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“You see, it was this way. Over in American Canon, some five miles maybe back of the mine, they was a creek called the American River, and it was sure chock-a-block full of trouts. The Boss used for to go over there with a dinky fish-pole like a buggy-whip about once a week, and scout that stream for fish and bring back a basketful. He was sure keen on it, and had bought some kind of privilege or other, so as he could keep other people off.

“Well, I used to go along with him to pack the truck, and one Saturday, about a month after Cock-eye had been run outen camp, we hiked up over the divide, and went for to round up a bunch o’ trouts. When we got to the river there was a mess for your life. Say, that river was full of dead trouts, floating atop the water; and they was some even on the bank. Not a scratch on ’em; just dead. The Boss had the papsy-lals. I never did see a man so rip-r’aring, snorting mad. I hadn’t a guess about what we were up against, but he knew, and he showed down. He said somebody had been shooting the river for fish to sell down Sacramento way to the market. A mean trick; kill more fish in one shoot than you can possibly pack.

“Well, we didn’t do much fishing that day–couldn’t get a bite, for that matter–and took on home about noon to talk it over. You see, the Boss, in buying the privileges or such for that creek, had made himself responsible to the Fish Commissioners of the State, and ’twasn’t a week before they were after him, camping on his trail incessant, and wanting to know how about it. The Boss was some worried, because the fish were being killed right along, and the Commission was making him weary of living. Twicet afterward we prospected along that river and found the same lot of dead fish. We even put a guard there, but it didn’t do no manner of good.

“It’s the Boss who first suspicions Cock-eye. But it don’t take no seventh daughter of no seventh daughter to trace trouble where Black-lock’s about. He sudden shows up in town with a bunch of simoleons, buying bacon and tin cows [Footnote: Condensed milk.] and such provender, and generally giving it away that he’s come into money. The Boss, who’s watching his movements sharp, says to me one day:

“‘Bunt, the storm-centre of this here low area is a man with a cock-eye, an’ I’ll back that play with a paint horse against a paper dime.’

“‘No takers,’ says I. ‘Dirty work and a cock-eyed man are two heels of the same mule.’

“‘Which it’s a-kicking of me in the stummick frequent and painful,’ he remarks, plenty wrathful.

“‘On general principles,’ I said, ‘it’s a royal flush to a pair of deuces as how this Blacklock bird ought to stop a heap of lead, and I know the man to throw it. He’s the only brother of my sister, and tends chuck in a placer mine. How about if I take a day off and drop round to his cabin and interview him on the fleetin’ and unstable nature of human life?’

“But the Boss wouldn’t hear of that.

“‘No,’ says he; ‘that’s not the bluff to back in this game. You an’ me an’ ‘Mary-go-round’–that was what we called the marshal, him being so much all over the country–‘you an’ me an’ Mary-go-round will have to stock a sure-thing deck against that maverick.’

“So the three of us gets together an’ has a talky-talk, an’ we lays it out as how Cock-eye must be watched and caught red-handed.

“Well, let me tell you, keeping case on that Greaser sure did lack a certain indefinable charm. We tried him at sun-up, an’ again at sundown, an’ nights, too, laying in the chaparral an’ tarweed, an’ scouting up an’ down that blame river, till we were sore. We built surreptitious a lot of shooting-boxes up in trees on the far side of the canon, overlooking certain an’ sundry pools in the river where Cock-eye would be likely to pursue operations, an’ we took turns watching. I’ll be a Chink if that bad egg didn’t put it on us same as previous, an’ we’d find new-killed fish all the time. I tell you we were fitchered; and it got on the Boss’s nerves. The Commission began to talk of withdrawing the privilege, an’ it was up to him to make good or pass the deal. We knew Blacklock was shooting the river, y’ see, but we didn’t have no evidence. Y’ see, being shut off from card-sharping, he was up against it, and so took to pot-hunting to get along. It was as plain as red paint.