Spades boasted he had made his old teeth rattle
like rocks in a rocker. The Doctor said nothing,
but got off as best he could and came home. He
did not even mention the matter to any one.
Shortly after this Spades was found dead. He was found just as the Judge had been found, close to his cabin door, with the three mortal stabs in the breast, only he did not have the lock of hair in his hands from the Doctor s head.
There was talk of a mob. This thing of killing people in the night, even though they were the most worthless men of the camp, and even though they were killed in a way that suggested something like fair play, and revenge rather than robbery, was not to be indulged in, even at Humbug, with impunity. Some of the idlers got together at the Howlin Wilderness to pass resolutions, and take some steps in the matter, as Spades lay stretched out under the old blue soldier coat on a pine slab that had many dark stains across and along its rugged surface, but they fell into an exciting game of poker, at ten dollars a corner, and the matter for the time was left to rest. No Antony came to hold up the dead Caesar s mantle, and poor Spades was buried much as he had buried the Judge a short time before.
Some one consulted Sandy on the subject, about the time of the funeral, as he stood at the bar of the Howlin Wilderness for his gin and peppermint. Sandy was something of a mouth-piece for the miners, not that he was a recognized leader; miners, as a
