own ; ate up the bread and coffee, the dried elk,
and the salt bacon ; and having gorged their
stomachs, they told Jesse to light a big fire, as
they meant to roast him alive. Burning their
captives is a common pastime with the Sioux ;
not their Pawnee enemies only, but the Swaps
(as they call the Yengees) or Pale-faces also. Up
to this time Jesse had contrived to keep his knife
and his revolver hidden in his clothes, and neither
of these weapons being seen, the Indians supposed
that he was quite unarmed and at their mercy.
At first, he refused to light a fire, knowing they
would carry out their threat ; and on their saying
SIERRA MADRE. 159
they would set their squaws to skin him if he did
not swiftly obey their chief, he said he could not
make a big fire unless he were allowed to fetch
straw and faggots from the stable. The fact being
obvious to the Sioux, he was told to go and fetch
them, two of the Indians going out into the night
to see him do it ; one entering the stable with him,
the second standing at the door on guard. Quick
as thought, his knife was in the side of the red
man near him ; a second later a slug was in the
brain of the one outside. The firing brought out
all the yelping band ; but Jesse, swift as an
antelope, leaped into a creek, got under some
trees and stones, in a place which he knew very
well, and lay there under cover, still as the dead,
while the Sioux, infuriated by their sudden loss,
kept up for hours around his hiding-place their
wild and horrible yep, yep. The night was
intensely cold ; he had no shoes ; no coat : worse
than all else, the snow began to fall, so that he
could not stir without leaving traces of his feet
along the ground. Happily for him, snow slobbers
and numbs an Indian s feet as quickly as it chills a
Yengee s. He could hear the Sioux crying out
against the cold ; after a few hours he found that
his enemies were turning their faces eastward.
160 NEW AMERICA.
Slowly, the noise of feet and voices bore away;
the Indians taking the path towards Sage Creek ;
and when the air was a little still, Jesse stole
from his covert, and ran for his life to the home-
station at Sulphur Springs, where he arrived at
daybreak, and obtained from his comrades of the
road the welcome relief of food and fire.
This brave boy has come back to Pine Grove:
a fact which I mention with regret, since the
Indians are again menacing the road ; and i;
they come down in strength, Jesse will be market
in their score of vengeance as one of the firs 1
to fall.
161
CHAPTEE XIV.
BITTER CREEK.
THE Camp of Peaks, composing the Sierra Madre,
having their crown and centre in Fremont s Peak,
three hundred feet above the height of Monte
Eosa, shed from their snowy sides three water-
lines ; on the eastern side, towards the Mississippi
and the Atlantic Ocean ; on the western side, towards
the Columbia river and the Pacific Ocean ; on the
southern side, towards the Colorado river and the
Gulf of California. South-westward of this Peak
rises the Wasatch chain, shutting out from these
systems of rain-flow the depression known as the
Valley of Utah and the Great Salt Lake. Be
tween the two great mountain chains of the Sierra
Madre and the Wasatch lies the Bitter Creek
country, one of the most sterile spots on the
surface of this earth.
This wild Sahara, measuring it from Sulphur
VOL. i. M
162 NEW AMEKICA.
Springs to Green river, is one hundred and thirty-
five miles in width. It is a region of sand and
stones, without a tree, without a shrub, without a
spring of fresh water. Bones of elk and antelope,
of horse and bullock, strew the ground. Here
and there, more thickly than elsewhere, you come
upon a human grave ; each of which has a story
known to the mountaineers. This stone is the
memorial of five stock-men who were murdered by
the Sioux. Yon pole marks the resting-place of a
young emigrant girl, who died on her way to the
Promised Land. That tree is the gallows of a
wretch, who was hung by his companions in a
drunken brawl. The whole track is marked by
skeletons and tragedies ; and visible nature is in
sternest harmony with the work of man. A
little wild sage grows here and there, scattered in
lonely bunches in the midst of a weak and stuntec
grass. The sun-flow T er all but disappears, attain
ing, where it grows at all, no more than th<
size of a common daisy. The hills are low, anc
of a dirty yellow tint. A fine white film of sod,
spots the landscape, here in broad fields, ther<
in bright patches, which the unused eye mistake
for frost and snow. When the creek, whid
lends its bitter name to the valley, is full c
BITTER CREEK. 163
water, as in early summer, while the ice is melt
ing, the taste of that water, though nauseous,
may be borne ; but when the creek runs dry, in
the later summer and the fall, it is utterly abo
minable to man and beast ; rank poison, which
inflames the bowels and corrupts the blood. Yet
men must drink it, or they die of thirst ; cattle
must drink it, or they will die of thirst. The soil
is very heavy, the road is very bad. A train can
hardly cross this Bitter Creek country under a
week, and many of the emigrant parties have to
endure its stern privations ten or twelve days.
