ll mining
town in which I was located at the time.

"Pierto--that was the Greaser's name--hadn't any more than got his
nugget into the Gold Dollar saloon, which was kept by a countryman of
hisn, and put it into a glass case and set it up on the table so that
everybody could see and admire it, before he was offered eight thousand
dollars for his find; but Pierto wouldn't sell. He thought he could make
more money by putting it up at a raffle, and when the raffle was over,
he would go back to the mountains and try for another nugget, taking
some of us along if we wanted to go. Three thousand shares at ten
dollars a share was what he thought would be about right, and I put my
name down for ten shares then and there.

"The Gold Dollar did a custom-house business after that. Crowds of
miners from every camp for miles around came there to look at Pierto's
find, take shares in the raffle, and drink forty-rod whiskey. Pierto and
the eight countrymen of hisn whom he employed to guard the nugget night
and day were armed with pepper-boxes and machetes, and were as sassy and
stuck up as so many bantam chickens, and the lordly way in which they
ordered us Gringos to stand back and not crowd the nugget too close was
laughable to see. They were a surly gang and looked able to whip their
weight in wild-cats; but in reality they were the most harmless lot of
cowards that Pierto could have got together.

"Like all mining towns, Brazos City could boast of some tough citizens,
and among them was Red Jimmy Murphy, a noted desperado, and as smart a
rough as ever pulled a gun. He and two of his pals were in the Gold
Dollar every day and night, and after looking the ground over they
concluded that the plant could be raised. No sooner had this been
settled to their satisfaction than they set to work to get things ready.

"The night before the raffle was to come off the Gold Dollar was packed
as full as it could hold,--so full that there was scarcely room for the
fiddlers to work their elbows,--and Pierto's guard had to use some
little muscular strength to keep the crowd from pushing over the table
on which lay the nugget in its glass case. Red Jimmy's gang was there,
ready to grab the chunk at the critical moment, and finally Jimmy
himself rode into the saloon on a kicking, plunging bronco. The closely
packed men cursed and threatened and ordered him out, but gave way all
the same, and when the bronco heard the squawking of the fiddles and
f