It took some little time for the gentle reproof to take effect, but
Uncle Lance had an easy faculty of evading a question when it was
contrary to his own views. "Speaking of the wisdom of babes," said he,
"reminds me of what Felix York, an old '36 comrade of mine, once said.
He had caught the gold fever in '49, and nothing would do but he and
some others must go to California. The party went up to Independence,
Missouri, where they got into an overland emigrant train, bound for the
land of gold. But it seems before starting, Senator Benton had made a
speech in that town, in which he made the prophecy that one day there
would be a railroad connecting the Missouri River with the Pacific
Ocean. Felix told me this only a few years ago. But he said that all
the teamsters made the prediction a byword. When, crossing some of the
mountain ranges, the train halted to let the oxen blow, one bull-whacker
would say to another: 'Well, I'd like to see old Tom Benton get
his railroad over _this_ mountain.' When Felix told me this he
said--'There's a railroad to-day crosses those same mountain passes over
which we forty-niners whacked our bulls. And to think I was a grown man
and had no more sense or foresight than a little baby blinkin' its eyes
in the sun.'"

With years at Las Palomas, I learned to like the old ranchero. There was
something of the strong, primitive man about him which compelled a
youth of my years to listen to his counsel. His confidence in me was a
compliment which I appreciate to this day. When I had been in his employ
hardly two years, an incident occurred which, though only one of many
similar acts cementing our long friendship, tested his trust.

One morning just as he was on the point of starting on horseback to
the county seat to pay his taxes, a Mexican arrived at the ranch and