Oxen cannot pull through the heavy sand, when
from scanty food and poisonous drink their
strength has begun to fail. Some fall by the
way, and cannot be induced to rise; some simply
stagger, and refuse to tug their chains. The whip
curls round their backs in vain ; there is nothing
for a teamster to do but draw the yoke and let
the poor creatures drop into the rear, where the
wolves and ravens put an end to their miseries.
The path is strewn with skeletons of ox and
mule. Again and again we meet with trains in
the Bitter Creek country, in which a third of the
oxen are in hospital ; that is to say, have been
relieved from their labour, thrown on the flank
M 2
1G4 NEW AMERICA.
to graze, or left behind on the chance of their
recovery, perhaps in care of a lad. When many
animals of a stock fall sick, the strain put on
the healthy becomes severe, and the whole cara
van, unable to go forward, may have to camp for
a week of rest in most unhealthy ground.
Lying between the two great ridges of the
Eocky Mountains, the Bitter Creek country, a
valley about the average height of Mons Pilatus
above the sea, is, of course, intensely cold. The
saying of the herdsmen is, that winter ends with
July, and begins with August. Many of the mules
and oxen die of frost, especially in the fall, when
the burning sun of noon is suddenly exchanged
for the icy winds of midnight. Frost comes upon
the cattle unawares, with a soft seductive sense of
comfort, so that they seem to bend their knees and
close their eyes in perfect health ; yet, w r hen the
morning dawns, it is seen that they will never
rise again from their bed of sleep. It is much
the same with men ; who often lie down in theii
rugs and skins on the ground, a little numb
perhaps, in the feet ; not miserably so, their toe?
being only just touched with the chill of ice
yet the more knowing hands among them fee
that they will never find life and use in those
BITTER CREKK. 165
feet again. I heard of one train captain, who,
being careful of his men and teams, had put them
up for the night, near Black Buttes, in a time of
trouble with the Sioux ; and who, being well
clothed and mounted, had undertaken, in relief
of another, to act as their sentinel and guard.
All night he sat his pony in the cold ; shivering
a little, dozing a little ; but on the rustling of a
leaf, awake, alert, and watchful. When daylight
came, and the camp began to stir, he shouted
to one of his drivers, and would have drawn
his foot from the leather rest, which serves the
mountaineer instead of a stirrup ; but his leg
was stiff, and would not obey his will. In his
surprise, he tried to raise the other leg, but the
muscles once more refused to answer. When he
was lifted down from the saddle, his legs were
found to have been frozen to the knee ; and after
three days agony he expired.
Nothing is more usual than to see men on the
prairies and in the mountains who have lost either
toes or fingers, bitten away by the frost.
Hardly less trying to the mountaineers than
frost and snow, are the sudden storms which
rage and howl through these lofty plains. On
my return from Salt Lake city across the Bitter
166 NEW AMERICA.
Creek, a storm of snow, of sleet and hail, swept
down upon us, right in our front, hitting us in
the face like shot, and soaking us suddenly to
the skin. At first we met it bravely, keeping
our horses to the fore, and making a little pro
gress, even in the teeth of this riotous squall.
But the horses soon gave in. Terrified by the
roaring wind, chilled by the smiting hail, they
stood stone still ; dogged, stolid, passive, utterly
indifferent to the driver s voice and the driver s
whip. Taught by his long experience, the driver
knew when the brutes must have their way; he
suddenly wheeled round, as though he was about
to return, and setting the waggon to the fore,
put his team under its lee, with their hind
quarters only exposed to the pelting storm. In
this position we remained three hours, until the
swirl and tumult had gone by; after which we
got down from the waggon, shook ourselves dry
in the cold night air, and with the help of a
little cognac and tobacco (taken as medicine) we
resumed our journey.
