VIGILANTE DAYS AND WAYS

                           BY THE SAME AUTHOR

                           WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

                       WONDERS OF THE YELLOWSTONE

                                                in _Scribner’s Magazine_

                       THE ASCENT OF MOUNT HAYDEN

                                                in _Scribner’s Magazine_

[Illustration: _Nathaniel P. Langford._]

                        VIGILANTE DAYS AND WAYS
                      THE PIONEERS OF THE ROCKIES
               THE MAKERS AND MAKING OF MONTANA AND IDAHO

                                   BY

                        NATHANIEL PITT LANGFORD

                    WITH PORTRAITS AND ILLUSTRATIONS

                                CHICAGO
                          A. C. McCLURG & CO.
                                  1912

                            COPYRIGHT, 1890.

                      BY NATHANIEL PITT LANGFORD.

                         _All Rights Reserved._

                               COPYRIGHT,

                          A. C. McCLURG & CO.

                                  1912

                      W. G. Hull Printing Company
                                Chicago

[Illustration: “_Why doesn’t he write?_”]

                       THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO

                          THE MEMORY OF THOSE

                            Unknown Pioneers

                     WHO LOST THEIR LIVES IN LAYING

                         THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE

                                 Empire

                                 OF THE

                            New Great West.

                  “_One of the chief temptations of
                  the Devil is that he can persuade a
                  man that he can write a book, by
                  which he can achieve both wealth and
                  fame._”—CERVANTES.

                           TABLE OF CONTENTS

                CHAPTER                            PAGE

                        INTRODUCTION                 xi

                      I HENRY PLUMMER                19

                     II SOCIETY IN LEWISTON          26

                    III NORTHERN MINES               34

                     IV CHARLEY HARPER               40

                      V CHEROKEE BOB                 45

                     VI FLORENCE                     53

                    VII FIRST VIGILANCE COMMITTEE    60

                   VIII NEW GOLD DISCOVERIES         64

                     IX DESERTION OF MINING CAMPS    69

                      X BOONE HELM                   74

                     XI DEATH OF CHARLEY HARPER      87

                    XII PINKHAM AND PATTERSON        91

                   XIII EARLY DISCOVERIES OF GOLD   111

                    XIV CAPTAIN FISK’S EXPEDITION   122

                     XV BANNACK IN 1862             130

                    XVI MOORE AND REEVES            137

                   XVII CRAWFORD AND PHLEGER        148

                  XVIII BROADWATER’S STRATAGEM      163

                    XIX ORGANIZATION OF THE ROUGHS  171

                     XX A MASONIC FUNERAL           181

                    XXI BATTLE OF BEAR RIVER        195

                   XXII ALDER GULCH                 206

                  XXIII VIRGINIA CITY               221

                   XXIV COACH ROBBERIES             232

                    XXV LEROY SOUTHMAYD             244

                   XXVI JOURNEY TO SALT LAKE CITY   255

                  XXVII COL. SANDERS AND GALLAGHER  266

                 XXVIII ROBBERY OF MOODY’S TRAIN    279

                   XXIX GEORGE IVES                 285

                    XXX TRIAL OF GEORGE IVES        298

                   XXXI RESULT OF IVES’S EXECUTION  305

                  XXXII LLOYD MAGRUDER              318

                 XXXIII HILL BEACHY                 331

                  XXXIV HOWIE AND FETHERSTUN        349

                   XXXV EXECUTION OF PLUMMER        360

                  XXXVI DEATH OF PIZANTHIA          367

                 XXXVII EXECUTION OF DUTCH JOHN     371

                XXXVIII VIRGINIA CITY EXECUTIONS    374

                  XXXIX PURSUIT OF ROAD AGENTS      389

                     XL EXECUTION OF HUNTER         400

                    XLI THE STRANGER’S STORY        407

                   XLII WHITE AND DORSETT           420

                  XLIII LANGFORD PEEL               429

                   XLIV JOSEPH A. SLADE             441

                    XLV A MODERN HAMAN              463

                   XLVI JAMES DANIELS               473

                  XLVII DAVID OPDYKE                476

                 XLVIII SAN ANDREAS IN 1849         485

                   XLIX AN INTERESTING ADVENTURE    492

                      L THE STAGE COACH             517

                     LI RETROSPECTION               537

                        INDEX                       545

                             ILLUSTRATIONS

                                                                    PAGE

 NATHANIEL P. LANGFORD                                    _Frontispiece_

 A PACK TRAIN: CINCHING                                               66

 JAMES STUART, WHO SET THE FIRST SLUICES IN MONTANA                  112

 GRANVILLE STUART, WHO SET THE FIRST SLUICES IN MONTANA              116

 CAPTAIN JAMES L. FISK, COMMANDER OF NORTHERN OVERLAND
   EXPEDITION                                                        124

 JUDGE J. F. HOYT, MINERS’ JUDGE AT TRIAL OF MOORE AND
   REEVES                                                            144

 JUDGE WALTER B. DANCE, MINERS’ JUDGE AT BANNACK                     174

 GENERAL P. E. CONNOR, COMMANDER AT BATTLE OF BEAR RIVER.            198

 SAMUEL T. HAUSER, EX-GOVERNOR OF MONTANA                            256

 COLONEL WILBUR F. SANDERS, PRINCIPAL PROSECUTOR OF
   GEORGE IVES                                                       300

 HILL BEACHY, LLOYD MAGRUDER’S AVENGER                               332

 NEIL HOWIE, CAPTOR OF “DUTCH JOHN”                                  352

 JOHN FETHERSTUN, OVERLAND EXPRESS MESSENGER                         358

 A VIGILANTE EXECUTION                                               396

 JOHN X. BEIDLER, LEADING VIGILANTE AND EXPRESS MESSENGER            464

                              INTRODUCTION

It is stated on good authority, that soon after the first appearance of
Schiller’s drama of “The Robbers” a number of young men, charmed with
the character of Charles De Moor, formed a band and went to the forests
of Bohemia to engage in brigand life. I have no fear that such will be
the influence of this volume. It deals in facts. Robber life as
delineated by the vivid fancy of Schiller, and robber life as it existed
in our mining regions, were as widely separated as fiction and truth. No
one can read this record of events, and escape the conviction that an
honest, laborious, and well-meaning life, whether successful or not, is
preferable to all the temporary enjoyments of a life of recklessness and
crime. The truth of the adage that “Crime carries with it its own
punishment” has never received a more powerful vindication than at the
tribunals erected by the people of the northwest mines for their
protection. No sadder commentary could have stained our civilization
than to permit the numerous and bloody crimes committed in the early
history of this portion of our country to go unwhipped of justice. And
the fact that they were promptly and thoroughly dealt with stands among
the earliest and noblest characteristics of a people which derived their
ideas of right and of self-protection from that spirit of the law that
flows spontaneously from our free institutions. The people bore with
crime until punishment became a duty and neglect a crime. Then, at
infinite hazard of failure, they entered upon the work of purgation with
a strong hand—and in the briefest possible time established the
supremacy of law. The robbers and murderers of the mining regions, so
long defiant of the claims of peace and safety, were made to hold the
gibbet in greater terror there than in any other portion of our country.

Up to this time, fear of punishment had exercised no restraining
influence on the conduct of men who had organized murder and robbery
into a steady pursuit. They hesitated at no atrocity necessary to
accomplish their guilty designs. Murder with them was resorted to as the
most available means of concealing robbery, and the two crimes were
generally coincident. The country, filled with cañons, gulches, and
mountain passes, was especially adapted to their purposes, and the
unpeopled distances between mining camps afforded ample opportunity for
carrying them into execution. Pack trains and companies, stage coaches
and express messengers, were as much exposed as the solitary traveller,
and often selected as objects of attack. Miners, who had spent months of
hard labor in the placers in the accumulation of a few hundreds of
dollars, were never heard of after they left the mines to return to
their distant homes. Men were daily and nightly robbed and murdered in
the camps. There was no limit to this system of organized brigandage.

When not engaged in robbery, this criminal population followed other
disreputable pursuits. Gambling and licentiousness were the most
conspicuous features of every mining camp, and both were but other
species of robbery. Worthless women taken from the stews of cities plied
their vocation in open day, and their bagnios were the lures where many
men were entrapped for robbery and slaughter. Dance-houses sprung up as
if by enchantment, and every one who sought an evening’s recreation in
them was in some way relieved of the money he took there. Many good men
who dared to give expression to the feelings of horror and disgust which
these exhibitions inspired, were shot down by some member of the gang on
the first opportunity. For a long time these acts were unnoticed, for
the reason that the friends of law and order supposed the power of evil
to be in the ascendant. Encouraged by this impunity the ruffian power
increased in audacity, and gave utterance to threats against all that
portion of the community which did not belong to its organization. An
issue involving the destruction of the good or bad element actually
existed at the time that the people entered upon the work of punishment.

I offer these remarks, not in vindication of all the acts of the
Vigilantes, but of so many of them as were necessary to establish the
safety and protection of the people. The reader will find among the
later acts of some of the individuals claiming to have exercised the
authority of the Vigilantes, some executions of which he cannot approve.
For these persons I can offer no apology. Many of these were worse men
than those they executed. Some were hasty and inconsiderate, and while
firm in the belief they were doing right, actually committed grievous
offences. Unhappily for the Vigilantes, the acts of these men have been
recalled to justify an opinion abroad, prejudicial to the Vigilante
organization. Nothing could be more unjust. The early Vigilantes were
the best and most intelligent men in the mining regions. They saw and
felt that, in the absence of all law, they must become a “law unto
themselves,” or submit to the bloody code of the banditti by which they
were surrounded, and which were increasing in numbers more rapidly than
themselves. Each man among them realized from the first the great
delicacy and care necessary in the management of a society which assumed
the right to condemn to death a fellow-man, and they now refer to the
history of all those men who suffered death by their decree as affording
ample justification for the severity of their acts. What else could they
do? How else were their own lives and property, and the lives and
property of the great body of peaceable miners in the placers to be
preserved? What other protection was there for a country entirely
destitute of law?

Let those who would condemn these men try to realize how they would act
under similar circumstances, and they will soon find everything to
approve and nothing to condemn in the transactions of the early
Vigilantes. I have endeavored to narrate nothing but facts, and these
will enable every reader to judge correctly of the merits of each case.

I would fain believe that this history, bloody as it is, will prove both
interesting and instructive. In all that concerns crime of the blackest
dye on the one hand, and love for law and order on the other, it stands
without a parallel in the annals of any people. Nowhere else, nor at any
former period since men became civilized, have murder and robbery and
social vice presented an organized front, and offered an open contest
for supremacy to a large civilized community. Their works for centuries
have been done by stealth, in darkness, and as far away from society as
possible. I cannot now remember the instance, within the past three
hundred years, when the history of any country records the fact that the
criminal element of an entire community, numbering thousands, was
believed to be greater than the peaceful element. Yet it was so here.
And when the Vigilantes of Montana entered upon their work, they did not
know how soon they might have to encounter a force numerically greater
than their own.

In my view the moral of this history is a good one. The brave and
faithful conduct of the Vigilantes furnishes an example of American
character, from a point of view entirely new. We know what our
countrymen were capable of doing when exposed to Indian massacre. We
have read history after history recording the sufferings of early
pioneers in the East, South, and West, but what they would do when
surrounded by robbers and assassins, who were in all civil aspects like
themselves, it has remained for the first settlers of the northwestern
mines to tell. And that they did their work well, and showed in every
act a love for law, order, and for the moral and social virtues in which
they had been educated, and a regard for our free institutions, no one
can doubt who rightly appreciates the motives which actuated them.

A people who had not been reared to respect law and order, and to regard
the privileges which flow from a free government as greater than all
others, in the regulation of society, would have been restrained by fear
from any such united and thorough effort as that which in Montana
actually scourged crime out of existence, and secured to an unorganized
community all the immunities and blessings of good government. The
terror which popular justice inspired in the criminal population has
never been forgotten. To this day crime has been less frequent in
occurrence in Montana than in any other of the new Territories, and no
banded criminals have made that Territory an abiding place.

Although not the first exhibition of Vigilante justice, the one I here
record was the most thorough and severe, and stands as an example for
all new settlements that in the future may be similarly afflicted, for
it was not until driven to it both by the frequent and unremitting
villainies of the ruffians, and by the necessities of a condition for
which there was no law in existence, that the people resorted to
measures of their own, and made and enforced laws suited to the
exigency. But enough! If the history fails to remove the prejudices of
my readers, nothing I can say will do so. It speaks for itself, and
though there are a few of its later occurrences I would gladly blot,
there is nothing in its early transactions, nothing in the design it
unfolds, nothing in the results which have followed, that on a similar
occasion I would not wish to see reproduced.

                        VIGILANTE DAYS AND WAYS

                               CHAPTER I
                             HENRY PLUMMER

The Snake River or Lewis fork of the Columbia takes its rise in a small
lake which is separated by the main range of the Rocky Mountains from
the large lakes of the Yellowstone, that being less than twenty miles
distant from it. The Yellowstone, the Madison, Jefferson and Gallatin,
forming the head waters of the Missouri, and the Snake, the largest
tributary fork of the Columbia, all rise within or near the limits of
the territory recently dedicated by the Government to the purpose of a
National Park.

