They say
there's still $40,000 buried on Trinity Mountain, half of what was
waiting when Rattlesnake Dick got killed."
Rattlesnake Dick, pirate of the placers, prince of highwaymen! Magical
name - irridescent bubble from the pipe of romance. Proud, imperious,
bitter Dick! What a splendid old name he had been born to, and what
blows Fate had dealt him which led to his tragic end!
The others had come up by this time and we sat in a circle listening
again to the story of the bold and brilliant Englishman whom two
undeserved jail sentences had turned into such a picturesque dare-devil
of a highwayman. However, I disagreed with Otto's version of the robber
chief.
"But you have made him out all bad," I told him. "I have heard the story
often, and he wasn't all bad by any means."
"He was a wild desperado. Why, even after he was dead and lying on the
sidewalk in Auburn, a man came up and kicked his face."
"Yes, and they say that everybody in the county was mad about it, and
when the man ran for supervisor more than a year later, no decent person
would vote for him and he lost his election.
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