sex.



138 NEW AMERICA.



CHAPTEE XII.

PRAIRIE JUSTICE.



THE chief executive officer of this city is Eobert
Wilson, sheriff, auctioneer, and justice of the
peace ; though he would hardly be recognised in
Colorado under such a description. As Quintus
Hora,tius Flaccus, poet and good-fellow, is only
known as Horace, so Eobert Wilson, sheriff and
auctioneer, is only known as Bob, in polite society
as Bob Wilson. The Sheriff, who is said, like our
Judge Popham of immortal memory, to have been
a gambler, if nothing worse, in his wild youth, is
still a young-looking man of forty or forty-two ; a
square, strong-chested fellow, low in stature, with
a head like the Olympian Jove s. The stories told
in the Prairies of this man s daring make the blood
freeze, the flesh creep, and the pulse gallop. To
day he came and sat with me for hours, talking of




ROBERT WILSON, SHERIFF OF DENVER.



PRAIRIE JUSTICE. 139

the city and the territory in which his fortunes are
all bound up. One of his tales was that of his
capture of three horse-stealers.

According to the code in fashion here in
Denver, murder is a comparatively slight offence.
Until two or three years ago, assassination inci
dental, not deliberate assassination was a crime
of every day. At the door of some gambling-house
and every tenth house in Main Street was a
gambling-house, openly kept, with the stimulants
of drinking, singing, and much worse it was a
common thing to find a dead man in the streets
each day-break. A fight had taken place over the
roulette-table ; pistols had been drawn ; and the
fellow who was slowest with his weapon had gone
down. No one thought of searching into the
affray. A ruffian had been shot, and the city con
sidered itself free of so much waste. Human life
is here of no account ; and what man likes to
bring down upon himself the vengeance of a horde
of reckless devils by seeking too particularly into
the cause of a fellow s death ?

A lady, whom I met in Denver, wife of an ex-
mayor of that city, told me that when she first
came out into the West, four or five years ago,
there were sixty persons lying in the little grave-



140 NEW AMERICA

yard, excluding criminals, not one of whom had
died a natural death. Exact enquiry told me this
account was somewhat beyond the mark ; but her
statement showed the belief still current in the
best houses ; and, indeed, it was only a little be
yond the truth. Men quarrel in the streets and
fight, but no one dreams of going to the help of
the weaker side. One night, when I was writing
in my room, a pistol-shot exploded near my win
dow, and, on looking out, I saw a man writhing on
the ground. In a few moments he was carried off
by his comrades ; no one followed his assailant ;
and I heard next day, that the assassin was not in
custody, and that no one knew for certain where
he was. Opposite my window there is a well, at
which two soldiers were drinking water late at
night ; an English gentleman, standing on the bal
cony of the Planter s House, heard one soldier say
to the other, " Look, there is a cobbler, bang at
him!" on which his comrade raised his piece and
fired. Poor Crispin jumped up into his shop and
shut the door ; he had a near escape with life,
for the ball had gone through the boarding of
his house, and lodged itself in the opposite wall.
Nothing was done to those two soldiers ; and every
one to whom I expressed my surprise at such



PRAIRIE JUSTICE. 141

negligence on the part of their commanding officers,
marvelled at my surprise.

Unless a ruffian is known to have killed half-
a-dozen people, and to have got, as it were, murder
on the brain, he is almost safe from trouble in these
western plains. A notorious murderer lived near
Central City ; it was known that he had shot six
or seven men ; but no one thought of interfering
with him on account of his crimes until he was
taken red-handed in the very act. Some persons
fancied he was heartily sorry for what he had done,
and he himself, when tossing off cocktails with his
rough companions, used to say he was sick of
shedding blood.

One day, on riding into Central City, he met a
friend whom he invited to take a drink. The friend,
not wishing to be seen any more in such bad com
pany, declined the offer, on which the ruffian drew
his pistol in the public street, in the open day, and
saying, with a comic swagger of reluctance, " Good
God, can I never come into town without killing
some one ? " shot his friend through the heart.
Seized by the indignant crowd, the callous ruffian
had a stern trial, a short shrift, and a midnight
escape up the famous cotton-tree in the city ditch.

