“I’ve got considerable muscle, that’s a fact,” said the farmer, who was a broad-shouldered, stalwart man. “But you don’t often find men of my build in the ranks of these gentry. They are more apt to be—well, like our friend here,” and he laid his hand on the shoulder of the black-eyed man.
“You compliment me,” said the latter, opening his mouth and showing a set of very white teeth. “I will tell my employer, when I reach ’Frisco, that I have been compared to Stephen Dike.”
“None is taken. Indeed, I do consider it rather a compliment, for Dike is quite celebrated in his line.”
“Better be quite unknown than to be celebrated in that way!” observed the teacher.
“You have doubtless often remarked that to your pupils during your career as a pedagogue,” said the black-eyed man, with a sneer.
“It is quite possible that I may have done so,” answered the teacher calmly. “You agree to it, don’t you?”
“Speaking of Dike,” remarked one of the miners, “a cousin of mine was returning from the mines, a year ago, with a thousand dollars in gold-dust—representing six months’ hard labor—when the wagon on which he was a passenger was stopped by this rascal. My cousin was not armed, nor was either of the three other passengers, and Dike, though single-handed, had no trouble in robbing them all.”
“What,” exclaimed one of the farmers, “did four men give in to one?”
“One man with two revolvers is a match for half a dozen unarmed men.”
“I don’t agree to that,” said the farmer. “I should be everlastingly mortified if I allowed one man to take such an advantage of me, if I had as many companions.”
“You think so,” said the black-eyed man, with a half sneer, “but if you were placed in like circumstances you would act just as he did.”
“You think so,” said the farmer in his turn.
“You are very confident. On what do you base your remark?”
“Well, perhaps you are right,” he said. Then turning to the miner, he asked: “Well, did your cousin lose all his gold-dust?”
“It was, indeed. The poor fellow had been in the country a year. During the first six months he hadn’t a particle of luck. During the next six months he made the money referred to. With it he intended to go home and lift a mortgage from the house in which he lived. But when he saw the fruit of his hard labor forcibly wrested from him, he became discouraged, took to drink, and died of delirium tremens in ’Frisco three months since.”