A train of emigrants, which had to draw up
near us, and await the tempest s passage, was not
so lucky in arrangement as ourselves. The men
had stopped their caravan as soon as the mules
BITTER CREEK. 167
and horses had refused to move ; but instead of
bracing their frightened animals closer to the wag
gons, they had loosened their bands and suffered
them to face the elements as they pleased. Some
of them could not stand this freedom from the
trace and curb. For a moment they stood still ;
they sniffed the air ; they shook with panic ;
then, turning their faces from the wind, they
pawed the wet ground, bent down their heads,
and went off madly into space ; a regular stam
pede, in the course of which many of the poor
creatures would be sure to drop down dead from
terror and exhaustion. We could not see the
end of our neighbours troubles, for the night
came down between us and their camp, and on
the instant slackening of the wind, we wheeled
the waggon round, and trotted on our way. The
emigrants would have to wait for dawn, to com
mence their search for the wandering mules and
horses ; some they would find in the nearer
creeks, where they happened to first shelter from
the driving storm ; others they would have
t ) follow over ridge and gully, many a long
mile. Once in motion, with the hail and wind
beating heavily on their backs, horses will never
stop ; will climb over mountains, rush into rivers,
168 NEW AMERICA.
break through underwood, until the violence of
nature has spent itself out. Then they will stand
and shiver, perhaps droop and die.
Bullocks, like mules and horses, suffer from
these storm-frights, and the experienced teamster
of the plains will yoke them together, and lash
them to the waggons whenever he sees the sign of
a tempest coming on. Herding in a corral, hear
ing the voices of their drivers, they are less
alarmed than when, loose and alone, they break
into a stampede ; yet even in a corral, with the
song of the teamster in their ears, they shake and
moan, lie down on the earth and cry, and not
unfrequently die of fright.
In the midst of these terrors and confusions
in a train when the horses are either strayed
or sick, when the boss is busy with his stock,
when the teamsters are exhausted by fatigue
and hunger the road-agents generally fall on
the corral and find it an easy prey.
Eoad-agent is the name applied in the moun
tains to a ruffian who has given up honest work
in the store, in the mine, in the ranch, for th<
perils and profits of the highway. Many ruin<
traders, broken gamblers, unsuccessful diggers,
take to the road, plundering trains of their goods,
BITTER CREEK. 169
robbing emigrants of their mules, and sometimes
venturing to attack the mail. They are all well
armed, some of them are certain shots. No fear
of man, and no respect for woman, restrain these
plunderers from committing the most atrocious
crimes. Their hands are raised against every one
who may be expected to have a dollar in his purse.
Every law which they can break, they have already
broken ; every outrage which they can effect, they
have probably effected ; so that their dregs of life
are already due to justice ; and nothing they can
do will add to the load of guilt which they already
bear. These plunderers, who roam about the
tracks in bands of three or five, of ten or twenty,
sometimes of thirty or forty, are far more terrible
to the merchant and the emigrant than either
Sioux or Ute. The Sioux is but a savage, whom
the white man has a chance of daunting by his
pride, of deceiving by his craft ; but his brother
on the road, himself perhaps a trader, a train-man
in his happier days, can see through every wile,
and measure with a glance both his weakness and
his strength.
o
Many men, known to have been road- agents,
suspected of being still connected with the bands,
are at large ; this man keeping a grog-shop, that
170 NEW AMERICA.
man living in a ranch, the other man driving the
mail. In this free western country you cannot
ask many questions as to character. A steady
wrist, a quick eye, a prompt invention, are of more
importance in a servant than the very best testi
monials from his recent place. Life is too rougli
for the nicer rules to come into play. I saw a
fellow in Denver whose name is as well known
in Colorado as that of Dick Turpin in Yorkshire.
He is said to have murdered half-a-dozen men ;
he is free to come and go, to buy and sell ; no one
molests him ; fear of his companions, and of men
who live by crimes like his, being strong enough
to daunt, for a time, even the Vigilance Committee
and their daring Sheriff. On my return through
the Bitter Creek country, I had the honour of
riding in the mountain waggon with an old road-
agent, who laughed and joked over his exploits,
caring not a jot for either sheriff or judge. One of
his stories ran as follows. He and a wretch like
himself, being out on the road, had been rather
lucky, and having got a thousand dollars in green
backs in their pouch, they were making for Den
ver city, where they hoped to enjoy their plunder,
when they saw in the distance five mounted men,
whom my companion said he knew at once to bo
BITTER CREEK. 171
part of a gang in which he had formerly served on
terms of share and share. " We are lost now,"
he said to his companion in crime ; " these men
will rob us of our greenbacks, possibly shoot us
into the bargain, so as not to leave a witness
of their deed alive."