But with respect to theft, most of all the theft



142 NEW AMERICA.

of horses, public opinion is far more strict than it
is with respect to murder. Horse-stealing is always
punished by death. Five good horses were one day
missed from a corral in Denver ; and on Wilson
being consulted as to the probable thieves, the
Sheriff s suspicions fell on three mining rowdies,
gamblers and thieves, named Brownlee, Smith,
and Carter, men who had recently come into the
city from the mines and the mountain roads. As
inquiry in the slums and grog-shops could not find
these worthies, Wilson, feeling sure that they were
the men he wanted, ordered his horse, and, after
looking well at his revolver and bowie-knife,
jumped into the saddle and turned towards the
Platte road. The time was early spring, when the
snow was melting and the water high. Coming to
the river, he stript and crossed the rapids, holding
his clothes and pistols above his head, and partly
swimming his horse across the stream. Eiding on
all day, all night, he came upon the thieves on a
lonely prairie, one hundred and fifty miles from
Denver, and five miles from the nearest ranch.
Carter and Smith were each leading a horse, in
addition to the one he rode ; Brownlee rode alone,
bringing up the rear. It was early day when he
came up with them, and, as they did not know him



PRAIRIE JUSTICE. 143

by sight, he entered into conversation, chiefly with
Brownlee, passing himself off with the robbers as
a broken miner going home to the States ; and
riding with them from eight o clock until twelve,
in the hope of meeting either the public stage, or
some party of traders who could lend him help.
But he looked in vain. At noon he saw that no
assistance could be got that day, and feeling that
he must do his perilous work alone, he suddenly
changed his air and voice, and reining in his horse,
said :

" Gentlemen, we have gone far enough ; we
must turn back."

" Who the h are you ? " shouted Brownlee,

drawing his weapon.

" Bob Wilson," said the Sheriff, quietly ; " come
to fetch you back to Denver. You are accused of
stealing three horses. Give up your arms, and you
shall be fairly tried."

" You go to h ! " roared Brownlee, raising

his pistol ; but, before he could draw the trigger, a
slug was in his brain, and he tumbled to the ground
with the imprecation hot upon his lips. Smith and
Carter, hearing the loud words behind them fol
lowed by the exploding pistol, turned round sud
denly in their saddles and got ready to fire ; but



144 NEW AMERICA.

in the confusion Smith let drop his piece ; and,
in an eye-blink, Carter fell to the ground, dead as
the dust upon which he lay. Smith, who had
jumped down from his horse to get his pistol, now
threw up his hands.

" Come here," cried Wilson, to the surviving
thief ; " hold my horse ; if you stir a limb, I fire ;
you see I am not likely to miss my mark."

" You shoot very clean, sir," answered the trem
bling ruffian.

"Now, mind me," said the Sheriff; "I shall
take you and these horses back to Denver; if you
have stolen them, so much the worse for you ; if
not, you are all square ; any way you shall have a
fair trial."

Wilson then picked up the three pistols, all of
them loaded and capped. " I hesitated for a mo
ment," he said to me, in this part of his tale,
" whether to draw the charges ; on second thought
I resolved to keep them as they were, as no one
could tell what might happen." Tying the three
pistols in a handkerchief, and carefully re-loading
his own revolver, he then bade Smith get on one
of the horses, to which he then made the fellow
fast by ropes passed round his legs. Leaving the
two dead men on the ground, and turning the



PRAIRIE JUSTICE. 145

horses loose to graze, Wilson led his captive along
the road as far back as the ranch. A French settler,
with an English wife, lived at this prairie ranch,
and on Wilson stating who he was, and what his
prisoner was more than suspected of being, the
brave couple entered into his plans. After lashing
Smith to a post, and telling the woman to shoot
him dead if he struggled to get free (an order
which her husband said she would certainly carry
out, should the need for it arise), the two men
rode back to the scene of execution, buried the
two bodies, recovered the four horses, and brought
away many articles from the dead men s pockets,
which might serve to identify them in evidence.
Eeturning to the ranch, they found the woman
on guard, and Smith in despair. In their ab
sence, Smith had used all his arts of appeal upon
the woman; he had appealed to her pity, to her
vanity, to her avarice. At length she had been
forced to tell him that she would hear no more,
that if he spoke again she would fire into his
mouth. Then he grew white and silent. Next
day brought the Sheriff and his prisoner to Denver,
when Smith had a short shrift and a violent escape
up the historical tree.

VOL. I. L



146 NEW AMERICA.



CHAPTER XIII.

SIERRA MADRE.