As contrasted with the large rivers of regions other than the one it
traverses, the Snake River would be a very remarkable stream, but there,
where everything in nature is wonderful, it is simply one of the marked
features in its physical geography. From its source to its junction with
the Clarke fork of the Columbia, a distance of nine hundred miles, it
flows through a region which, at some remote period, has been the scene
of greater volcanic action than any other portion of North America.
Unlike other streams, which are formed by rivulets and springs, this
river is scarcely less formidable in its appearance at its commencement
than at its termination. It leaps into rapids from the moment of its
exit, and its waters, blackened by the basaltic bed through which it
flows, roar and fret, and lash the sides of the gloomy cañon which it
enters, presenting a scene of tumult and fury, that extends far beyond
the limits of vision. This initiatory character it maintains, alternated
with occasional reaches of quiet large expansions, and narrow
contractions, fearful and tremendous cataracts, to its debouchure into
the Columbia. Its channel and its course, alike sinuous, have obtained
for it its name. Navigation is impeded by reason of fearful rapids,
every few miles of the first five hundred after leaving the lake. The
shores for most of the distance are barren rock, always precipitous,
often inaccessible from the river, and frequently engorged by lofty
mountains and rocky cañons which shut its inky surface from the light of
day. The scenery, though on the most tremendous scale, is savage,
unattractive, and frightful. Its waters lash the base of the three
Tetons, so celebrated as the great landmarks of this portion of the
continent. As they approach the Columbia they break into frequent
cataracts, the largest of which, the great Shoshone Fall, with a
perpendicular descent of two hundred and fifty feet, presents many
points of singular interest.

On the river, twelve miles above its mouth, at a point accessible from
the Columbia by small steamboats, stands the little village of Lewiston,
which, at the time of which I write, was the capital of all the vast
Territory that had been just organized under the euphonic name of Idaho.
This Territory then included Montana and Wyoming, which had not been
organized. Lewiston, being the nearest accessible point by water to the
recently discovered gold placers of Elk City, Oro Fino, Florence, and
Warner Creek, grew with the rapidity known only to mining towns into an
emporium. In less than three months from the time the first immigrants
commenced to establish a settlement there, several streets of more than
a mile in length were laid out, thickly covered on either side with
dwellings, stores, hotels, and saloons, chiefly constructed of common
factory cotton. A tenement of this kind could be extemporized in a few
hours. The frame was of light scantling or poles, and the cloth in most
cases fastened to it with tacks. Seen from a distance, the town had the
appearance of being built of white marble, but truly

            “’T is distance lends enchantment to the view,”

for upon entering it the fragility of the material soon disabused the
vision and the admiration of the beholder. At night, when lights were
burning in these frail tenements, a stranger would think the town
illuminated. The number of drinking and gambling saloons was greatly in
excess of stores and private dwellings, and to nearly all of these was
attached that most important attraction of a mining town, the
hurdy-gurdy. The sound of the violin which struck the ear on entering
the street, was never lost while passing through it, and at many of the
saloons the evidence of the bacchanal orgies which were in progress
inside was often apparent in the eagerness exhibited by the crowd which
surrounded the building without. The voices of auctioneers on the street
corners, the shouts of frequent horsemen as they rode up and down the
streets, the rattle of vehicles arriving and departing for the miners’
camps, troops of miners, Indians, gamblers, the unmeaning babble of
numerous drunken men, the tawdrily apparelled dancing women of the
hurdy-gurdys, altogether presented a scene of life in an entirely new
aspect to the person who for the first time entered a mining town. It is
a feature of modern civilization which cannot elsewhere be found, search
the whole world over. The thirst for gold is shared by all classes.
Those who are unwilling to labor, in their efforts to obtain it by less
honorable means, flock to the mines to ply their guilty vocations. Hence
there is no vice unrepresented in a mining camp, and no type or shade of
character in civilized society that is not there publicly developed. The
misfortune is, as a general thing, that the worst elements, being most
popular, generally preponderate.

Our Civil War was raging at the time that Lewiston became a mining
emporium. Sympathizers with each party fled to the mines, to escape the
possible responsibilities they might incur by remaining in the States.
They carried their political views with them, and identified themselves
with those portions of society which reflected their respective
attachments. Loyalty and Secession each flourished by turn, and were the
prolific causes of frequent bloody dissensions. There was no law to
restrain human passion, so that each man was a law unto himself,
according as he was swayed by the evil or good of his own nature. The
temptations to evil, not so numerous, were much more powerful than were
ever before presented to a great majority of the immigrants. Gambling
and drinking were made attractive by the presence of debased women, who
lured to their ruin all who, fortunate in the possession of gold, could
not withstand their varied devices.

In the Spring of 1861, among the daily arrivals at Lewiston, was a man
of gentlemanly bearing and dignified deportment, accompanied by a woman,
to all appearance his wife. He took quarters at the best hotel in town.
Before the close of the second day after his arrival his character as a
gambler was fully understood, and in less than a fortnight his
abandonment of his female companion betrayed the illicit connection
which had existed between them. Alone, among strangers, destitute, the
poor woman told how she had been beguiled, by the promises of this man,
from home and family, and induced to link herself with his fortunes. A
fond husband and three helpless children mourned her loss by a
visitation worse than death. Lacking moral courage to return to her
heart-broken husband and ask forgiveness, she sought to drown her sorrow
by plunging still deeper into the abyss of shame and ruin. Soon, alas!
she became one of the lowest inmates of a frontier brothel. This latest
crime of Henry Plummer was soon forgotten, or remembered only as one of
many similar events which occur in mining camps.

He, meanwhile, in the pursuit of his profession as a gambler, formed the
acquaintance of many congenial spirits. From their subsequent operations
it was also apparent that at his instigation an alliance was formed with
them which had for its object the attainment of fortune by the most
desperate means. Every fortunate man in any of the mining camps was
marked as the prey, sooner or later, of this abandoned combination.
Every gambler or rough infesting the camp, either voluntarily or by
threats was induced to unite in the enterprise; and thus originated the
band of desperadoes which, for the succeeding two years, by their
fearful atrocities, spread such terror through the northern mines.
Plummer was their acknowledged leader.

Professional gamblers everywhere, in a new country, form a community by
themselves. They have few intimates outside of their own number. A sort
of tacit understanding among them links them together by certain implied
rules and regulations, which they readily obey. Of the same nature, we
may suppose, was the bond which united Plummer and his associates in
their infernal designs of plunder and butchery. The honor which thieves
accord each other, the prospect of unlimited reward for their vicious
deeds, and the certainty of condign punishment for any act of treachery,
secured the band and its purposes against any betrayal by its members.

Nowhere are the conventionalities of social life sooner abandoned than
in a mining camp. To call a man by his proper name there generally
implies that he is either a stranger or one with whom you do not care to
make acquaintance. The gamblers were generally known by diminutive
surnames or appellations significant of their characters. I shall so
designate those of them who were thus known, in this narrative.

Prominent among the associates of Plummer at Lewiston were Jack
Cleveland, Cherokee Bob, and Bill Bunton. Cleveland was an old
California acquaintance, familiar with Plummer’s early history. He used
this fatal knowledge, as it afterwards proved, in a dictatorial and
offensive manner, often presuming upon it to arrogate a position in the
band which by common consent was assigned to Plummer.

Cherokee Bob was a native Georgian, and received his name from the fact
that he was a quarter-blood Indian. He was bitter in his hatred of the
loyal cause and all engaged in it. Before he came to Lewiston he had, in
an affray of his own plotting, killed two or three soldiers in the Walla
Walla theatre. He fled to Lewiston to escape the vengeance of their
comrades.

Bill Bunton was a double-dyed murderer and notorious horse and cattle
thief. He had killed a man at a ball near Walla Walla, was tried for
murder, and acquitted on insufficient evidence. He afterwards killed his
brother-in-law, and in cold blood soon after shot down an Indian, and
escaped the clutches of the law by flight. Possessing himself of a
ranche on Pataha Creek, he lived there with his Indian wife, under the
pretext of farming. It was soon ascertained, however, that his business
was secreting and selling stolen stock. The officers made a dash upon
his ranche, but the bird had again flown. Soon afterward, disguised in
the blanket and paint of an Indian, he entered Lewiston, and lounged
about the streets for several days without exciting suspicion. During
this time he became a member of Plummer’s murderous band.

There were several others whose names are unknown, that entered into the
combination formed for systematized robbery and murder at this time.
Around this nucleus a large number of desperate men afterwards gathered.
They became so formidable in numbers, and their deeds of blood were so
frequent and daring, that the mining camps were awed by them into tacit
submission, and witnessed without even remonstrance the perpetration of
murders and robberies in their very midst, of the most revolting
character.

                               CHAPTER II
                          SOCIETY IN LEWISTON

Towards the close of the Summer of 1862, the band organized by Plummer
having increased in numbers, he selected two points of rendezvous, as
bases for their operations. These were called “shebangs.” They were
enclosed by mountains, whose rugged fastnesses were available for refuge
in case of attack.

One was located between Alpwai and Pataha creeks, on the road from
Lewiston to Walla Walla, about twenty-five miles from the former, and
the other at the foot of Craig’s Mountain, between Lewiston and Oro
Fino, at a point where the main road was intersected by a trail for pack
animals. The location of the latter was upon ground reserved by treaty
to the Nez Percés Indians, and near a military post established for its
protection. The chief of the tribe complained to the resident agent of
the Indians, of the aggression. He laid the complaint before the
commandant of the post, who treated it with neglect. The robbers
occupied the spot without molestation, and when they abandoned it, it
was of their own accord.

There were several smaller stations nearer to Walla Walla and Lewiston,
which were occupied only as occasion might require. A close
communication was established between these localities, by which the
operations of each were speedily known to all. Plummer, meantime, while
secretly directing the affairs of the shebangs and issuing orders
continually to the men, contrived to ward off suspicion from himself,
and preserve the appearance of a harmless and inoffensive citizen of
Lewiston. His notoriety as a gambler was shared by so many better men,
and by a great majority of the miners themselves, that it really
protected him in his character as a robber. While, therefore, he was
prying into the financial condition of those with whom his profession
brought him in daily contact in town, he was at the same time informing
his confederates at the shebangs of every departure which boded success
to their enterprise.

Such of the population as were not, to a greater or less degree,
involved in the gambling operations of the community, although perfectly
cognizant of the designs of the robbers, were too insignificant in
numbers to offer any active opposition. Being without organization, they
hardly knew each other. Such was the state of feeling that, if a gambler
or rough desired to possess any of the articles on sale by merchants or
grocers, he entered a store, selected for himself the best the
assortment afforded, and took it away with a request that it should be
charged, or stated that some day when he was in luck he would pay for
it. Rather than risk an affray, the dealer submitted to the imposition.
Payment was generally made, the gamblers entertaining, among themselves,
a standard of honor in such matters which it was considered disgraceful
to violate.

The two roads upon which the shebangs were located were the only
thoroughfares in the country, and not a day passed that they were not
traversed by people in going to and returning from the interior mining
camps, and in coming into and departing from the country. The number of
robberies and murders committed by the banditti will never be known.
Mysterious disappearances soon became of almost weekly occurrence. The
danger which every man incurred of being robbed or killed was
demonstrated by numerous escapes made by horsemen who had been assaulted
and fired upon, and escaped by the fleetness of their horses. It was
fully understood that whoever passed over either of these roads would
have to run the gantlet in the neighborhood of the shebangs, and people
generally went prepared. Crime was fearfully on the increase all through
the secluded districts which separated the river from the distant mining
camps. The country itself, about equally made up of mountains,
foothills, cañons, dense pine forests, lava beds, and deep
river-channels, was as favorable for the commission of crime as for the
concealment of its perpetrators.

The two shebangs swarmed with ruffians. On one occasion a party of half
a dozen, while riding in the vicinity of Craig’s Mountain, were stopped
by a volley from the shebang, which, being harmless, was returned. A
number of well-mounted robbers started in pursuit. The party escaped by
hard spurring, one of the number, to lighten his burden, throwing
several large bags of gold dust into the grass. They were afterwards
recovered. A butcher by the name of Harkness, of Oro Fino, was also
assaulted, and fired upon, who owed his deliverance to the fleetness of
his horse. Owners of pack trains never attempted to pass without force
sufficient to intimidate the robbers.

The other shebang was used as a receptacle for stolen horses. It was
under the superintendence of a noted horse-thief by the name of Turner,
who had been a partner in the business with Bill Bunton. Any member of
the band, whose claim to recognition was founded upon success in any
thieving or bloody enterprise, could leave his jaded steed here in
exchange for a fresh one. A single incident will illustrate the manner
in which many of the horses were obtained. A gentleman riding a
beautiful young mare, on his way from Oregon to Oro Fino, while she was
drinking from the stream near by, was suddenly confronted by a man, who
claimed her as his property. Several persons were witnesses to the
meeting. Drawing a bill of sale of the mare, from his pocket, which he
had obtained five hundred miles away, he dismounted, and was about to
prove his ownership, when the ruffian jumped into the saddle, and,
seizing the bridle, rode rapidly away. The wayfarer called upon the
by-standers to assist in the recapture of the animal, instead of which
they knocked him down, stripped him of everything in his pockets, and
told him to leave. He entered Lewiston utterly destitute.

