robbers. The general feeling was one of extreme uneasiness. There
were plenty of men who had taken out of the ground considerable
quantities of gold, and who would have been glad to get back to
the East with their little fortunes, but they dared not start.
Time after time the express coach, the solitary rider, the
unguarded wagon-train, were held up and robbed, usually with the
concomitant of murder. When the miners did start out from one
camp to another they took all manner of precautions to conceal
their gold dust. We are told that on one occasion one party bored
a hole in the end of the wagon tongue with an auger and filled it
full of gold dust, thus escaping observation! The robbers learned
to know the express agents, and always had advice of every large
shipment of gold. It was almost useless to undertake to conceal
anything from them; and resistance was met with death. Such a
reign of terror, such an organized system of highway robbery,
such a light valuing of human life, has been seldom found in any
other time or place.

There were, as we have seen, good men in these camps--although
the best of them probably let down the standards of living
somewhat after their arrival there; but the trouble was that the
good men did not know one another, had no organization, and
scarcely dared at first to attempt one. On the other hand, the
robbers' organization was complete and kept its secrets as the
grave; indeed, many and many a lonesome grave held secrets none
ever was to know. How many men went out from Eastern States and
disappeared, their fate always to remain a mystery, is a part of
the untold story of the mining frontier.

There are known to have been a hundred and two men killed by