FROM Denver City up to Bridger s Pass, the
highest point of the Sierra Madre (Mother Crest,
or saw-line), over which trapper and trader have
worn a track, the ascent is easy as to gradients,
though it may be most uneasy in the matter of
ruts, creeks, sand and stones. So far a traveller
finds but little difference between the mountains
and the prairies, which are also rolling uplands,
rising between Leavenworth and Denver upwards
of four thousand feet, the height of Snowdon
above the sea. Yet Bridger s Pass is the water-
parting of a great continent ; the eastern slopes
shedding their snow and rain towards the Atlantic
Ocean, the western slopes towards the Pacific
Ocean.

For ninety miles the road runs quietly north



SIERRA MADRE. 147

of Denver, along the base of a lower range of
mountains known as the Black Hills, in search
of an opening through the towering wall of rock
and snow. At Stonewall, near Virginia Dale, it
finds a gorge, or canyon, as the people call it,
leading into a pretty woodland district, full of
springs and streamlets, in which the trout are so
abundant you may catch them in a creel. The
scenery is not yet wild and grand, though it is
picturesque, from the strange rock formation and
i the brilliance of its body colour. The moment
you enter into the mountain land, you see why
the Spaniards called it Colorado. The prevailing
tint of rock, of soil, of tree (especially in the fall),
as red.

Between Virginia Dale and Willow Springs, the
country lying south of our track may be called
Beautiful. The road runs high, commanding a
sweep of many valleys, bright with welcome fo-
iage, therefore blessed with water ; broken by cols
md ridges, with long dark intervals of space be-
,ween ; the whole landscape crowned in the dis-
lance by the mighty and irregular range from
i Long s Peak to Pike s Peak. This is a true Swiss
scene ; the hills being clothed with pine, the
summits capped with snow ; a scene as striking in



148 NEW AMERICA.

its natural features as the more famous view ol
the Oberland Alps from Berne.

At Laramie we lose this mountain picture
Low mounds of earth and sand, covered with the
wild sage, peopled by prairie dogs, coyotes, anc
owls, shut out the snow-line from our sight.

Here and there along the track we pass th<
shoulder, we cross the summit, of a height whicl
may be called a mountain (out of courtesy), such a
Elk Mountain, the Medicine Bow Mountain, am
the ridge of North Platte, before we descend upoi
Sage Creek and Pine Grove ; but we see no peaks
we climb no alps ; jog jog, trot trot, grin<
grind, we rumble in the light waggon ove
stones, over grass, over sand, across creeks an
water-ruts, with a uniform misery, day after nigh
night after day, that would murder any man oui
right, from sheer exhaustion of his animal spirit
were it not for the strong reaction caused by tli
ever-expected appearance of Ute, Cheyenne, an
Sioux.

The life is hard at its best, intolerable at i
average. Only twice in the night and day ^
are allowed to eat. The food is bad, the wat<
worse, the cooking worst. Vegetables there a
none. Milk, tea, butter, beef, mutton, are cor



SIERRA MADRE. 149

raonly wanting. Even the talismanic letters from
New York are useless in these high and desolate
Passes through the sage-fields. If there were
food, it would be sold to us ; but, as a rule, there
is simply none at all. Hot dough, which they call
cake, you may have, though you will find it hard
to eat, impossible to digest you who are not to
the material and the method born, and who have
been pampered and spoiled by the chefs in Pall
Mall. No beer, no spirit, sometimes no salt, can
be found. As a luxury, you may get dried ^lk
and buffalo-flesh, seasoned with a dash of powder ;
and for these horrid dainties you are charged a
dollar and a half, in some places two dollars
per meal.

But if the life seems hard to us, who get
through it in a dozen days and nights, what must
it prove to the trapper, the teamster, the emi
grant? Spite of its perils and privations, this
mountain road is alive with trains of people going
to and fro between the Eiver and Salt Lake.
Hundreds of men, thousands of oxen, mules, and
horses, climb these desolate tracks ; bearing with
them, in light mountain waggons built for the
purpose, the produce of eastern fields and cities,
green apples, dried corn, salt beef, flour, meal,



150 NEW AMERICA.

potted fruits and meats, as well as tea, tobacco,
coffee, rice, sugar, and a multitude of dry goods,
from caps and shoes to coffin-plates and shrouds,
bearing them to the mining districts of Colorado,
Utah, Idaho, Montana, w r here such things find a
ready sale. The train-men march in bands for
safety, and a train from Leavenworth to Salt
Lake resembles in many ways the great caravan
of commerce on a Syrian road. A trader on the
river, at Omaha, in Nebraska, at Leavenworth,
in Kansas, hears, or perhaps suspects, that some
article, such as tea, cotton, fruits, it may be mo
lasses, tanned leather, is running short in the
mountains, and that in a few weeks a demand for
it is likely to spring up at high rates. Buying in
a good market, he takes the risk of being wrong
in his conjecture. With his one prime article of
trade he combines a dozen minor articles ; say,
with a huge bulk of tea, a little cutlery, a little
claret, a little quinine and other drugs, store oi
blankets and gauntlets, perhaps a thousand pairs
of top-boots. He buys fifty or sixty light wag
gons, with a dozen oxen to each waggon ; engages
a train boss, or captain, hires about a hundrec
men, packs up his goods, and sends the cara
van off into the plains. No actuary in his senses