No occupation in the northern mines tested the courage and honesty of
men more severely than that of the Express riders. Their duties, in
riding from camp to camp, frequently for hundreds of miles, where there
was not a dwelling, carrying large amounts of treasure, made them
objects of frequent attack. Tried men were selected for this
business—men as well known for personal bravery as for their adroitness
in the use of weapons in personal encounter. The notoriety of this class
was sufficient as a general thing to protect them from attack, unless it
could be made under every possible advantage. It is a remarkable fact,
and speaks as little in favor of the courage of the desperadoes as in
praise of the daring nobility of these early Express riders, that few of
the latter were interrupted in the discharge of their dangerous duties.
They were ever upon the alert. It was the work of an instant only, when
attacked, for them to draw and discharge their revolvers, with deadly
effect, and follow up the smallest advantage with the no less fatal
bowie-knife. One man has been known in an encounter of this kind to kill
four assailants and escape unharmed.

Tracy & Co., of Lewiston, had a pony express route from that town to
Salmon River, a distance of seventy-five miles. Their messenger, whom we
only know by the name of Mose, was a man of great intrepidity, and
perfectly familiar with all the risks of his business. In single
encounter he was understood to be more than a match for any man in the
mountains. Some time in the early Fall of 1862 a plan was laid by
Plummer and his associates to capture Mose. The place selected for the
purpose was the trail crossing of White Bird Creek, at a distance of
sixty miles from Lewiston and eighteen from Salmon River. At this point
the creek runs between very abrupt banks densely covered with
cottonwoods, rendering both descent and ascent tedious and difficult.
The robbers, in anticipation of the arrival of Mose, as usual on a keen
lope, after darkness had set in had felled a tree across the trail at a
sufficient height to admit the passage of the horse, and at the same
time strike the rider in the chest, and throw him suddenly from the
saddle. They then intended to kill him and rob his cantinas, which it
was supposed would contain several thousand dollars in gold dust. At
Chapman’s ranche, near the crossing, Mose was told that several
suspicious characters had been prowling in the neighborhood during the
afternoon, and with that keen sense which had been educated to scent
danger from afar, he at once comprehended the whole plot. Carefully
descending the bank, he discovered the snare, and turning to the left
avoided it, hurried through the creek, and ascending the opposite bank
cast a look of derision back upon the foiled highwaymen. This fearless
messenger continued in service long after this event, but his future
trips were made under the escort of well-armed assistants.

Winters are nowhere more dreary than among the miners. Frost and snow
bring their labors to an end, and for three or four months they either
remain in their camps in a state of listless inactivity, or seek for
occupation and enjoyment in the excesses of the nearest populous
settlement. Hundreds of them actually squander during the season of
winter all that they have obtained by the most severe toil during the
rest of the year. With the terrible example before him, he must be a man
of resolute will who can long refrain from embracing vice in all its
forms.

Gambling becomes a favorite occupation, and whiskey a common beverage.
The society of abandoned women lures him on, until every moral, social,
and virtuous resolution is broken down, and the experience of a few
months of such a life wholly unfits him for a return to his earlier
pursuits. This is the experience of three-fourths of the young men who
seek for fortune among the gold mines. Most of this class who had been
occupied in placer digging during the summer and fall, at the first
approach of cold forsook their mines, and crowded into Lewiston to spend
the winter, bringing with them the hard earnings of their toil.
Following in their wake came the professional gamblers and sports, and,
mingling with the common mass, were the wretches who had reached the
lowest depths of human depravity. A letter from one of the early
settlers of Lewiston, written at the time, says: “Late in 1862 a large
number congregated here to pass the winter. About seventy-five per cent
of these were cut-throats, robbers, gamblers, and escaped convicts.
Honest men were in a fearful minority, and dared not lisp of the arrest
and punishment of criminals; the villains had their own way in
everything.”

I record the following as an incident which will better illustrate the
condition of society than anything I can write. A gambler named Kirby
borrowed of another a revolver. Secretly withdrawing the charges from
it, an hour later he returned it, and requested the owner to lend him a
few ounces of gold dust, which request was declined. Knowing that he had
the money, Kirby, enraged at the refusal, put the muzzle of a loaded
revolver to the temple of the other, and blew out his brains. No arrest
was attempted. The cold-blooded, mid-day murderer walked the streets of
the town during the entire winter, mingled in the sports, and escaped
unwhipped of justice. Three years afterward he was arrested in Oregon,
and turned over to the Idaho authorities, upon the requisition of
Governor Lyon, but no witnesses appearing against him he was suffered to
go at large.

In a state of society where the majority of the people depend upon
vicious pursuits for a livelihood, want and destitution are the natural
elements. Increase of crime in all its forms follows. All through the
Winter of 1861–62, and until returns began to come in from the mines the
following Spring, Lewiston was daily and nightly a theatre where the
entire calendar of crime was exhibited in epitome. Murders were
frequent; robberies and thefts constant; gambling, debauchery,
drunkenness, and all their attendant evils, openly flaunted in the face
of day in defiance of law. Money and food were so scarce that robbery
with the sporting community became an actual necessity. How to protect
themselves against it sorely taxed the wit and tried the courage of the
unfortunate property holders. Canvas walls offered slight resistance to
determined thieves, and life was not protected by them from murderous
bullets. An exemplification is furnished in the following incident:

A German named Hiltebrant kept a saloon in a large canvas building in
the centre of the town. It was the principal rendezvous for the Germans,
and a popular retail establishment. Hiltebrant was known to possess a
considerable amount of coin and gold dust, which the roughs resolved to
appropriate. The barriers in the way involved only the possible murder
of the owner and two friends who occupied a large bed in the front of
the saloon. Between twelve and one o’clock in one of the coldest nights
of the first week of January, the door was suddenly broken from its
hinges, and a volley of balls fired in the direction of the bed.
Hiltebrant was instantly killed. His two companions, after returning the
fire of the ruffians, seized the treasure and escaped. One of the
villains was wounded in the finger. When the firing ceased, the robbers
coolly entered the building, lighted a candle, and proceeded to search
for the money. Finding none they departed, uttering curses upon their
ill-fortune, not, however, until several citizens appeared upon the
scene, and witnessed the enormity of their crime. The murderers passed
fearlessly and unconcernedly through the crowd, no effort being made to
arrest them, lest a rescue might be attempted, which would prove fatal
to all concerned, and possibly result in the burning of the town. The
next day, however, a meeting of the citizens was held, for the avowed
purpose of punishing the murderers, and devising measures to arrest the
further progress of crime.

This was the first effort at self-protection made by the people. The
moment was a trying one. All knew that the roughs were in the majority,
and no one was bold enough to recommend open resistance to their
encroachments, for fear of consequences. Henry Plummer took an active
part in the proceedings, depicting with fervid eloquence “the horrors of
anarchy” and solemnly warning the people to “take no steps that might
bring disgrace and obloquy upon their rising young city.” Known as a
gambler only, and suspected by few of any darker associations, his
winning manner had the effect to squelch in its inception the initiatory
movement, which at no distant period was to burst forth and whelm him,
with hundreds of his bloody associates, in its avenging vortex.

The brother of the murdered Hiltebrant was in business at this time at
the Oro Fino mines. Hearing of the murder, he openly avowed the
intention of going immediately to Lewiston to bring the authors to
justice. The banditti sent him a message that he would not live to get
there, which had the effect to daunt him from his purpose, and the
assassins, for the time, escaped punishment.

                             NORTHERN MINES

Prospecting, as it is called, for gold placers and quartz veins has
grown into a profession. No man can engage in it successfully unless he
understands it. There are certain indications in the face of the
country, the character of the rocks, the presentation of the strata, the
form of the gulch, the gravel in streams or on the bars, the cement
formation below it, or the shape of the mountains, which are generally
known only to experienced prospectors, that determine generally the
presence of the precious metals. Guided by these unmistakable signs, the
veteran gold searcher is sustained in his solitary explorations by the
consciousness of possessing knowledge which must sooner or later lead to
success. Impressed with the idea that as many rich gulches and
productive veins have been found, so others remain to be discovered,—and
that as those already developed have made their owners rich, so some
fortunate discovery may do the same for him,—he mounts his pony, and
with pick, shovel, and pan, a magnifying glass, a few pounds of bacon,
flour, and coffee, his trusty rifle and revolver at hand, and his roll
of blankets and not infrequently a quart flask of whiskey, he plunges
into the unexplored recesses of the mountains, and for weeks and months
is lost to all the world of humanity beside himself. Alone, but
encouraged by that hope which outlives every disappointment, he wanders
hundreds of miles into the unvisited wilderness, the hero of countless
adventures and the explorer of the world’s great solitudes.

Men of this class are numerous in all gold-mining regions. Their very
occupation makes them maniacs. They lose all relish for society, and
think of nothing but the success they are one day to meet with in the
pursuit of gold. Frequent as their discoveries often are, and promising
as many of them proved to be, the one they are in search of lies still
farther onward. Abandoning to those who follow them discoveries which
would assure them all the wealth they need, they lead on and on into the
mountain labyrinth, pioneering the path of empire, to die at last alone,
unfriended, and destitute, beyond its utmost boundaries. It is to such
men that we owe the discovery of all the gold regions which have
contributed to our wealth since the days of Marshall, the discoverer of
gold in California in 1848.

Gold had been discovered west of the mountains in several portions of
Washington Territory previous to this time. As early as the year 1852,
H. M. Chase found it on a creek which flowed into the Grand Ronde River.
He exhibited it at Portland, and such was the excitement it occasioned
that several parties of discovery were organized, and plunged into the
mountain recesses of that portion of Washington which afterwards became
Idaho. Among others was one Pierce, who became infatuated with the idea
that the river sands of this unexplored region were filled with
diamonds. He searched for them very thoroughly, but the traditions of
the time fail to inform me that he found anything more valuable than
gold. An unimportant camp of the early miners, which received his name,
has served to transmit his memory and mania to the present period. These
early explorations, leading deeper and deeper into the mountain
wilderness, finally resulted in the discovery of the Florence and Oro
Fino mines.

Thousands of people, lured by their discoveries, had nearly worked out
the placers of Oro Fino during the Summer of 1861. The Pacific world,
alive to the importance of a region which promised such great additions
to its wealth, kept up a stream of emigration to the placers, which
exhausted all the sources of supply more rapidly than they could be
filled. The world was there in miniature. Meantime the indomitable
prospector kept in the van. Crossing the Salmon River range, he soon
unveiled the riches of those placers which afterwards became known as
Florence and Elk City. They were immediately occupied by thousands,—and
other thousands of the far East, thrilled with the story of their
richness, were on their way to the new El Dorado. An hegira similar to
that of 1849 again took place across the plains. Lewiston was no longer
the base of operations. Among the earliest of those to abandon it for a
point more favorable to the prosecution of their enterprise, were the
banditti which had so long held its inhabitants in fear. Supplied with
horses from the shebang on the Walla Walla road, they departed from
Lewiston in small parties, intending to recommence operations at a place
afterwards to be selected, in the mountains of the interior.

The daring, adventurous, and courageous elements of character are
necessarily developed and brought into frequent action in a mining
country; and whenever these are found in combination with high moral
principle, they are held in continual fear by men of criminal life. One
bold, honest man will demoralize the guilty designs of a host of
rascals. Nothing was so much dreaded by Plummer’s murderous gang as the
possible organization of a Vigilance Committee; and any man who favored
it was marked for early destruction. Such a man was Patrick Ford, the
keeper of a saloon in Lewiston. Ford was an active man in his own
business,—eager in the pursuit of gain, but entirely upright in his
dealings, and the open and avowed enemy of the roughs. He, more than any
other member of the community, had urged the people of Lewiston to unite
for their protection, and hang every suspected individual in the place;
and he taunted them with cowardice when they disbanded without punishing
the known murderers of Hiltebrant. As fearless as he was uncompromising,
he denounced the ruffians in person, and warned them that a time would
come ere long when they would meet their deserts at the hands of an
outraged people. He did not conceal from them his intention of following
in the track of the prosperous miner, lead where it might,—which purpose
they resolved to prevent. His death they regarded as necessary to their
future prosperity. Having ascertained that he intended to leave Lewiston
with a half-dozen dancing girls for the saloon he had established at Oro
Fino, they laid a plan to insult him and involve him in a quarrel on his
arrival at their shebang, and kill him. Ford was admonished of the
design, which he foiled by avoiding the shebang. Being assured of his
safe passage to Oro Fino, the robbers, led by Plummer, Ridgely, and
Reeves, mounted their horses and started for the interior. Of the
particular events of the early part of the trip, further than that it
was marked by the frequent robbery of travellers, I am unable to speak.
When within seven or eight miles of Oro Fino, the robbers observed two
Frenchmen, some distance apart, approaching them on foot. The one in
advance was ordered to stop and throw up his hands, as in that position
he was powerless and could not offer any resistance. After a careful
search of his person they found nothing of value, and bade him move on
as rapidly as possible, telling him that it was “a rough country to be
in without money” and that he “had better get out of it as soon as
possible.” With the other, whom they subjected to a like process, they
were more fortunate, and, despite his solemn denial, found in his pocket
a purse containing a thousand dollars in dust, which they appropriated,
dismissing him with the remark that if he had done the square thing and
not lied they would have given him enough to take him to the
Columbia,—but as it was, he might be thankful to get off with a whole
carcass. Some idea may be formed of the daring and recklessness of this
robbery when it is understood to have occurred at mid-day, near a town
containing a population of several thousands, and on a thoroughfare
thronged with travellers.

