CHAPTER I_Forty-one Thieves: A Tale of California

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Forty-one Thieves

_A Tale of California_

ANGELO HALL

THE CORNHILL COMPANY

BOSTON

DEDICATED TO J. H. K.

A PARTNER OF WILL CUMMINS AND A NEIGHBOR OF ROBERT PALMER

CONTENTS

I. Dead Men Tell No Tales

II. The Graniteville Stage

III. The Girl or the Gold?

IV. A Council of War

V. Old Man Palmer

VI. Two of a Kind

VII. An Old Sweetheart

VIII. "Bed-bug" Brown, Detective

IX. The Home-Coming of a Dead Man

X. The Travels of John Keeler

XI. The Snows of the Sierras

XII. The Golden Summer Comes Again

XIII. The End of the Trail

XIV. Golden Opportunities

XV. Three Graves by the Middle Yuba

XVI. When Thieves Fall Out

XVII. Brought to Justice

XVIII. The End of J. C. P. Collins

XIX. The Home-Coming of Another Dead Man

XX. The Bridal Veil

FORTY-ONE THIEVES

CHAPTER I

Dead Men Tell No Tales

In the cemetery on the hill near the quiet village of Reedsville,

Pennsylvania, you may find this inscription:

WILLIAM F. CUMMINS

son of Col. William & Martha Cummins

who was killed by highwaymen near

Nevada City, California

September 1, 1879

aged 45 yrs. and 8 months

Be ye therefore also ready

For the Son of Man cometh

At an hour when ye think not.

It is a beautiful spot, on the road to Milroy. In former times a church

stood in the middle of the grounds, and the stern old Presbyterian

forefathers marched to meeting with muskets on their shoulders, for the

country was infested with Indians. The swift stream at the foot of the

hill, now supplying power for a grist-mill, was full of salmon that ran

up through the Kishacoquillas from the blue Juniata. The savages

begrudged the settlers these fish and the game that abounded in the

rough mountains; but the settlers had come to cultivate the rich land

extending for twelve miles between the mountain walls.

The form of many a Californian now rests in that cemetery on the hill. A

few years after the burial of the murdered Cummins, the body of Henry

Francis was gathered to his fathers, and, near by, lie the bodies of

four of his brothers,--all Californians. The staid Amish farmers and

their subdued women, in outlandish, Puritanical garb, pass along the

road unstirred by the romance and glamour buried in those graves. Dead

men tell no tales! Else there were no need that pen of mine should

snatch from oblivion this tale of California.

More than thirty-five years have passed since my father, returning from

the scene of Cummins' murder, related the circumstances. With Mat

Bailey, the stage-driver, with whom Cummins had traveled that fatal day,

he had ridden over the same road, had passed the large stump which had

concealed the robbers, and had become almost an eye-witness of the whole

affair. My father's rehearsal of it fired my youthful imagination. So it

was like a return to the scenes of boyhood when, thirty-six years after

the event, I, too, traveled the same road that Cummins had traveled and

heard from the lips of Pete Sherwood, stage-driver of a later

generation, the same thrilling story. The stump by the roadside had so

far decayed as to have fallen over; but it needed little imagination to

picture the whole tragedy. In Sacramento I looked up the files of the

_Daily Record Union_, which on Sept. 3, 1879, two days after the event,

gave a brief account of it. There was newspaper enterprise for you! An

atrocious crime reported in a neighboring city two days afterward! Were

such things too common to excite interest? Or was it felt that the

recital of them did not tend to boom the great State of California?