SIERRA MADRE. 151

would ensure the arrival of that train in Denver,
in Salt Lake, in Virginia city. The journey is
considered as an adventure. The men who go
with it must be excellent shots, thoroughly well
armed ; but they are not expected to defend their

1 cargo against the Indians ; and should the red
skin plunderers show in force, the teamsters are
allowed to cut the traces, mount on the fleetest
mules, and fly to the nearest post or station,
leaving their waggon, stock, and cargo, to be

! plundered as the Indians list. No man likes his
poll to be scalped ; and the teamster, with a wife

; and child, perhaps, lying in Omaha, in Leaven-
worth, loves to keep his hair untouched. Murder

i will happen in the best-conducted trains ; but the

. bravest Western boy sets his life above a hundred
chests of tea and a thousand sacks of flour.

Some of these trains haul passengers along
the road at the rate of fifty dollars a-head for the
journey (in the stage it is two hundred and
fifty) the passenger finding himself in food,

; herding with the teamsters, and cooking his own
meals.

The trip, when it is done at all, is made in

i about ninety days, from the Eiver to Salt Lake ; a
journey of more than twelve hundred miles ; with



152 NEW AMERICA.

the city of Denver as a resting-place, six hundred
miles from the starting-point and from the end.
The average rate is fourteen or fifteen miles
a-day ; though some of the train-men will push
through twenty miles on the plains.

Four or five hours in the middle of the day
they rest to let the cattle graze, and to cook their
food ; at night-fall they encamp near to fresh
water, if possible in the vicinity of a little wood.
They corral the waggons ; that is to say, they set
them in the form of an ellipse, open only at one
end, for safety ; each waggon locked against its
neighbour, overlapping it by a third of the length,
like the scales on plate armour ; this ellipse being
the form of defence against Indian attack, which
long experience in frontier warfare had proved to
the old Mexican traders in these regions to be the
most effective shield. When the waggons are cor
ralled, and the oxen are turned loose to graze, the
men begin to cut and break wood, the women and
children (if there be any in the party) light the
fires, fetch water from the spring or creek, boil the
kettle, and bake the evening bread. Some of the
young men, expert with the rifle, tramp across
gully and creek in search of plover, prairie dog,
and chicken ; and on lucky days these hunters



SIERRA MADRE. 153

may chance to fall upon antelope and elk. Luck
going with them, the evening closes with a
feast. Others hunt for rattle-snakes, and kill
them ; also for stray coyotes and wolves, many
of which, driven mad by hunger, infest the
neighbourhood of a camp. I saw a huge grey
wolf shot within two yards of a waggon, which
had been lifted from the wheels and set on the
ground, and in which lay a sleeping child. When
supper is done, the oxen, having had their mouth
ful of bunch-grass, are driven for safety into the
corral of waggons ; or otherwise the morning light
would haply find them miles away in an Indian
camp. A song, a story, perhaps a dance, winds up
the weary day. In warm weather, train folks
sleep in the waggons, to escape the rattle-snakes
and wolves. When the snow is deep in the gulley,
when the wind comes sweeping down the ice, a
waggon on wheels is too cold for a bed, and the
train-men prefer a blanket on the ground, with a
whisky-bottle for a pillow. Long before dawn
they are up and about ; yoking the cattle, hitch-
ir-g up the waggons, swallowing their morning
meal. Sunrise finds them plodding on the road.

Sometimes the owner travels with his train ;
not often ; for the boss can manage these unruly,



154 NEW AMERICA.

drunken, quarrelling teamsters better than the
actual owner of the cargo. If the rations should
run short, if the whisky should turn out bad, if
the waggons should break down, the boss can join
chorus with the teamsters in swearing at his chief.
A strong outburst of abuse is said to do the men
much good ; and as the owner does not hear it,
he is none the worse. When the chief is present,
every man in the train has a complaint to make ;
so that time 1 is lost by the way, and a spirit of
insubordination shows itself in the camp. When
anything goes wrong and every day, in such
a country, something must go wrong if the
real master is not present, the boss can say, he
cannot help it, they are all in one boat, and they
must make the best of a bad job. In this way-
grumbling, drinking, fighting they get through
the mountain-passes ; to end their ninety days of
stern privations by a week s debauchery, either in
the secret slums of Salt Lake City, or in the
solitude of some mountain ranch.