Uttering a shout of exultation, the robbers dashed into the town of Oro
Fino with the impetuosity of a cavalry charge. Reining up in front of
Ford’s saloon, which they entered, they called loudly upon the
bar-keeper for liquor. Ford was absent. When they had drunk, they
commenced demolishing the contents of the saloon. Decanters, tumblers,
chairs, and tables were broken and scattered over the apartment. One of
their number, more fiendish than the others, seized a lap-dog from one
of the females and cut off his tail. At this juncture Ford himself came
upon the scene. Boldly confronting the rioters, pistol in hand, he
ordered them instantly to leave his premises. He charged them with the
robbery of the Frenchmen, and denounced them as thieves, robbers, and
murderers. They saw and feared his determination, and obeyed his
commands with alacrity. He followed them into the street, and threatened
them with punishment if they remained in town. They were about to act
upon this hint, when Ford, fully armed, came to them a second time, and
demanded the cause of their delay. He was answered with a bullet,
inflicting a dangerous wound. The fire was returned, and the fight
became general,—three against one. The robbers were protected by their
horses, while their antagonist was openly exposed to their fire. Ford
emptied the charges from one six-shooter, made five shots with the
other, and was in the act of aiming for the last, when he fell dead,
riddled with the balls of his adversaries. Ridgely was shot through the
leg twice, and Plummer’s horse disabled.

Such was the melancholy fate of Patrick Ford,—a man long to be
remembered as the friend of law and order,—the first, indeed, in the
northern mines who dared to urge the extermination of the robbers, as
the only remedy for their depredations. He literally sealed his
principles with his life’s blood.

Ridgely’s wounds disabled him for service. He was taken by his
companions to a ranche near the town, and as well cared for as
circumstances would admit. Leaving him there, the other members of the
band, fearful of the friends of Ford, seldom ventured beyond the limits
of their camp.

                               CHAPTER IV
                             CHARLEY HARPER

A new candidate for bloody laurels now appears in the person of Charley
Harper. He arrived in Walla Walla in the Fall of 1861. A young man of
twenty-five, of medium size, of erect carriage, clear, florid
complexion, and profuse auburn hair, he could, but for the leer in his
small inexpressive gray eye, have passed in any society for a gentleman.
His previous life is a sealed book;—but the readiness with which he
engaged in crime showed that he was not without experience. He told his
landlord that he had no money, but that partners were coming who would
relieve his necessities. The second night after his arrival, several
hundred dollars in gold coin was stolen from a lodger who occupied the
room adjoining his. While intoxicated the next day, he exhibited by the
handful eagles which he said were borrowed from an acquaintance. No one
doubted that he had stolen them; but where officers were believed to
wink at crime, prosecution was useless. Charley was not even arrested
upon suspicion. The money he had obtained introduced him to the society
of the roughs, with whom he became so popular that he aspired to be
their leader. This honor was disputed by Ridgely, whom we left wounded
in the last chapter, and by Cherokee Bob, both of whom claimed
precedence from longer residence and greater familiarity with the
opportunities for distinction.

Circumstances soon occurred which enabled Charley, without disputation,
to assume the role of chief of the Walla Walla desperadoes. Cherokee
Bob, heretofore mentioned as an associate of Plummer at Lewiston, was an
uneducated Southerner. His mother was a half-blood Cherokee,—hence his
name. With a hatred of the North and the Northern soldiery born of
prejudice and ignorance, and a constitutional faith in the superior
prowess of the Southern people, and with mercurial passions inflamed by
the contest that was still raging, this ruffian was nearly a maniac in
his adherence to the cause of Secession. He could talk or think of
little else than the great inferiority of the Northern to the Southern
soldiers, and was continually boasting of his own superior physical
power. He would often taunt the soldiers of the garrison near Walla
Walla. In ingenuity of vaunting expression, he far excelled Captain
Bobadil himself;—but like that hero of dramatic fiction he was destined
to experience a reverse more humiliating, if possible, than that of his
great prototype. With shotgun in hand and revolver in his belt, it was
his frequent boast that he could take a negro along with him, carrying
two baskets loaded with pistols, and put to flight the bravest regiment
of the Federal army.

No person who has witnessed a theatrical performance in a mining camp
can forget the general din and noise with which the audience fill up the
intervals between the acts. Whistling, singing, hooting, yelling, and a
general shuffling of feet and moving about are so invariable as to form,
in fact, a feature of the performance. So long as they are unaccompanied
by quarrelsome demonstrations, and do not become too boisterous, efforts
are seldom made to suppress them. The boys are permitted to have a good
time in their own way, and the lookers-on, accustomed to the scene, are
often compensated for any annoyance that may be occasioned, by strokes
of border humor more enjoyable than the play itself.

Cherokee Bob, eager for an opportunity when he could wreak his demoniac
wrath upon some of the Federal soldiers, with the aid and complicity of
Deputy Sheriff Porter, who like himself was a Secessionist, contrived
the following plan as favorable to his purpose; it was agreed between
them, that on a certain evening Bob and his friends should attend the
theatre, fully armed. Porter, under pretext of quelling disturbances
between the acts, should by his insulting language and manner provoke an
affray with the soldiers present, in the progress of which he would
command Bob and those with him to assist, and thus under the seeming
protection of law, save them from the consequences of any acts of
vengeance they desired to commit. On the evening appointed, six or seven
soldiers were seated side by side in the pit, a single one occupying a
seat in the gallery behind them. Porter was near them, and Bob and his
associates in a position convenient to him. When the curtain fell upon
the first act, the usual noises commenced, the soldiers joining in
making them. Porter sprang from his seat, and striding in front of them,
vociferated,

“Dry up there, you brass-mounted hirelings, or I’ll snatch you
bald-headed.”

This insulting language produced the desired effect. Smarting under the
implied reproach it conveyed, one of the soldiers sharply inquired,

“Why do you single us out, when there are others more boisterous?”

Porter waited for no further provocation, but drawing and cocking his
revolver with one hand, and seizing the soldier nearest to him with the
other, he dragged him ignominiously into the circle where he was
standing, ordering the deputy city marshal and Bob and his friends to
assist in arresting him. The soldiers offered resistance. An immediate
_mêlée_ was the consequence. The women and children in the audience
screamed in affright. The other soldiers present rushed with drawn
pistols to the rescue of their comrade. The one in the gallery sprang
upon one of the officers with the ferocity of a wild beast. Cherokee Bob
with a pistol in one hand and a bowie-knife in the other, his voice
wildly ringing above all other sounds, was in his true element. More
than a dozen pistol shots followed in quick succession. Two of the
soldiers were killed, and others fearfully mangled. Porter and his
deputy assistant were each shot through a leg, the latter crippled for
life. The work of blood was progressing, and but for the interference of
an officer of the garrison, would have ended only with the death of the
assassins.

The next day the soldiers appealed to their commanding officer for
redress. He ordered those of them engaged in the affray to be placed
under arrest, and dismissed the subject from his thoughts. Indignant at
this unexpected treatment, about fifty of the soldiers armed themselves,
and marched into town, with the determination to capture and hang
Cherokee Bob, whom they knew to be the chief mover of the murderous
assault. Disavowing all riotous intentions they informed the citizens of
their design and commenced a thorough search for the murderer. He,
meanwhile, fearful of their revenge, eluded them by leaving the town
before the dawn of morning on a stolen horse, for Lewiston.

The year before his appearance in Walla Walla, Ridgely was living in
Sacramento. During his sojourn there he acquired notoriety for his
thievish and villainous propensities. One of the police corps, detecting
him in the commission of a larceny, arrested him. He was convicted, and
sentenced to imprisonment in the county jail. He vowed revenge against
Gilchrist the policeman, but on his release fled to the gold mines. Soon
after his arrival at Walla Walla he fell in with his old enemy, and
secretly renewed the determination to take his life. Calling upon a
friend to accompany him, he boldly entered a saloon where he knew
Gilchrist to be and fired several shots at him. Gilchrist fell at the
first fire. Ridgely, believing he had killed him, left the saloon,
saying as he went, “I have thrown a load off my mind, and now feel
easy.” Gilchrist was badly wounded, but recovered. Ridgely, escaping
arrest on the night of the assault, crossed the river into Oregon the
next day, beyond the jurisdiction of the authorities of Walla Walla,
which was in Washington Territory. Thence he went to Lewiston and joined
Plummer.

Cherokee Bob and Ridgely being out of the way, Charley Harper, as next
in rank on the scale of villainous preferment, became the Walla Walla
chief.

                               CHAPTER V
                              CHEROKEE BOB

Intelligence of the discovery in 1861 of extensive placers on the head
waters of Salmon River, excelling in richness any former locations, had
been circulated through all the border towns during the following
Winter. The excitement consequent thereon was intense. Such was the
impatience of the people to effect an early arrival there that many left
Walla Walla and Lewiston in mid-winter, and on their way thither
perished in the snows which engorged the mountain passes. Others, more
cautious, awaited the coming of warm weather, and made the
journey,—tedious, difficult, and dangerous at best,—with comparative
safety. Among the latter number were Charley Harper and his band of
brigands. Mounted on strong, fleet horses which they had acquired during
the winter, the criminal cavalcade with its chief at the head dashed up
the river valley, insulting, threatening, or robbing every one so
unfortunate as to fall in their way. Of the number prominent in the
riotous column were Peoples, English, Scott, and Brockie—men whose deeds
of villainy have blackened the criminal records of nearly all the larger
cities of the Pacific slope. With none of the magnanimity which
characterized Joaquin Murieta and the earlier brigands of California,
and with all their recklessness of crime and murder, a meaner, baser,
more contemptible band of ruffians perhaps never before disgraced the
annals of the race. No crime was too atrocious for them to commit, no
act of shame or wantonness was uncongenial to their grovelling natures.
They were as totally depraved as a long and unchecked career of every
variety of criminal indulgence could make them. Afraid of nothing but
the law, and not afraid of that in these new and unorganized
communities, they were little else than devils incarnate. Insensible to
all appeals for mercy, and ever acting upon the cautious maxim that
“dead men tell no tales,” the only chance for escape from death for
those whom they assaulted was in their utter inability to do them
injury. Human life regarded as an obstacle to their designs, was of no
more importance than the blowing up of a safe, or any other act which
stood between them and their prey. Of course it was impossible that such
a band of desperadoes should pass over the long and desolate route from
Walla Walla to Florence without adventure.

On the second or third day after leaving Walla Walla, when nearing
Florence, they met a company consisting of five men and a boy of
sixteen, who were on their way to a neighboring camp. The brigands
surrounded them, and with cocked pistols well aimed, gave the usual
order, “Throw up your hands.” This order being obeyed, two of them
dismounted to search the persons of their victims for treasure, the
others meanwhile covering them with their revolvers. Five purses,
containing amounts varying from fifty to five hundred dollars, were
taken from them. The boy was overlooked, and had seated himself on a
granite bowlder by the roadside.

Scott, as he tells the story himself, approached him more from curiosity
than expectation, when the following conversation ensued:

“Come,” said Scott, addressing him, “draw your weasel now.”

“How do you know I’ve got any, stranger?” queried the youth.

“No fooling, I say. Hand out your buckskin.”

“You wouldn’t rob a poor little devil like me, would you?”

“Don’t keep me waiting longer, or I’ll cut your ears off,”—and Scott
drew his bowie as if to carry the threat into execution.

“Well, I only get half-wages, you know. Is your heart all gizzard?”

“Get off from that stone and shell out, or I’ll blow your brains out in
a minute,” said Scott.

The boy sprung up hurriedly, and with affected reluctance thrust his
hand into his pocket.

“Well, stra-an-nger,” he inquired with a peculiar drawl and quizzical
expression of the eyes, “what do you take Salmon River dust at, anyhow?”

With this he drew forth an empty purse, and handing it to Scott, said,

“If you think I’ve got any more, search me.”

Pleased with the pluck and humor of the lad, one of the band threw him a
five-dollar piece, and they galloped furiously on towards Florence.

Thundering into the town, they drew up before the first saloon, fired
their pistols, and urged their horses into the establishment. Without
dismounting they ordered liquor for the crowd. All the by-standers
partook with them. Harper ostentatiously threw one of the purses he had
just seized upon the counter, telling the bar-keeper to weigh out the
amount of the bill, and after a few moments they left the saloon, “to
see,” as one of them expressed himself, “whether the town was big enough
to hold them.”

