Excerpt from Forty-One Thieves: A Tale of California On that fateful first of September, 187 9, the stage left Graniteville, as usual, at six o'clock in the morn ing. Graniteville, in Eureka Township, Nevada County, is the Eureka South of early days. The stage still makes the daily trip over the mountains; but the glamour and romance of the gold fields have long since departed. On the morning mentioned traffic was light, for people did not travel the twenty eight miles through heat and dust to Nevada City for pleasure. Too Often it was a case Of running the gauntlet from the gold fields to the railroad terminus and safety. This very morning, Charley Chu, who had thrown up his job as mender of ditches, was making a dash for San Francisco, with five hundred dollars in dust and a pistol at his belt. The other passengers were Dr. John Mason and Mamie Slocum, teacher. Mamie, rosy-checked, dark-eyed, and pretty, was only seventeen, and ought to have been at home with her mother. She was a romantic girl, however, with several beaux in Eureka Township; and now that the summer session Of school was over, she was going home to Nevada City, where there were other conquests to be made. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.