" We shall see," replied his more crafty friend.
" I know them, and have been out with them ; we
must get over them as broken-down wretches."
Smearing themselves with dirt, dragging a
long face, and looking hungry and miserable, they
met the five horsemen with the cry, " Give us
five dollars, captain ; we are broken down and
trying to get on to Denver, where we ll find some
friends ; give us five dollars ! " This cry of distress
went straight to the highwayman s heart. He
tossed my companion the greenbacks, telling him
to be mum, and then dashed on in front of his
more suspicious comrades.
Not long ago, a party of these road-agents
robbed the imperial mail, with circumstances of
unusual harshness, even in the mountains. The
story of the crime is in everybody s mouth as that
of the Portliff Canyon murder; and is here told,
mainly from the murderer s confession to Sheriff
Wilson.
172 NEW AMERICA.
Frank Williams, a man of bad character,
but a good whip, a good shot, an experienced
mountaineer, got employment as a driver on the
Overland route. On one of this man s visits to
Salt Lake he made the acquaintance of one Parker
of Atchison, a trader who had been doing business
in the Mormon city, and was about to return with
his gains to the Eiver town. M Causland of
Virginia, and two other merchants, having with
them a large sum of money in gold dust, were
proposing to go back with Parker in the mail, for
their mutual safety. These names and facts Par
ker told Frank Williams as they drank together,
at the same time asking his advice in the matter
as a driver and a friend. Under Frank Williams
suggestion the four men took their places in the
stage ; they were the only passengers that day ;
and they made a prosperous journey until they
arrived in Portliff Canyon, where Parker found
Frank, who had gone back from Salt Lake city to
his accustomed drive.
In that canyon they were murdered. In a
narrow gorge of the pass Frank let his whip fall
to the ground; he stopped the coach, and ran
backwards to pick it up ; when a volley of shot
came rattling into the mail, and three of the men
BITTER CREEK. 173
inside of it fell dead. Eight fellows in masks
rushed up to the mail, pulled out the dead and
dying, and seized upon their boxes with the gold
dust and the greenbacks. Parker was hurt,
though not to his death ; and on seeing Williams
come back, pistol in hand, he cried out to his
friend to spare his life : " I am only hipped ; help
me, Frank, and I shall do ! " Frank put the pistol
to his friend s head and blew his brains into the
air ; not daring to allow one witness of his crime
to remain alive. He then drove into the station,
where he reported that the mail had been robbed,
the passengers killed. Two men went out with
him to find the dead bodies, and a search was made
from Denver to Salt Lake for the assassins. No
suspicion fell upon Frank, until a few weeks after
the robbery and murder, when news was brought
to Sheriff Wilson by a thief, that Frank Williams
had left his place on the mail line, and was
spending his money rather freely in the Gentile
grog-shops of Salt Lake. Bob instantly took
steps to have him watched in those dens ; but
while he was setting his spies in motion, Williams
suddenly appeared in the streets of Denver, close
to that cot ton- tree on which the Sheriff looks
down from his auctioneer s throne. Before he had
174 NEW AMERICA.
been a day in Denver, he had bought for himself
and his boon companions seven new suits of
clothes, had hired a brothel, and treated nearly
every ruffian in the town to drink.
One evening he was seized by Wilson, who
conducted him to a midnight sitting of the Vigi
lance Committee. What took place in that sitting
is unknown ; the names of those who were present
can be only guessed ; but it was evident to every
one next day that Frank Williams had been found
guilty of some atrocious crime. Men who got
up early that morning had seen his body dang
ling from a buggy-pole in Main Street.
175
CHAPTEE XV.
DESCENT OF THE MOUNTAINS.
AFTER passing Fort Bridger the descent becomes
quick, abrupt, and verdant. The track is still
rough, stony, unmade ; here running over round
crests, there cutting into deep canyons, anon toil
ing through troughs of sand ; but on the whole
we go dropping down from the high plateau of the
Sierras, where Nature is dry and sterile, seemingly
unfit for the occupation of man, into deep ravines
and narrow dales, in which the wild sage gives
place to tall, rank grass. A little scrub begins to
show itself in the clefts and hollows ; dwarf oak and
maple now putting on their autumnal garb of pink
and gold. Stunted pines and cedars become a feature
in the landscape ; a noise of water babbles up from
the glens ; long serpentine fringes of balsam and
willow show the courses of the descending creeks.