This irruption into Florence occurred while that city was comparatively
in embryo. The great floods of immigration from the East and West had
not arrived. Some months must elapse before the expectations of the
robbers could be realized. Meantime they distributed themselves among
the saloons and bagnios, and by means of gambling and frequent
robberies, contrived to hold the community in fear and pick up a
subsistence until the great crowd came.

Leaving them for a season, we will return to Cherokee Bob, whom we left
in his ignominious flight from Walla Walla to Lewiston, on a stolen
horse. That worthy had established himself in a saloon at Lewiston, and
while there, renewed an acquaintance with an old pal known as Bill
Mayfield.

Mayfield was a fugitive from justice from Carson City, Nevada, where in
the Winter of 1861–62 he renewed an acquaintance with Henry Plummer,
whom he had known before that time in California. The Governor of
California had issued a requisition for the surrender of Plummer, and a
warrant for his arrest was in the hands of John Blackburn, the sheriff
at Carson City. Though efficient as an officer, Blackburn, while in
liquor, was overbearing and boastful of his prowess. His reputation was
bad among the leading citizens of the town. Foiled in his search for
Plummer, who, he believed, was in the Territory, and knowing of
Mayfield’s intimacy with him, he accused the latter with concealing him.
Mayfield denied the charge, and to avoid a quarrel with Blackburn, who
was intoxicated, immediately left the saloon where the interview
occurred, but as a measure of precaution armed himself with a
bowie-knife. Blackburn, rendered desperate by liquor, soon followed in
pursuit of him, and at a later hour of the same day found him in another
saloon. As he entered the front, Mayfield tried to leave by the rear
door. Failing in this, he drew his knife, and concealed it in his
sleeve. Approaching Mayfield in a bullying manner Blackburn said to him,

“I will arrest Plummer, and no one can prevent it. I can arrest anybody.
I can arrest you if I wish to.”

“You can arrest me,” replied Mayfield, “if you have a warrant for my
arrest, but you can’t without.”

“I tell you,” rejoined Blackburn tauntingly, “that I _can_ arrest you,
or any one else,” and added with an oath, “I will arrest you anyhow,”
accompanying this threat with a grasp for his pistol. Mayfield, with
flash-like quickness, slipped his knife from its place of concealment,
and gave him an anticipatory stab in the breast. Blackburn then tried to
close with him, and being much the stronger man would have killed him
had not Mayfield jumped aside and plied his knife vigorously until
Blackburn fell. He died almost instantly. Mayfield surrendered himself
for trial, was convicted of murder, and sentenced to be hanged.

While awaiting execution in the penitentiary, two miles distant from
Carson, a plan for undermining the prison was successful, and he
escaped. The friends who effected this were among the best citizens of
Carson. They deemed the sentence unjust, and as soon as he was out of
confinement, mounted him on a good horse, provided him with arms, and
bade him leave the State as rapidly as possible. When his escape was
discovered the next morning the jailer started in pursuit. He struck the
track of the fugitive, and by means of relays, gained rapidly upon him.
Mayfield’s friends meantime were not idle. They managed to be apprised
of his progress, followed close upon his pursuers, and by a short cut at
a favorable point, overtook him, and, doubling back, concealed him at a
ranche in Pea Vine Valley, only forty miles from Carson City. There he
remained six weeks,—many of the leading citizens of Carson meantime
watching for an opportunity to aid his escape from the State. A careless
exposure of his person led to his recognition and the discovery of his
retreat. His friends were the first to learn of it, and before the
officers could arrive at the ranche, Mayfield was on his way to
Huffaker’s ranche on the Truckee River, which was nearer Carson by half
the distance than the ranche he had left. While the officers were
scouring the country in pursuit of him, he remained there until Spring,
sharing a box stall with a favorite race-horse. When Spring was far
enough advanced to afford pasturage and comfortable travel, he was
furnished by his friends with a good “outfit,” and made the journey
unmolested to Lewiston, where he joined his old friends Plummer and
Cherokee Bob.

Here he trumped up an intimacy with a woman calling herself Cynthia, at
that time stewardess of a hotel in Lewiston, and the fallen wife of a
very worthy man.

In June, Cherokee Bob, accompanied by Mayfield and Cynthia, left
Lewiston for Florence. Soon after their arrival the jealousy of Mayfield
was aroused by the particular attentions of Bob to his mistress. On his
part Bob made no concealment of his attachment for the woman, and when
charged with harboring an intention of appropriating her affections,
boldly acknowledged the soft impeachment. Cynthia possessed many charms
of person, and considerable intelligence. She had, moreover, an eye to
the main chance, and was ready to bestow her favors where they would
command the most money. Bob was richer than Mayfield, and this fact won
for him many encouraging smiles from the fair object of his pursuit.
Mayfield’s jealousy flamed into anger, and he resolved to bring matters
to a crisis, which should either secure his undisturbed possession of
the woman, or transfer her to the sole care of his rival. He had
confidence enough in Cynthia to believe that when required to choose
between him and Cherokee Bob, her good taste, if nothing else, would
give him the preference. He had not calculated on the strength of her
cupidity. Confronting Bob in her presence, he said, as he laid his hand
on the butt of his revolver,

“Bob, you know me.”

“Yes,” replied Bob with a similar gesture, “and Bill, you know me.”

“Well, now, Bob, the question is whether we shall make fools of
ourselves or not.”

“Just as you say, Bill. I’m al’ys ready for anything that turns up.”

“Bob, if that woman loves you more than me,” said Mayfield, “take her. I
don’t want her. But if she thinks the most of me, no person ought to
come between us. I call that on the square.”

“Well, I do think considerable of Cynthia, and you are not married to
her, you know,” replied Bob.

“That makes no difference. If she loves me, and wishes to live with me,
no one shall interfere to prevent it.”

“Well, what do you propose to do about it?” asked Bob, after a brief
pause.

“Let the woman decide for herself,” replied Mayfield. “What say you,
Cynthia? Is it Bob or me?”

Thus appealed to, greatly to the surprise of Mayfield, Cynthia replied,

“Well, William, Robert is settled in business now, and don’t you think
he is better able to take care of me than you are?”

This reply convinced Mayfield that his influence over the woman was
lost. The quarrel terminated in a graceful surrender to Bob of all his
claim upon her.

“You fall heir,” said he to his successor, “to all the traps and things
there are around here.”

Cherokee Bob insisted upon paying for them; and Cynthia, true to the
course of life she was pursuing, tried to soften the pangs of separation
from her old lover by reiterating the question if he did not “think it
the best thing that could be done under the circumstances.”

Cherokee Bob forced a generous purse upon Mayfield, who left him with
the parting injunction to take good care of the girl.

The woman shed some tears and, as we shall see at a later stage of this
history, showed by her return to Mayfield that she entertained a real
affection; and when, a year later, she heard of his violent death, was
heard to say that she would kill his murderer whenever opportunity
afforded.

An explanation of the circumstances under which Bob became “settled in
business” is not the least interesting part of this narrative. The
senior proprietor of the leading saloon in Oro Fino died a few days
before Bob’s arrival. He was indebted to Bob for borrowed money, calling
upon the surviving partner soon after his arrival, Bob informed him of
the indebtedness, and declared his intention of appropriating the saloon
and its contents in payment.

“How much,” inquired the man, “did you lend my partner? I’ll settle with
you, and pay liberal interest.”

“That’s not the idee,” rejoined Bob. “Do you think me fool enough to
lend a fellow five hundred dollars, and then after it increases to five
thousand, square the account with a return of what I lent and a little
more? That’s not my way of doing biz. How much stock have you got here
on hand?”

Bob carefully committed to writing the invoice verbally furnished.

“Now,” said he, putting the memorandum in his pocket, “I’ll hold you
responsible for all these traps—the whole outfit. You’ve got to close up
and get out of this without any delay. I’ll give you twenty-four hours
to do it in. You must then deliver everything safe into my hands.”

The unfortunate saloon-keeper knew that the law as administered in that
mountain town would afford him no redress. He also knew that to refuse
compliance with the demand of Cherokee Bob, however unjust, would
precipitate a quarrel which would probably cost him his life. So when
Bob, accompanied by two or three confederates, came the next morning to
the saloon to take possession, he was prepared to submit to the
imposition without resistance. Walking within the bar, Cherokee Bob
emptied the money drawer and gave the contents to his victim. He then
invited his friends to drink to the success of the new “outfit,” and
finding himself in undisturbed occupancy, increased the amount of his
gift to the man he had expelled to several hundred dollars. This was the
manner in which he became, as Cynthia said, “settled in business.”

                               CHAPTER VI
                                FLORENCE

Florence was now the established headquarters of the robbers. Its
isolated location, its distance from the seat of government, its
mountain surroundings, and, more than all, its utter destitution of
power to enforce law and order, gave it peculiar fitness as a base for
the criminal and bloody operations of the desperate gang which infested
it. At all hours of the day and night some of them were to be seen at
the two saloons kept by Cherokee Bob and Cyrus Skinner. When one company
disappeared another took its place, and at no time were there less than
twenty or thirty of these desperadoes at one or both of their haunts,
plotting and contriving deeds of plunder and robbery which involved the
hard earnings, possibly the lives, of many of the fortunate miners of
the vicinity. The crowd from both East and West had arrived. The town
was full of gold hunters. Expectation lighted up the countenance of
every newcomer. Few had yet realized the utter despair of failure in a
mining camp. In the presence of vice in all its forms, men who were
staid and exemplary at home laid aside their morality like a useless
garment and yielded to the seductive influences spread for their ruin.
The gambling shops and hurdy-gurdy saloons—beheld for the first time by
many of these fortune-seekers—lured them on step by step, until many of
them abandoned all thought of the object they had in pursuit, for lives
of shameful and criminal indulgence.

The condition of society thus produced was fatal to all attempts at
organization, either for protection or good order. Wholly unrestrained
by fear or conscience, the robbers carried on their operations in the
full blaze of mid-day. Affrays were of daily occurrence, and robberies
took place in the public streets. Charley Harper, the acknowledged
chief, stained with the darkest crimes, walked the streets with the
boldness and confidence of one who glories in his iniquity. Peaceable,
honest, well-meaning citizens, completely overawed, were fortunate to
escape insult or abuse, as they passed to and fro in pursuit of their
occupations. Woe to the unfortunate miner who entered the town if it
were known or believed that there was any treasure on his person! If not
robbed on the spot, or lured into a hurdy-gurdy saloon, or cheated at a
gambling table, he was waylaid by disguised ruffians on his return to
his camp, and by threats and violence, or when these failed, by death
itself, relieved of his hard-bought earnings. For one of these sufferers
to recognize and expose any of his assailants was simply to insure death
at his hands the first convenient opportunity.

One of these side exploits was marked by features of peculiar atrocity.
An aged, eccentric German miner, who lived alone in a little cabin three
miles from town, was supposed to have a considerable amount of gold dust
concealed in his dwelling. One morning, early in August, a neighbor
discovered that the house had been violently entered. The door was
broken and scattered in pieces. Entering, he beheld the mangled corpse
of the old man lying amid a general wreck of bedding, boxes, and trunks.
The remains of a recent fire in a corner bore evidence of the failure of
the design of the robbers to conceal their crime by a general
conflagration. The miners were exasperated at an act of such wanton and
unprovoked barbarity. A coroner’s jury was summoned and such an inquest
held as men in fear of their lives dared to venture. The verdict, as
might have been anticipated, was “murdered by some person or persons
unknown.” Here the affair has rested ever since.

Acts of violence and bloodshed were not infrequent among the robbers
themselves. Soon after the murder of the German, a company of them, who
had been gambling all night at one of the saloons, broke up in a quarrel
at sunrise. Before they reached the street, a revolver in the hands of
Brockie was discharged, killing instantly one of the departing brawlers.
The murderer surrendered himself to a justice of the peace, and escaped
upon the singular plea that the shot was accidental and did not hit the
person he intended to kill. One of the jury, in a letter to a friend
wrote: “The verdict gave universal satisfaction, the feeling over the
homicide among good citizens being that Brockie had done a good thing.
If he had killed two of the ruffians instead of one, and then hung
himself, good men would have been better pleased.”

Hickey, the intended victim, was one of the worst men in the band. The
year following this occurrence, in a fit of anger induced by
intoxication, at a store in Placerville, he made a desperate assault
upon a peaceable, inoffensive individual who was known by the name of
“Snapping Andy.” Hurriedly snatching a pickhandle from a barrel, Andy,
by two or three well-directed blows, brought his career of crime and
infamy to a bloody close.

For some reason, probably to place him beyond the reach of the friends
of the murdered robber, Brockie was assigned to a new position.
Ostensibly to establish a ferry at the mouth of White Bird Creek, a few
miles from town, but really for the purpose of furnishing a convenient
rendezvous for his companions, he took up his abode there. It was on the
line of travel between Florence and a gold discovery reputed to have
been made on a tributary of the Boise River.

About the middle of September, Arthur Chapman, son of the
surveyor-general of Oregon, while waiting for ferriage, was brutally
assaulted by Brockie, who rushed towards him with pistol and knife,
swearing that he would “shoot him as full of holes as a sieve, and then
cut him into sausage meat.” With an axe which he seized upon the
instant, Chapman clove his skull to the chin. Brockie fell dead in his
tracks, another witness to the fulfilment of that terrible denunciation,
“Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.” Chapman
was acquitted.

