These men were an important factor in the history of Monterey County for many years, and I knew all of them well; but had they known that I saw them that morning in the grove I guess I should not have lived to write this history; though it was years before the people came to believing such things of them. The third man in the grove I never saw again. Judging from what we learned afterward, I think it is safe to say that this Unknown was one of the celebrated Bunker gang of bandits, whose headquarters were on the Iowa River somewhere between Eldora and Steamboat Rock, in Hardin County. He was a small man with light hair and eyes, and kept both the Bushyagers on one side of him all the time I had them in view. When he spoke it was almost in a whisper, and he kept darting sharp glances from side to side all the time, and especially at the Bushyagers. When they left he rode the black horse and led one of the grays. I know, because I crept back to my own camp, took my breakfast with Virginia, and then spied on the Bushyagers until dinner-time. After dinner I still found them there arguing about the policy of starting on or waiting until night. Bowie wanted to start; but finally the little light-haired man had his way; and they melted away across the knolls to the west just after sunset. I returned with all the air of having driven them off, and ate my third meal cooked by Virginia Royall. 2 I do not know how long we camped in this lonely little forest; for I lost reckoning as to time. Once in a while Virginia would ask me when I thought it would be safe to go on our way; and I always told her that it would be better to wait. I had forgotten my farm. When I was with her, I could not overcome my bashfulness, my lack of experience, my ignorance of every manner of approach except that of the canallers to the waterside women, with which I suddenly found myself as familiar through memory as with the route from my plate to my mouth; that way I had fully made up my mind to adopt; but something held me back. I now began leaving the camp and from some lurking-place in the distance watching her as a cat watches a bird. I lived over in my mind a thousand times the attack I would make upon her defense, and her yielding after a show of resistance. I became convinced at last that she would not make even a show of resistance; that she was probably wondering what I was waiting for, and making up her mind that, after all, I was not much of a man.