Of their married felicity but little is known, perhaps for the reason that Tennessee, then living with his partner, one day took occasion to say something to the bride on his own account, at which, it is said, she smiled not unkindly and chastely retreated,—­this time as far as Marysville, where Tennessee followed her, and where they went to housekeeping without the aid of a justice of the peace.  Tennessee’s Partner took the loss of his wife simply and seriously, as was his fashion.  But to everybody’s surprise, when Tennessee one day returned from Marysville, without his partner’s wife,—­she having smiled and retreated with somebody else,—­Tennessee’s Partner was the first man to shake his hand and greet him with affection.  The boys who had gathered in the canon to see the shooting were naturally indignant.  Their indignation might have found vent in sarcasm but for a certain look in Tennessee’s Partner’s eye that indicated a lack of humorous appreciation.  In fact, he was a grave man, with a steady application to practical detail which was unpleasant in a difficulty.

Meanwhile a popular feeling against Tennessee had grown up on the Bar.  He was known to be a gambler; he was suspected to be a thief.  In these suspicions Tennessee’s Partner was equally compromised; his continued intimacy with Tennessee after the affair above quoted could only be accounted for on the hypothesis of a copartnership of crime.  At last Tennessee’s guilt became flagrant.  One day he overtook a stranger on his way to Red Dog.  The stranger afterward related that Tennessee beguiled the time with interesting anecdote and reminiscence, but illogically concluded the interview in the following words:  “And now, young man, I’ll trouble you for your knife, your pistols, and your money.  You see your weppings might get you into trouble at Red Dog, and your money’s a temptation to the evilly disposed.  I think you said your address was San Francisco.  I shall endeavor to call.”  It may be stated here that Tennessee had a fine flow of humor, which no business preoccupation could wholly subdue.

This exploit was his last.  Red Dog and Sandy Bar made common cause against the highwayman.  Tennessee was hunted in very much the same fashion as his prototype, the grizzly.  As the toils closed around him, he made a desperate dash through the Bar, emptying his revolver at the crowd before the Arcade Saloon, and so on up Grizzly Canon; but at its farther extremity he was stopped by a small man on a gray horse.  The men looked at each other a moment in silence.  Both were fearless, both self-possessed and independent, and both types of a civilization that in the seventeenth century would have been called heroic, but in the nineteenth simply “reckless.”

“What have you got there?—­I call,” said Tennessee quietly.

“Two bowers and an ace,” said the stranger as quietly, showing two revolvers and a bowie-knife.

“That takes me,” returned Tennessee; and, with this gambler’s epigram, he threw away his useless pistol and rode back with his captor.