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.
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