The owner travels in the mail, more swiftly,
not more pleasantly, than his servants, and is
ready in Denver, in Salt Lake, in Virginia City, to
receive his waggons ; when he may sell the whole



SIERRA MADRE. 155

train, tea, drugs, hosiery, waggons, oxen, in a lump
or lumps.

The ranch-men are of two classes ; (1), the
enterprising class, who go out into the mountains
much as eastern farmers go into the back-woods
to clear the ground, to grow a little corn, to feed
a few sheep and kine ; fighting the battle of life,
on one side against reluctant nature, on the other
side against hostile red-skins ; living on bad food
and bad water, in the hope of getting a first
footing on the unoccupied soil, and laying the
foundation of a fortune for their sons and grand
sons ; (2), the more reckless class, who build a log-
hut by the roadside, in the highway of teamster
and emigrant, with a view of selling whisky and
cordials to the passers-by, and even to the tipsy
Cheyenne and Sioux, making in a brief season
a fortune for themselves. Both classes lead a
life of much peril and privation. Even more
than the teamster and the emigrant, the ranch
man bears his life in the palm of his hand ; for
every ruffian on the road who calls for drink,
with a bowie-knife and a revolver in his belt, has
the quick, quarrelsome spirit of the Western boy,
and often wants whisky to drink when he has



156 NEW AMERICA.

never a dollar in his pouch to pay for the de
licious dram.

But the chief peril comes to the ranch-man
in the shape of Indians ; most of all, when a
powerful tribe, like that of the Sioux, that of the
Pawnees, sets out on the war-path. The red-skin
loves whisky more than he loves either wife or
child ; in peace he will sell anything to obtain his
darling poison ; his papoose, his squaw, even his
captive in war : but when a Sioux has put the
red paint on his cheek, and slung the scalping-
knife to his side, he no longer thinks of buying
his dose of fire-water from the white man ; he
sweeps down upon the ranch, takes it by force,
and with it, not unfrequently, the life of its
vendor.

Yet the spirit of gain tempts the ranch-man to
rebuild his burnt shed, to replenish his plundered
store. If he lives through two or three seasons
of successful trade in whisky and tobacco, he is
rich. Paddy Blake, an Irishman, from Vir
ginia city, keeps a ranch near the summit of
Bridger s Pass, in a field which is the very model
of desolation. He lives at Fort Laramie ; by trade
he is a suttler ; but he finds it pay better to sell
bad spirits to the teamsters at three dollars a



SIERRA MADRE. 157

bottle, and cake-tobacco for chewing at six dollars
a pound, than to deal in decent stores among
soldiers and civilians at the fort. A small log-
hut contains his stock of poisons, which he vends
to the passer-by, including Utes and Cheyennes,
about four months in the year, while the roads
are open and the snow is off the ground ; taking
buffalo and beaver skins from the red men, dollars
and kind (the kind too often stolen) from the
whites.

Along this mountain road, in every train,
among the callous teamsters, among the raw emi
grants, among the passing strangers, among the
resident stockmen, there is one topic of conver
sation night and day, the Indians. Every red
man moves in this region with the scalping-knife
in his hand. Spottiswood, one of the smart agents
of the Overland mail, told me that he saw a white
man taken by the Sioux from his waggon, and
burnt to death on a pile of bacon. The antelope-
hunter of Virginia Dale was killed only a few
weeks ago. Between Elk Mountain and Sulphur
Springs a train was stopped by Cheyennes, and
eighteen men, women, and children, were mas
sacred and mutilated. Two young girls were
carried off, and, after being much abused by the



158 NEW AMERICA.

Indians, were sent into Fort Laramie, and ex
changed for sacks of flour from the quarter
master s store.

Near the top of the first pass stands a lonely
mail-station, called, by a pious and permissible
fiction, Pine Grove ; two stockmen occupy the log-
hut ; one of them, named Jesse Ewing, is the hero
of a tale more striking than many a deed that
has earned the Victoria Cross.

In the spring of this year a party of Sioux,
then out on the war-path, came to Pine Grove,
and by accident found Jesse there alone. As
usual, they made free with what was not their