp had its lawless element whose
members took full advantage of that prejudice against the conquered
race. The claim proved rich enough to tempt some ne'er-do-wells. They
gathered a crowd of their own breed and the mob came to the young
pair's cabin one evening with the purpose of jumping the property.
When the owner made a show of resistance they bound him hand and foot,
after which they subjected the girl to such abuses as will not bear
the telling. She pleaded with her lover when the crowd had gone and
managed to induce him to leave the place without attempting vengeance.
They went to Columbia and within the month were driven out by another
anti-Mexican mob. Their next move took them to Murphy's Diggings,
where the boy got his job at dealing monte and was doing very
well--until this evening came, and with it, tragedy.

He had been visiting his brother, who had come to California and
settled near Murphy's; and the latter had lent him a horse to ride
home. As he was nearing the upper end of the camp a group of miners
stepped out into the road before him and halted him. The horse had
been stolen from one of their number and they were searching for it at
the time.

They listened to his explanations and went with him to his brother who
told them how he had bought the animal in good faith from a stranger.
Whereat they seized the narrator, bound him, and hanged him to the
nearest live-oak tree; then stripped the monte-dealer to the waist,
tied him to the same tree, and flogged him until the blood ran down
his bare back. After which they departed, satisfied that they had done
their share to bring about law and order in a neighborhood where
thefts were becoming altogether too frequent. But some of them
mentioned in Murphy's Diggings--during the brief space of time while
they had the opportunity--the strange expression which came over their
victim's face while the lash was being applied. Each of these men
spoke of the look as having been directed at himself. Had they been
members of one of the dark-skinned races, to whom the vendetta is
peculiarly an institution, they would have understood the purport of
that look.

But none of them understood and the monte-dealer was left to keep his
promise to his dead brother. He turned his back upon the grave and
went about the fulfilment of that vow as ambitious men go about the
making of careers; and in the days that followed, while his swarthy
company was sweeping through Califo