It will not be deemed out of place to record here the desperate fortune
of one Matt Bledsoe, who became notorious as an independent freebooter,
and killed several persons in the valley of the Upper Sacramento and
Upper Willamette. His bloody character preceded his arrival at Florence
in the Fall of 1861. He acknowledged no allegiance to any band, and
avowed as a ruling principle that he would “as soon kill a man as eat
his breakfast.” While engaged in a game of cards with a miner at a
ranche on White Bird Creek in October, 1861, he provoked an altercation,
but the miner being armed, he did not, as was usual with him, follow it
up by an attack. The next morning, while the miner was going to the
creek, Bledsoe shot and killed him. Mounting his horse he rode rapidly
to Walla Walla, surrendered to the authorities, asked for a trial, and
on his own statement that he “had killed a man in self-defence,” was
acquitted.

A leap forward in his history to twelve o’clock of a cold winter night
of 1865 finds this same villain in company with another, each with a
courtesan beside him, seated at a table in an oyster saloon in Portland.
Some angry words between the women soon involved the men in a quarrel,
which Bledsoe brought to a speedy termination by a fatal blow upon the
head of his antagonist. He was immediately arrested, tried, convicted of
manslaughter, and sentenced to the penitentiary for a long term of
years. During the following Fall he escaped, was rearrested, and after
trial, returned to prison to serve out a prolonged sentence.

Perhaps in the early history of no part of our country were greater
difficulties overcome in moving from one place to another than in the
mining districts of Oregon and Idaho. Essentially a mountain region, and
in all portions of it away from the narrow valleys formed by the streams
filled with the remains of extensive volcanic action, its surface,
besides being broken into deep cañons, lofty ridges, inaccessible
precipices, impassable streams, and impenetrable lava beds, was also
covered everywhere with the sharp points and fissured hummocks which
were cast out during a long and active period of primeval eruption.
There were no natural roads in any direction. The trail of the Indian
was full of obstacles, often indirect and generally impracticable. To
travel with vehicles of any sort was absolutely impossible. The
pack-animal was the only available resource for transportation. The
miner would bind all his earthly gear on the back of a mule or a burro
and grapple with obstructions as they appeared, cutting his way through
forests almost interminable, and exposing himself to dangers as trying
to his fortitude as to his ingenuity. The merchant who wished to
transport goods, the saloon-keeper who had liquors and billiard tables,
the hotel-keeper whose furniture was necessary, all had to employ
pack-animals as the only means of transportation from the towns on the
Columbia to the mining camps of the interior. The owner of a train of
pack-animals was always certain of profitable employment. His life was
precarious, his subsistence poor, his responsibilities enormous. He
threaded the most dangerous passes, and incurred the most fearful
risks,—for all of which he received adequate compensation.

The pack train was always a lively feature in the gigantic mountain
scenery of Oregon and Idaho. A train of fifty or one hundred animals,
composed about equally of mules and burros, each heavily laden, the
experienced animal in the lead picking the way for those in the rear
amid the rocks, escarpments, and precipices of a lofty mountain side,
was a spectacle of thrilling interest. At times, the least mis-step
would have precipitated some unfortunate animal hundreds of feet down
the steep declivity, dashing him to pieces on the rocks below.
Fortunately the cautious and sure tread of these faithful creatures
rendered such an accident of very rare occurrence, though to the person
who for the first time beheld them in motion the feeling was ever
present that they could not escape it. The arrival of one of these large
trains in a mining camp produced greater excitement among the
inhabitants than any other event, and the calculations upon their
departure from the Columbia River and their appearance in the interior
towns were made and anticipated with nearly as much certainty as if they
were governed by a published time-table.

The confidence of the owner of a train of pack-animals in their sagacity
and sure-footedness relieved him of all fear of accident by travel, but
he could never feel as well assured against the attacks of robbers. All
the men in charge of a train were well armed and in momentary
expectation of a surprise. Frequently on the return trips they were
entrusted by merchants with large amounts of gold dust. Opportunities of
this character seldom escaped the vigilance of the robbers,—and any
defect in the police of the departing train insured an attack upon it in
some of the difficult passes on its route to the river.

The packer of a train belonging to Neil McClinchey, a well-known
mercantile operator of the Upper Columbia, in October, 1862, when four
days out from Florence, on his return to Walla Walla, was stopped by a
masked party of which Harper was supposed to be the leader, and for want
of sufficient force robbed of fourteen pounds of gold. As he gave the
treasure into the hands of the assailants, the villain who took it said
in a consoling tone, “That’s sensible. If every man was as reasonable as
you things would go along smoother.”

Shortly after this robbery, Joseph and John Berry were returning to the
river with their train. They had gone but forty miles from Florence,
when they were confronted by three men in masks, who, with levelled
pistols, commanded them to throw up their hands. Seeing that resistance
was useless they obeyed, and were relieved of eleven hundred dollars.
The packers recognized the voices of David English and William
Peoples,—and the third one was afterwards ascertained to be Nelson
Scott. The victims returned with all possible expedition to Lewiston,
where the report of their loss excited the most intense indignation.

                              CHAPTER VII
                       FIRST VIGILANCE COMMITTEE

As soon as the Berrys were assured of the identity of the villains who
had robbed them they appealed to the people to assist in their capture.
The robbers had stripped them of all their hard earnings, and they had
the sympathy of every honest man in the community. Nothing more was
needed to kindle into a flame of popular excitement the long-pent-up
fires of smothered indignation. Public sentiment was clamorous for the
capture and punishment of the robbers. It gathered strength day by day,
until it became the all-absorbing topic everywhere. Men assembled on the
street corners, in the stores, in the saloons, and at the outside mining
camps to compare views and consult upon measures of relief. Meantime,
several parties whose faith in immediate action was stronger than in
consultation, set out in pursuit of the robbers.

From the fact that they had passed south of Lewiston it was believed
they had gone down the Columbia. Distributing themselves along the
different roads and trails in that direction, the pursuers made diligent
search for them in every nook and corner which could afford them a
hiding-place. Their diligence was successful. The robbers had separated,
but were arrested in detail,—Peoples at Walla Walla, Scott on Dry Creek,
near there, and English at Wallula, forty miles distant on the Columbia.

The only surprise they manifested upon being arrested was at the
temerity of their captors. In a community which had so long held them in
fear, any legal interference with their business was deemed by them an
outrage. They did not pause to inquire whether their reign was near its
termination, nor think that perhaps the people had decided as between
longer submission to their villainies and condign punishment for their
actual crimes. If they had, their efforts to escape would have been
immediate. As it was, they rested easy, and reflected savagely upon the
revenge in store for their captors after their friends had effected
their rescue.

They were taken in irons to Walla Walla. Judge Smith ordered their
removal to Florence for trial. Such was the indignation of the citizens
of Lewiston that on their arrival there it was determined they should be
tried by the people. All confidence in the law and the courts was lost.
Accordingly a committee was appointed to investigate the circumstances
of the robbery and declare the punishment. The prisoners were taken in
charge by the committee, and confined in an unfinished building on the
bank of the Clearwater, which was strongly guarded. To make their work
thorough and terrify others of the band who were known to be prowling
about the saloons of Lewiston, a number of persons were appointed, with
instructions to effect their immediate arrest. In anticipation of this
course all suspected persons except one escaped by flight. This one,
known by the name of “Happy Harry,” was a simple fellow, who denied all
association with the band, confessed to a few petty offences, and was
discharged on condition that he would instantly leave and never return
to the country. He has never been heard of since.

One of the shrewdest of the gang, George Lane, who from a personal
deformity was called “Club Foot George,” well known as a robber and
horse-thief, escaped arrest by surrendering himself to the commandant of
Fort Lapwai (a United States post twelve miles distant), who confined
him in the guard-house.

The final disposition of the three villains in custody was delayed until
the next day. A strong guard of well-armed men surrounded their prison.
Just after midnight the sleeping inhabitants of the town were roused by
several shots fired in the direction of the place of confinement. In a
few minutes the streets were filled with citizens. A former friend of
Peoples, one Marshall, who kept a hotel in town, had, in attempting his
rescue, fired upon the guard. In return he received a shot in his arm,
and was prostrated by a blow from a clubbed musket. The cause of the
_mêlée_ being explained, the people withdrew, leaving the sentinels at
their posts.

The next morning at an early hour the people gathered around the prison.
The guards were gone and the door ajar. Unable to restrain their
curiosity, and fearful that the robbers had been rescued, they pushed
the door wide open. There, hanging by the neck, stark and cold, they
beheld the bodies of the three desperadoes. Justice had been
anticipated, and the first Vigilance Committee of the northern mines had
commenced its work. No one knew or cared who had done it, but all felt
that it was right, and the community breathed freer than at any former
period of its history.

Intelligence of the execution, with the usual exaggeration, spread far
and wide through the mining camps. It was received with approval by the
sober citizens, but filled the robber horde with consternation. Charley
Harper, while on his way from Florence to Lewiston to gather full
particulars, met a mountaineer.

“Stranger,” he inquired, “what’s the news?”

“I s’pose you’ve heard about the hanging of them fellers?”

“Heard something. What’s the particulars?”

“Well, Bill Peoples, Dave English, and Nels Scott have gone in. They
strung ’em up like dried salmon. Happy Harry got out of the way in time;
but if they get Club Foot George, his life won’t be worth a cent.
They’re after a lot more of ’em up in Florence.”

“Do you know who all they’re after?” asked Harper.

“Yes. Charley Harper’s the big chief they’re achin’ for the most, but
the story now is that he’s already hanged. A feller went into town day
before yesterday, and said he saw him strung up out here on Camas
Prairie. Did you hear anything of it back on the road?”

Harper needed no further information. He felt that the country was too
hot to hold him, and that the bloodhounds were on his track. As soon as
the miner was out of sight, he turned to the right, crossed the
Clearwater some miles above Lewiston, and pursued a trail to Colville on
the Upper Columbia, where we will take leave of him for the present.

                              CHAPTER VIII
                          NEW GOLD DISCOVERIES

When the rumored discovery in the Summer of 1861 of extensive gold
placers on Salmon River was confirmed, the intelligence spread through
the Territories and Mississippi States like wildfire. Thousands of young
men, thrown out of employment by the war, and other thousands who
dreaded the evils which that great conflict would bring upon the nation,
and still others actuated by a thirst for gain, utilized their available
resources in providing means for an immediate migration to the land of
promise. Before midsummer they had started on the long and perilous
journey. How little did they know of its exposures! The deserts,
destitute of water and grass, the alkaline plains where food and drink
were alike affected by the poisonous dust, the roving bands of hostile
Indians, the treacherous quicksands of river fords, the danger and
difficulty of the mountain passes, the death of their companions, their
cattle, and their horses, breakage of their vehicles, angry and often
violent personal altercations,—all these fled in the light of the summer
sun, the vernal beauty of the plains, the delightfully pure atmosphere
which wooed them day by day farther away from the abode of civilization
and the protection of law. The most fortunate of this army of
adventurers suffered from some of these fruitful causes of disaster. So
certain were they in some form to occur, that a successful completion of
the journey was simply an escape from death. The story of the Indian
murders and cruelties alone, which befell hundreds of these hapless
emigrants, would fill volumes. Every mile of the several routes across
the continent was marked by the decaying carcasses of oxen and horses,
which had perished during the period of this hegira to the gold mines.
Three months with mules and four with oxen were necessary to make the
journey,—a journey now completed in five days from ocean to ocean by the
railroad.

Some of the earliest of these expeditions, after entering the unexplored
region which afterwards became Idaho and Montana, were arrested by
information that it would be impossible to cross, with teams, the
several mountain ranges between them and the mines. This discouragement
was followed up by intelligence that the placers were overrun by a crowd
of gold hunters from California and Oregon, and that large bands of
prospectors were spreading over the adjacent territory. Swift on the
heels of this came the rumor that new placers had been found at Deer
Lodge, on the east side of the mountains.

The idea was readily adopted that the country was filled with gold
placers,—that it was not necessary to pursue the track of actual
discovery, but that each man could discover his own mine. Thus
believing, the stream of emigration diverged,—some crossing the range to
Fort Lemhi on the Lower Salmon, and others pursuing a more southerly
course, with the hope of striking an old trail leading from Salt Lake to
Bitter Root and Deer Lodge valleys. Some of this latter party remained
on Grasshopper Creek near the large cañon, where they made promising
discoveries. The others went on to Deer Lodge, but being disappointed in
the placers there, rejoined their companions and gave to their placer
the name of Beaver Head Diggings,—that being the name given by Lewis and
Clark to the river into which the creek empties.

While these discoveries were in progress on the east side of the
mountains, a prospecting party which had been organized at Florence
under the leadership of a Californian by the name of Grimes, discovered
the mines on the Boise River. They were one hundred and fifty miles
south of Florence. Grimes and his party sunk their first shaft fifteen
miles northwest of the site of Idaho City. While preparing to extend
their explorations, they unfortunately fell into an Indian ambuscade and
their leader was slain.

