I said to the murderer: "Sir, you are a stranger to me, but you have done me a kindness this day which I can never forget.

If whole years of gratitude can be to you any slight compensation, they shall be yours.

I was in trouble and you have relieved me nobly and at a time when all seemed dark and drear.

Count me your friend from this time forth, for I am not a man to forget a favor." If I did not really say that to him I at least felt a sort of itching desire to do it.

I wrote up the murder with a hungry attention to details, and when it was finished experienced but one regret--namely, that they had not hanged my benefactor on the spot, so that I could work him up too.
Next I discovered some emigrant wagons going into camp on the plaza and found that they had lately come through the hostile Indian country and had fared rather roughly.