's fashion, where it pleased. As he played, a group of
miners just behind him began arguing about the bandit whose name was
now famous all the way from Mount Shasta to the Mexican line. One of
them, a strapping fellow with a brace of pistols at his waist, became
impatient at something which another had said concerning the robber's
apparent invulnerability and raised his voice in the heat of his
rejoinder.

"Joaquin Murieta!" he cried. "Say! I'd just like to see that fellow
once and I'd shoot him down as if he was a rattlesnake."

A noise behind him made him turn his head, and now, like all the
others in that room, he stared at the dandified young Mexican-who had
leaped to the top of the monte-table and was standing there among the
litter of cards and gold. His broadcloth serape was thrown back; his
two hands moved swiftly to his belt and came away gripping a pair of
pistols.

"I am Joaquin Murieta," he shouted so loudly that his voice carried
the length of the hall. "Now shoot!"

A moment passed; he stood there with his head thrown back, his dark
eyes sweeping the crowd, but no man on the floor so much as moved a
hand. Then laughing he sprang down and walked slowly among them to the
front door. They fell away before him as he came and he vanished in
the shadows of the narrow street before one of them sought to follow
him.

The others of the sextet were waiting for him when he reached the
Mexican quarter; their horses were saddled; and at a word from him
they mounted. For he and his two lieutenants had finished their work;
they knew all they cared to know about the gold trains and the caches
of the miners, and this was to have been their last evening in camp.
With their gathered information they rode southward to Arroyo
Cantoova, in the foot-hills of the Coast Range at the western edge of
the upper San Joaquin valley. This was the band's new headquarters.

They remained here for some days resting before the next raid. Gold
was plentiful among them; the leaders dressed with the splendor of
noblemen; not one of those leaders--save Three-Fingered Jack--but had
his mistress beside him decked out like a Spanish lady; nor one but
rode a clean-limbed thoroughbred. When the hills were turning brown
with summer's beginning young Murieta led them out across the range
and southward to the country around Los Angeles.

Success had made him so serene that during the journey he sometimes
forgot his grim vow of shedding blood a