necessary that our mountain fort should be kept hid from everybody. Gentlemen like Mr. Brasher do not know it, sir. Tell me your name, show that you are no evildoer, and after you have rested you may equip yourself and go your way. We can trust to your being led out, hoodwinked as you were brought, to maintain our secret. So much I will do for Trading Jake's messenger. Anything else, stranger?"

The ex-prisoner was surprised at so much confidence, and the promise to place him on a fair footing for the task upon his shoulders.

"You will do this, eh?" cried he with frank joy; "A good rifle instead of that broken musket, food and powder, clothes against this searching air?"

"Jim Ridge never yet broke his word," remarked the Cherokee, for the first time relenting in his suspicion so as to address his late captive.

"My name goes for nothing, but I will tell you my mission out here, and why your gift will put me under a great obligation. Besides, you have the experience which I lack, and who knows but that your comments on my story may be of service."

"Make yourself at home, then," said the old mountaineer, pleasantly; "there's a pipe for you, too, and the night is only begun. We so seldom have company, eh, Bill? that a couple of hours for a storyteller will be a real treat. Stranger, we listen, if the grub has put you in pretty good shape again."

"One moment," demurred the other; "you talk of the need to guard this place from spies. Now, I can't compliment you on your vigilance and prudence when you squat here in the broad firelight with the cavern gaping open yonder—an Indian boy could riddle us with arrows."

Ridge laughed.

"If you don't mind getting up and coming to the opening, you shall see that—but not so near the brink—the crust is shaky. See, how readily I detach a chunk. Don't lean forward. Look forth—it is a clear night."

It was serene and lovely. The stars shone unveiled, and that was all in the deep indigo black, where, beneath, the deep-rooted pines could be heard slowly swaying, not seen, like a field of grain in a zephyr.

"I see nothing."

"No trees, no rocks?"

"No. Nothing but stars."

"You would see nothing but stars if you were to step after that stone. Hark!"

Jim trundled the rocky lump out of the cave; but not the faintest sound or echo betokened that it touched bottom or anywhere.

"Heaven preserve us!" ejaculated the guest, recoiling. "'Tis the Bottomless Pit!"

"Pretty nigh," answered the mountaineer, laughing; "that's fallen five thousand feet. This is not a precipice sheer down, but a peak hollowed out—a cut-off, we say; the Injins say a devil's jump. Stranger, on this side, we shall not be invaded. Now for your tale! Stir up the fire brightly, Bill."

"Yes, for it is a dark and horrid story, gentlemen."

CHAPTER V.

THE LONE MAN'S STORY.

"Gentlemen," began the enforced guest of Jim Ridge and the half-breed, "I was born in an Atlantic State, and my earliest memories relate to home events of so little moment now, that I have almost forgotten them. I remember, however, that a number of our young men formed a party and went West, and that the reading of some of their letters home, reflected into my boyish ears, fed the natural longings of one who lived sufficiently remote from the crowded town to know what a lake and the woods are like. Besides, an uncle of mine was said to have gone to the same marvellous backwoods, and I used to be promised a real wild Indian's bow-and-arrows at the least when he should return. All this is common enough in the East. About the year 1850 my mother died, and my father, as much to distract himself in his profound grief as to quench a thirst for fortune which he shared with New Englanders, departed with me, a stripling, around the Cape to California. Our ship was rather better than those rotten tubs which unscrupulous men fitted out as 'superb clippers,' and we outstripped many vessels that had anticipated our start. You must recall something of the sensation due to the startling discovery of gold in the extreme West. Even the fables of old whalers who visited the Pacific Coast, and who really had been blind, were outdone by reality. With indescribable furious madness, people flocked from the world's confines towards a tract hardly laid down in charts. They seemed to have become monsters in human form, as the playbooks say, with no impulse but avarice. We stepped ashore into a field of carnage, though lately a peaceable grazing ground; men sought to remove each other with steel and lead, whilst the few females, the vilest of their sex, freely employed poison. Luckily, these demons slew one another, and left no aftercrop of fiends and furies to blight the Golden State."

"Father and I had no experience in gold seeking, and he saw that money enough awaited an active, acute man, in supplying the returned miners with table delicacies. He was used to fishing, trapping, and gunning, and so we set to killing bears—any quantity on the Sierra Nevada 'spurs' then—and fishing in the Sacramento and San Joaquín. We built a ranche on the banks of the former stream, in a lonely spot, and only went to town to sell game and procure ammunition and other stores."

"One Saturday my father went on this duty, whilst I amused myself with tracking a young grizzly, with the hope of securing him alive, as a hotel keeper wanted a 'native attraction' for his barroom. Unfortunately, a huge grizzly intercepted my course, and wounded me in a scuffle, out of which I thought myself happy to escape so easily; and almost made me lose my prize. However, as this wound stung me in pride as well as flesh—for I daresay, gentlemen, you know how a grizzly's claws leave a smart!" (the two hunters nodded animatedly)—"I pressed on, after a circuit, at the tail of my first 'meat.' I overtook it at dark, had to kill it—it was so stubborn—dressed it, and carried away the paws and choice meat in the hide. The sun was down, and my load was too heavy for me to show much speed, though I believed my father would be impatiently awaiting me."

"It was nine o'clock when I sighted the ranche. The squally wind presaged a tempest. As no light shone at the window, I concluded my father, who must have got back, had gone to bed, weary of waiting. I pulled up the latch, entered, flung down the game, and was making for the hearth, to get a flare-up, when I heard a faint voice close by falter—"

"'Is that you, Sam?' My father's voice! The tone sent a shiver all over me till the blood ran cold from my heart."

"'Oh, that you had come an hour sooner!' he sighed."

"In an instant I had a blaze on the hearth with a handful of bears' grease upon the embers."

"There lay the old man, having tried to crawl to his couch. His face was livid; two wounds were on his breast—one of a firearm, one of a knife; and he was scalped as well. The blood from these neglected wounds painted him thickly and hideously. I fell on my knees beside him, and tried, though vainly, to staunch those dreadful hurts."

"'It's no use, boy,' said he; 'nothing can fence off death. I thank Heaven I was allowed to linger till you came. Now, dash away your tears, and listen to me like a man. In half an hour I shall be no more; but that will do if you mean to see justice done me.'"

"He had started for San Francisco at one, so as to be home early enough to have a good meal against my return if I were out. He soon got through his business, and was going to leave, when he met a native Californian acquaintance—a gambusino, or confirmed gold hunter—a man he liked very well. To have a friendly glass at leisure, they dropped into the nearest public resort, the gamblers' and revellers' hotel, called the 'Polka' saloon. The place was crammed with drinkers taking their morning 'eye-openers,' or desperadoes relating their night's exploits, or miscreants hatching fresh schemes.