Intelligence of the Beaver Head and Boise discoveries unsettled all
local projects for building up the towns of Florence, Elk City, and Oro
Fino. They were immediately deserted by all who could leave without
sacrifice. West Bannack, at Boise, and East Bannack, at Beaver Head,
sprung into existence as if by enchantment.

Ridgely had now so far recovered from his wound as to be able to travel.
Accompanied by him and Charley Reeves, Henry Plummer left the vicinity
of Florence and went to Elk City. There he met with several of his old
California acquaintances who were familiar with his early history.
Fearful of remaining lest they should deliver him up to the authorities
and cause him to be returned to California, or that a Vigilance
Committee would visit him with heavier punishment, he suddenly departed,
and ten days later made his appearance at Deer Lodge. He found the camp
full of needy adventurers, the mines unpromising, and the chances few
for replenishing his fortune by either gambling or robbery. After
spending a few days of constantly increasing discouragement he started
in company with Jack Cleveland for Fort Benton, intending to go down the
Missouri by the first boat. Fortunate would it have been had he carried
this design into execution. If it would not have saved him from a
felon’s death, it would have preserved the lives of those who afterwards
became his victims.

  A PACK TRAIN: CINCHING
]

Sixty miles from Benton, their horses jaded with travel, the two men
stopped at the Government farm on Sun River for a few days’ rest. In
this secluded valley they were out of the way of pursuers. Carpeted with
bunch grass, it afforded grazing for their half-starved horses, and in
Mr. Vail, the man in charge of the farm, they found a very hospitable
host. Divided centrally by the large and peaceful river, the valley
stretched away on either side to numberless plateaus, remarkable for the
uniform height and tabular recession with which they rose to the summits
of the lofty foothills, which in their turn swelled gradually into a
circumference of heaven-kissing mountains. Nothing but a few forests
were wanting to make the scene one of unparalleled grandeur. These were
measurably supplied by the parks of cottonwood which stretched along
either bank of the river, affording shelter for the herds of elk,
antelope, and deer that roamed unharmed over the boundless solitude.

Here, sheltered by the arms of kind relatives, Henry Plummer first saw
the only being which inspired his bosom with virtuous love. A young,
innocent, and beautiful girl, artless and loving as a child, won by his
attention and gentlemanly deportment, and the tale, seductive as that
poured by the serpent into the ear of Eve, which he told of his love,
against the advice of her sister and friends, crowned his happiness with
her heart and hand. No stories of his past career, no terrible picture
of the future, no tears and petitions, could stay the sacrifice. She
felt the sentiment so beautifully expressed by Moore,

           “I know not, I ask not, if guilt’s in that heart,
           I but know that I love thee, whatever thou art,”—

and under its influence she linked her fortunes with those of the
robber, murderer, and outlaw, in the holiest of human ties.

A quarrel, of which this young lady was the innocent cause, took place
between Plummer and Cleveland before the marriage of the former. Their
old friendship was never reëstablished. Often during their residence at
Sun River an exchange of bitter epithets only relieved their pent-up
wrath. Afraid of each other, neither would leave the farm alone.
Accordingly they went to Bannack in company, early in the Winter of
1862–63. There we will leave them while we return to Florence to inquire
after the fortunes of Cherokee Bob, whom we left a few chapters ago
“settled in business.”

                               CHAPTER IX
                       DESERTION OF MINING CAMPS

The decay of a mining town is as sudden and rapid as its growth, and the
causes which occasion it as problematical. Few, comparatively, of the
great number of placer camps in the Rocky Mountains, once peopled with
thousands, survive beyond the third year of their existence. As soon as
the placers fail to remunerate the miners, they are abandoned. The crowd
departs, and if any remain, it is that sober, substantial class which is
satisfied with small gain as the reward of unceasing toil. Intelligence
of new discoveries brought to a failing placer will cause the immediate
departure of great numbers engaged in working it. These stampedes are
among the most notable features of mountain life. Sometimes when the
discovery of a new placer is announced, the entire population of a
mining town is on the alert, each man striving with the next to be the
first to reach it. Horses are saddled, mules packed, sluices abandoned,
and the long and unmarked route is filled with gold hunters. Away they
go, over mountains, across streams, through cañons and pine forests,
with the single object of making the first selection of a claim in the
new location. Not infrequently it is the case that a single company is
the first to learn of the discovery of a new rich placer. If the claim
it has worked is abandoned the succeeding morning, it is received by the
camp as incontestable evidence that a mine of superior richness has been
found,—and hundreds start in pursuit of the missing company. Rumor is a
fruitful cause of stampedes. Disappointments are more frequently the
consequences than rewards. Instances are common where whole camps have
been deserted to follow up a rumor, been disappointed, and glad to
return at last. There is nothing permanent in the life of a gold
miner,—and beyond the moment, nothing strong or abiding in his
associations.

                   “Whither he goes or how he fares,
                   Nobody knows and nobody cares.”

Florence had suffered from these causes. The roving portion of the
population had gone, some to Boise, some to Bannack, and some to Deer
Lodge. Cherokee Bob and Cynthia still remained, but Harper had fled, and
Peoples, English, and Scott slept the “sleep that knows no waking.” Bill
Willoughby, a suspected member of Harper’s gang, was Bob’s only
companion.

The New Year was approaching. The good wives and daughters, in
accordance with usual custom, proposed that it should be celebrated by a
ball,—a proposition to which the other sex joyfully acceded. Extensive
preparations were made for the supper, and the ball-room was
attractively decorated. Cynthia made known to Bob her desire to go. He
said in reply, “You shall go, and be respected as a decent woman ought
to be.” So he asked Willoughby to “take his woman to the ball, and,”
said he, “if things don’t go right, just report to me.” Cynthia assented
to the arrangement, and Willoughby promised compliance. The guests had
arrived when Cynthia, hanging on the arm of Willoughby, made her
appearance. Scowls and sneers met them on every hand. A general
commotion took place among the ladies. In little groups of five or six,
scattered throughout the room, they whispered to each other their
determination to leave if Cynthia were permitted to remain. The managers
held a consultation, and Willoughby was told that he must take Cynthia
home. No alternative presenting, he obeyed.

The gentlemen present were prepared to meet any further disturbance, but
none occurred, and the ball passed off pleasantly. The next day Cherokee
Bob marshalled his forces to avenge the insult, but was restrained by
the evident preparation with which the citizens anticipated his design.
He and his companions swaggered around town flourishing their pistols
and bowie-knives, boasting of their prowess, but careful of giving
personal offence. It would have been well for them had their resentment
cooled here, but Bob’s malice was not to be satisfied so easily. Two
days had passed, and Cynthia’s humiliation was unavenged. Before the
close of another it must be propitiated with blood. Accordingly, the
next morning it was agreed between Bob and Willoughby that they would
precipitate the battle.

The most efficient leader of the citizens was a saloon-keeper by the
name of Williams, familiarly called “Jakey.” He was an athletic man, and
a determined enemy of the robbers, by whom he was held in great fear. He
had been the hero of more than one desperate affray, and was regarded by
Bob and Willoughby as the only obstacle in the way of their bloody
project to kill the managers of the ball. The first act, therefore, in
their contemplated tragedy was to dispose of him. Jakey at first sought
to avoid them. They pursued him from house to house, till, tired of
fleeing, he finally declared he would go no farther. Returning by a
circuitous path, he was overtaken and fired upon by his pursuers while
entering his saloon. He fired in return, and springing back, seized a
loaded shotgun, and rushed into the street. Meantime, several citizens
joined in the fight, which soon became general. The ruffians found
themselves contending against fearful odds. Willoughby was slowly
retreating with his face to his assailants, and firing as rapidly as
possible. Cherokee Bob was pursuing the same strategy in an opposite
direction. The twelfth fire exhausted Willoughby’s pistols. He turned to
run, with Jakey in full pursuit. Exhausted from loss of blood, which was
pouring from sixteen wounds, he soon fell, and, throwing up his hands,
exclaimed to one of his pursuers who was in the act of firing,

“For God’s sake, don’t shoot any more. I’m dying now,” and surrendered
himself to death.

Bob beat a retreat at the first fire. Dodging behind a corner, where his
head only was exposed, he fired upon his pursuers until his pistols were
nearly empty. While aiming for another shot, a ball fired from an
opposite window brought him to the earth, mortally wounded. He was taken
to his saloon, and died the third day after the affray, in the full, and
to him, consolatory belief that he had killed Jakey Williams at the
first fire of his revolver. He had a brother living at Lewiston. His
last words were, “Tell my brother I have killed my man and gone on a
long hunt.” His real name was Henry Talbert.

Cynthia was now without a protector. At Bob’s request she soon joined
her old lover, Bill Mayfield, at Boise. This reunion was destined to be
of short duration. The following Spring Mayfield went to Placerville,
Idaho, for a brief sojourn. A quarrel over a game of cards sprung up
between him and one Evans. Mayfield drew his revolver, intending to
settle it by a fatal shot, but Evans interposed,

“I’m not heeled”—the mountain phrase for “I am not armed.”

“Then go and heel yourself,” said Mayfield, sheathing his revolver, “and
look out the next time you meet me, for I’m bound to kill you at sight.
One of us must die.”

The next day, while Mayfield and two friends were walking in the
suburbs, they came upon a muddy spot, across which a narrow plank had
been laid. This necessitated crossing it in single file. Mayfield was in
the centre. Evans was in a cabin beside the crossing, but a few feet
distant. Seizing a double-barrelled shotgun, he fired upon Mayfield from
his place of concealment, through an open window. Mayfield grasped for
his revolver, but fell without power to draw it, exclaiming “I’m shot.”
He died in two hours, illustrating in his demise the Scriptural axiom,
“With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.” Evans
was immediately arrested, but escaped from jail that night, and being
furnished with a horse by a friend, fled the country, and was never
apprehended.

After Mayfield’s death Cynthia entered upon that career of promiscuous
infamy which is the certain destiny of all women of her class. It is
written of her that “she has been the cause of more personal collisions
and estrangements than any other woman in the Rocky Mountains.”

                               CHAPTER X
                               BOONE HELM

Some men are villains by nature, others become so by circumstances.
Hogarth’s series of pictures representing in contrast the career of two
apprentices illustrates this truth better than words. Both commenced
life under the same influences. The predominance of good and evil is
exhibited by the natural tendency of one to overcome all unfavorable
circumstances by close application to business and by virtuous
associations, and of the other to idleness, vicious indulgences, and
corrupt companionship. The one becomes Lord Mayor of London, and in the
discharge of official duty passes sentence of death upon the other.

The wretch I am now about to introduce to the reader was one of those
hideous monsters of depravity whom neither precept nor example could
have saved from a life of crime. Boone Helm was a native of Kentucky.
His parents emigrated to one of the newest settlements in Missouri while
he was a boy. The rough pursuits of border-life were congenial to his
tastes. He excelled in feats of physical strength, and delighted in
nothing more than a quarrel which brought his prowess into full display.
He was an inordinate drinker, and when excited by liquor gave way to all
the evil passions of his nature. One of the exploits recorded of him was
that of hurling his bowie-knife into the ground and regaining it with
his horse at full speed. On one occasion, while the circuit court was in
session, the sheriff attempted to arrest him. Helm resisted the officer,
but urging his horse up the stairs into the court-room, astonished the
judge by demanding with profane emphasis what he wanted of him.

In the year 1848 he married a respectable girl, but neither her
affection nor the infant daughter born to him a year later could prevail
with him to abandon his vicious and profligate habits. His wife sought
security from his ill-treatment in divorce, which was readily granted.
This freed him from family responsibilities, and he at once determined
to emigrate either to Texas or California. Littlebury Shoot, a neighbor,
while Helm was intoxicated, had, for pacific purposes, promised to
accompany him,—intending when he was sober to avoid the fulfilment of
the promise by explanation. Helm was told of his intention. He called
upon Shoot, who had retired, and meeting him at the door of his house,
with his left hand on his shoulder, in a friendly tone thus addressed
him:

“So, Littlebury, you’ve backed down on the Texas question, have you?”

Shoot attempted an explanation, but was stopped by the peremptory
demand:

“Well, are you going or not? Say yes or no.”

“No!”