We rattle, in the fading light, through Muddy
176 NEW AMERICA.
Creek, and roll, in the early darkness, past Quaking
Asp, startled, as we come round the ledge of a
sharp hill, to see before us a mighty flame, as
though the valley in our front, the hill-side on
our flank, were all on fire. It is a Mormon camp.
About a hundred waggons, corralled, in the usual
way, for defence against Utes and Snakes, are
halted in a dark valley, where rocks and crests
pile high into the heavens, shutting out the stars.
In front of each waggon burns a huge fire ; men
and women, boys and girls, are gathered round
these fires ; some eating their supper, some singing
brisk songs, others again dancing ; oxen, mules,
horses, stand about in happy confusion of group
and colour ; dogs sleep round the fires or bark at
the mail ; and through all this wild, unexpected
scene, clash the cymbals, horns, and trumpets of a
band. Though we are still high up in the moun
tains, we feel, as it were, already on the borders of
the Salt Lake Eden, that home of the Latter-Day
Saints, to which the weaver is called from Man
chester, the peasant from Llandudno, the cobbler
from Whitechapel.
An hour later we drop into Bear Eiver station,
kept by acting-bishop Myers, an English mem
ber of the Mormon Church ; a dignitary who has
DESCENT OF THE MOUNTAINS. 177
hitherto limited his rights over the weaker sex to
the wedding of two wives. One wife lives with
him at Bear Eiver; one hired help, a young Eng
lish woman on a visit (and I fear in some little
peril of the heart), with two or three men, his
servants, make up this bishop s flock and house
hold. The wife is a lady ; simple, elegant, be
witching ; who, while we rinse the dust from our
throats and dash cold water about our heads and
faces, hastily and daintily sets herself to cook our
food. Tired and hungry as we are, this Myers
appears to us the very model of a working bishop
for a working world. At Oxford he would count
for little, in the House of Lords for nothing. His
words are not choice, his intonation is not good
and musical ; he hardly (I will not answer for it)
knows a Greek particle by sight ; but he seems
to know very well how a good man should receive
the hungry and weary who are cast down at his
door on a frosty night. After poking up the
stove, heaping wood upon the fire, chopping up a
side of mutton (it is the first fresh meat we have
seen for days), he runs out of doors to haul water
from the well, and puts straw into our coach that
our feet may be kept warm in the coming frost.
From him we get genuine tea, good bread, even
VOL. I. N
178 NEW AMEEICA.
butter; not sage-tea, hot dough, and a pinch of
salt. The chops are delicious ; and the bishop s
elegant wife and her ladylike friend, by the grace
and courtesy with which they serve the table, turn
a common mountain meal into a banquet.
We leave Bear Eiver with respect for one
phase of the working episcopacy founded by Brig-
ham Young.
In the night we pass by Hanging Eock and
roll down Echo Canyon ; a ravine of rocks anc
nooks, surprising, lovely, fantastic, when they are
seen under the light of luminous autumn stars
Early morning brings us to Weber Eiver, where
we break our fasts on hot-bake and leather ; early
day to Coalville, the first Mormon village on our
road; a settlement built of wooden sheds, in the
midst of rude gardens and patches of corn-fields
hardly redeemed from that wild waste of nature
in the midst of which a few Utes and Bannocks
hunted the elk and scalped each other not a score
of years since. Coal is found here ; also a little
water, a little wood. We glance with quick eyes
into the houses, some of which stand in groups
and rows, as we learn from our driver that those
wooden cottages which have two or more doors
are the houses of elders who have married two 0]
DESCENT OF THE MOUNTAINS. 179
more wives. We think of the arid sweeps through
which we have just coine; of our six days jour
ney among rocky passes and mountain slopes ; and
gaze with wonder on the courage, industry, fanatic
ism, which could have been induced, by any teach
ing, by any promise, to attack this desolate valley,
with a view to making out of it a habitation fit for
man. But here is Coalville ; a town in the hills,
at least the beginning of a town ; placed in a
gorge where engineers and explorers had declared
it utterly impossible for either man or beast to
live. Patches of corn run down to the little creek
Oxen graze on the hill-sides. Dogs guard the
farmhouses. Hogs grub into the soil ; chickens hop
among the sheaves ; and horses stand in the court
yards. Eosy children, with their blue eyes and
flaxen curls telling of their pure English blood,