At the utterance of this reply, Helm buried his bowie-knife in the
breast of the unfortunate man, who, without a struggle, fell dead at his
feet. Mounting his horse immediately, Helm rode away. The brother of the
victim and a few resolute friends followed in pursuit. They tracked him
through several neighborhoods and captured him by surprise at an Indian
reservation, and returned him to Monroe County for trial. He was
convicted of murder; but his conduct was such while in confinement as to
raise serious doubts of his sanity. After his conviction, under the
advice of physicians he was consigned to the lunatic asylum, his conduct
meantime being that of a quiet, inoffensive lunatic. His keeper, finding
him harmless, indulged him so far as to accompany him on daily walks
into the country surrounding the institution. On one occasion, on some
urgent pretence, Helm asked permission to enter a willow copse, which
was readily granted. Afterwards the desire to enter this copse whenever
he approached it seemed to take the form of mania. Suspecting no
ulterior design, his keeper indulged him. One day, meeting a friend near
the spot, the keeper, during Helm’s absence, engaged in conversation.
Time passed unnoticed at first, but as the stay of Helm was prolonged,
the keeper, fearing some accident had befallen him, made a rapid search
through the thicket. But the bird had flown. His stratagem was
successful. He was never afterward seen in Missouri, but upon his escape
he fled immediately to California. Several persons were killed by him
while there, in personal _rencontre_. At length he committed actual
premeditated murder, but escaped arrest by flight. In the Spring of 1858
he arrived at Dalles, Oregon. Fearful of a requisition for his return to
California, Helm, in company with Dr. Wm. H. Groves, Elijah Burton, Wm.
Fletcher, John Martin, —— Field, and —— McGranigan, attempted a journey
on horseback to Camp Floyd, Utah, sixty miles southwest of Salt Lake
City, by way of Fort Hall. A ride of several days brought them to the
Grand Ronde River. During that time they had become sufficiently
acquainted with each other to banish all those feelings of distrust
natural among strangers in a new country. Helm, who to his criminal
qualities added the usual concomitant of being a loud-mouthed braggart,
while narrating his exploits said in a boastful tone to McGranigan:

“Many’s the poor devil I’ve killed, at one time or another,—and the time
has been that I’ve been obliged to feed on some of ’em.”

“Yes,” replied McGranigan, casting a sinister glance at Groves, “and
we’ll have more of that feasting yet.”

The cold sincerity with which these words were uttered struck a chill to
the heart of Groves, which experienced no relief when a few moments
afterwards Helm proposed a plan for organizing a band of Snake Indians,
and returning with them on a predatory excursion against the Walla
Wallas.

“The Walla Wallas,” said he, “own about four thousand horses. With such
a band of Snakes as we can easily organize for the enterprise, we can
run off two thousand of the best of those animals, and after dividing
with the Indians, take ours to Salt Lake and dispose of them to
advantage.”

Groves, who had heard enough to satisfy him that a longer stay with this
company would be accompanied by risks for which he had neither
inclination nor fitness, mounted his horse at a late hour that night,
and spurred back to the Dalles as rapidly as possible. On his arrival he
sent intelligence to the chief of the Walla Wallas of Helm’s
contemplated foray, warning them to keep a careful watch upon their
horses. His plans being frustrated, Helm remained in the vicinity till
Autumn, when, in company with his five companions, he continued his
journey to Camp Floyd. Five hundred miles of this route lay through a
wilderness of mountains, unmarked by a trail and filled with hostile
Indians. It was late in October when the party left Grand Ronde River.
The mountains were covered with snow. Cold weather had set in for a
season whose only changes for the next six months would be a steady
increase of severities. The thermometer, seldom above, often marked a
temperature thirty or forty degrees below zero in the mountains. The
passes were snowed up to the depths of twenty and thirty feet. Wild
game, however abundant in Summer, had retreated to the forests and
fastnesses for food and shelter. Snow-storms and sharp winds were
blinding and incessant. Deep ravines, lofty mountains, beetling crags,
and dismal cañons, alternated with impenetrable pine forests,
inaccessible lava beds, and impassable torrents, encumbered every inch
of the way. Death on the scaffold or escape through this terrible
labyrinth gave the alternative small advantage of the penalty. Small as
it was, Helm and his companions took the risk and plunged into the
mountain wilderness. He alone escaped.

In the absence of other narratives of this remarkable adventure, I
record his own, as detailed to John W. Powell in April of the following
year. Mr. Powell says:

  “N. P. LANGFORD,

  “DEAR SIR: On the tenth of April, 1859, I was on my way from Fort
  Owen, Bitter Root Valley, to Salt Lake City. My party consisted of
  one American named James Misinger, a Frenchman called ‘Grand
  Maison,’ a French half-breed named Antoine, and three Indians.

  “I had crossed the Snake River just above Fort Hall, pitched my
  lodge, and was entering to indulge in a brief sleep, when I heard
  some one outside ask in a loud tone of voice, ‘Who owns this
  shebang?’ Stepping to the door and looking out, I saw a tall,
  cadaverous, sunken-eyed man standing over me, dressed in a dirty,
  dilapidated coat and shirt and drawers, and moccasins so worn that
  they could scarcely be tied to his feet. Having invited him in and
  inquired his business, he told me substantially the following:

  “His name was Boone Helm. In company with five others he had left
  Dalles City, Oregon, in October, 1858, intending to go to Camp
  Floyd, Utah Territory. Having reached the Raft River, they were
  attacked by a party of Digger Indians, with whom they maintained a
  running fight for several miles, but none of the party was killed or
  severely wounded. Late in the evening they reached the Bannack
  River, where they camped, picketed their horses near by, and
  stationed two sentinels. During the night one of the sentinels was
  killed, the savage who committed the deed escaping on a horse
  belonging to the party.

  “Upon consultation, it was decided that they had better leave that
  place as soon as possible. The sky at the time was overcast with
  storm-clouds, and soon after they got into their saddles the weather
  culminated in a snowstorm, which increased in violence until it
  became terrific. Finally, being unable to see anything but sheets of
  snow, they became bewildered, and knew not in what direction they
  were proceeding. Morning brought no relief. In the midst of an ocean
  of snow, they were as oblivious of locality in daylight as if total
  darkness had encompassed them. They knew they were somewhere between
  Ross’s Fork and the Bear River, and this was their most definite
  knowledge.

  “At last they reached Soda Springs on Bear River, where familiar
  landmarks came in view. They then travelled up that river until they
  reached Thomas’s Fork, where they were forced to stop, from the lean
  and exhausted condition of their horses and the depth of the snow.
  Here they found a very comfortable cabin, and perforce went into
  winter quarters.

  “Their provisions soon being all gone they commenced subsisting on
  their horses, killing one after another, until they had eaten them
  all but a celebrated race-horse which had been valued on the Upper
  Columbia at over a thousand dollars. Seeing now that they must all
  perish unless they soon reached a point where supplies could be
  obtained, the race-horse had to share the fate of the others. His
  meat was ‘jerked’ or hastily dried, that they might the more
  conveniently carry it on their backs. They then made snowshoes of
  the hides of the horses, and started back towards, and aimed to
  reach, Fort Hall, where they supposed they would meet with human
  beings of some kind, white men, half-breeds, or Indians.

  “The party kept together until they had got beyond Soda Springs,
  where some had become so exhausted they could scarcely travel,—and
  their meat getting frightfully small in amount, Helm and a man named
  Burton concluded not to endanger their own lives by waiting for the
  wearied ones, so they left them behind.

  “The two finally reached the Snake River, and moved down it in
  search of Fort Hall, having nothing to eat but the prickly-pear
  plant. When they had reached the site of Cantonment Loring, Burton,
  starving, weary, and snow-blind, was unable to proceed; and a good
  vacant house being there, Helm left him, and continued on for Fort
  Hall.

  “Reaching the fort, he found it without an occupant. He then
  returned and reached Burton about dark. When out in the willows hard
  by, procuring firewood, he heard the report of a pistol. Running
  back into the house, he found Burton had committed suicide by
  shooting himself. He then concluded to try and find his way into
  Salt Lake Valley. Cutting off, well up in the thigh, Burton’s
  remaining leg (he had eaten the other), he rolled the limb up in an
  old red flannel shirt, tied it across his shoulder, and started.

  “About eight miles out he met an Indian going in his lodge. He
  entreated the savage to take him along; but the Indian said he had
  nothing himself to eat, and that his family were starving. Helm
  exhibited handfuls of gold coin, when the Indian consented to his
  accompanying him.

  “He remained at this lodge about two weeks, paying the Indian ten
  dollars a meal. His food consisted of ants and an unpalatable herb,
  called in the mountains the ‘tobacco plant.’

  “The above facts Helm gave me with tears in his eyes, and said, ‘I
  will give you all I have in the world,—which is only nine
  dollars,—to take me to the settlements.’ I told him I did not desire
  money for helping a man in his condition.

  “That same evening the Indian with whom Helm had been stopping,
  visited me. His name was Mo-quip. I had known him for several years.
  He fully corroborated Helm’s story, in regard to the carrying and
  eating the body of his companion. ‘When I first tasted of the
  flesh,’ said Mo-quip in his own tongue, ‘I knew not what it was, but
  told the stranger it was _bueno_[1] game,—better than I had myself.
  The stranger then took hold of one of the corners of a red shirt
  that was around his pack, and jerked it up, when a white man’s leg,
  the lower end ragged from gnawing, rolled out on the ground.’
  Altogether Helm had paid Mo-quip two hundred and eighty dollars.

Footnote 1:

    Good.

  “Having given him a new suit of buckskin, and furnished him with a
  horse, he set out with my party for Salt Lake City. Just after
  pitching my lodge the first evening after starting with him, ‘Grand
  Maison,’ very much frightened, came to me with a sack of gold coin
  which he said Helm had asked him to conceal until they reached Salt
  Lake City. I took the money and counted it—it amounted to fourteen
  hundred dollars.

  “Though satisfied there was something wrong, I said nothing, and
  took Helm on to the settlements. Having ascertained in the meantime
  that he was the worst kind of a desperado, I called him to me as
  soon as we had reached the end of the journey, and handed him his
  money, saying, ‘You can now take care of yourself.’ He coolly put
  the coin in his pocket, without expressing a syllable of
  thankfulness for the assistance I had rendered him.

  “It was not long until he had squandered all he had in gambling and
  drinking, and was finally expelled from Salt Lake Valley for his
  atrocities.

  “Hoping these facts may be of service to you, allow me to subscribe
  myself,

                                               Your obt. servant,
                                                     “JOHN W. POWELL.”

We have good reason for believing that before Helm fled from Salt Lake
City he murdered, in cold blood, two citizens, at the instigation of
some of the leading Mormons, who, after the deed was done, concealed
him, and finally aided in his escape from arrest. Certain it is that
after leaving there he travelled through southern Utah, and by a long
circuit reached San Francisco, whence he returned by water to the Dalles
in Oregon.

Here he engaged in fresh villainies. Several murders which were
committed along the route leading from the Columbia River to the gold
mines were laid to his charge. At one time, in Washington Territory, he
stole a herd of horses which he sold at Vancouver’s Island. In this
course of varied and hardened crime he passed his time till the Spring
of 1862,—with his usual good fortune escaping detection or arrest. In
June of that year he made his appearance in Florence, where he soon
found, among the roughs, congenial associates.

A man of that mixed character which united the qualities of a gambler, a
skilful pugilist, and an honest, straightforward miner in his single
person, known only as “Dutch Fred,” at this time enjoyed a local
notoriety in Florence which had won for him among his comrades the
appellation of “Chief.” He was neither a rowdy nor desperado, and in
ordinary deal, honest and generous; but he gambled, drank, and when
roused, was a perfect Hercules in a fight. Helm, having been plied with
liquor, at the request of an enemy of Fred’s sought him out for the
purpose of provoking a fight. Entering the saloon where Fred was seated
at a faro table, Helm, with many oaths and epithets and flourishes of
his revolver, challenged Fred to an immediate deadly combat. Fred sprung
up, drew his knife, and was advancing to close with the drunken
braggart, when the by-standers interfered, and deprived both of their
weapons, which they entrusted to the keeping of the saloon-keeper, and
Fred returned quietly to his game.

Helm apologized, and expressed regret for his conduct, and left the
saloon. A few hours afterwards he returned. Fred was still there.
Stepping up to the saloon-keeper, Helm asked for his revolver, promising
that he would immediately depart and make no disturbance. No sooner was
it returned to him than he turned towards Fred, and uttering a
diabolical oath, fired at him while seated at the table. The ball
missed, and before the second fire, Fred, unarmed, with his arms folded
across his breast, stood before his antagonist, who, with deadlier aim,
pierced his heart. He fell dead upon the spot. Helm cocked his pistol,
and looking towards the stupefied crowd, exclaimed,

“Maybe some more of you want some of this!”

As no one deigned a reply, he walked coolly away.

If Helm was arrested for this murder, he escaped; for the next we hear
of him, he was captured on Frazer River in the Fall of 1862, as will
appear from the following extract from a British Columbia paper:

  “The man, Boone Helm, to whom we referred some weeks since, has at
  last been taken. He was brought into this city last night strongly
  ironed. The first clue of the detectives was the report that two men
  had been seen trudging up the Frazer River on foot, with their
  blankets and a scanty supply of provisions on their backs. The
  description of one corresponded with the description given by the
  American officers of Boone Helm. Helm’s conduct on the road is
  conclusive evidence that he was aware he was being pursued. He
  passed around the more populous settlements, or through them in the
  night time. When overtaken, he was so exhausted by fatigue and
  hunger that it would have been impossible for him to continue many
  hours longer. He made no resistance to the arrest,—in fact, he was
  too weak to do so,—and acknowledged without equivocation or attempt
  at evasion that he was Boone Helm. Upon being asked what had become
  of his companion, he replied with the utmost _sang froid_:

  “‘Why, do you suppose that I’m a —— fool enough to starve to death
  when I can help it? I ate him up, of course.’