The coach we were in had a neat hole through its front—a reminiscence of

its last trip through this region. The bullet that made it wounded the

driver slightly, but he did not mind it much. He said the place to keep

a man “huffy” was down on the Southern Overland, among the Apaches,

before the company moved the stage line up on the northern route. He

said the Apaches used to annoy him all the time down there, and that he

came as near as anything to starving to death in the midst of abundance,

because they kept him so leaky with bullet holes that he “couldn’t hold

his vittles.” This person’s statements were not generally believed.

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We shut the blinds down very tightly that first night in the hostile

Indian country, and lay on our arms. We slept on them some, but most of

the time we only lay on them. We did not talk much, but kept quiet and

listened. It was an inky-black night, and occasionally rainy. We were

among woods and rocks, hills and gorges—so shut in, in fact, that when

we peeped through a chink in a curtain, we could discern nothing. The

driver and conductor on top were still, too, or only spoke at long

intervals, in low tones, as is the way of men in the midst of invisible

dangers. We listened to rain-drops pattering on the roof; and the

grinding of the wheels through the muddy gravel; and the low wailing of

the wind; and all the time we had that absurd sense upon us, inseparable

from travel at night in a close-curtained vehicle, the sense of

remaining perfectly still in one place, notwithstanding the jolting and

swaying of the vehicle, the trampling of the horses, and the grinding of

the wheels. We listened a long time, with intent faculties and bated

breath; every time one of us would relax, and draw a long sigh of relief

and start to say something, a comrade would be sure to utter a sudden

“Hark!” and instantly the experimenter was rigid and listening again. So

the tiresome minutes and decades of minutes dragged away, until at last

our tense forms filmed over with a dulled consciousness, and we slept,

if one might call such a condition by so strong a name—for it was a

sleep set with a hair-trigger. It was a sleep seething and teeming with

a weird and distressful confusion of shreds and fag-ends of dreams—a

sleep that was a chaos. Presently, dreams and sleep and the sullen hush

of the night were startled by a ringing report, and cloven by _such_ a

long, wild, agonizing shriek! Then we heard—ten steps from the stage—

“Help! help! help!” [It was our driver’s voice.]

“Kill him! Kill him like a dog!”

“I’m being murdered! Will no man lend me a pistol?”

“Look out! head him off! head him off!”

[Two pistol shots; a confusion of voices and the trampling of many feet,

as if a crowd were closing and surging together around some object;

several heavy, dull blows, as with a club; a voice that said

appealingly, “Don’t, gentlemen, please don’t—I’m a dead man!” Then a

fainter groan, and another blow, and away sped the stage into the

darkness, and left the grisly mystery behind us.]

What a startle it was! Eight seconds would amply cover the time it

occupied—maybe even five would do it. We only had time to plunge at a

curtain and unbuckle and unbutton part of it in an awkward and hindering

flurry, when our whip cracked sharply overhead, and we went rumbling and

thundering away, down a mountain “grade.”

We fed on that mystery the rest of the night—what was left of it, for it

was waning fast. It had to remain a present mystery, for all we could

get from the conductor in answer to our hails was something that

sounded, through the clatter of the wheels, like “Tell you in the

morning!”

So we lit our pipes and opened the corner of a curtain for a chimney,

and lay there in the dark, listening to each other’s story of how he

first felt and how many thousand Indians he first thought had hurled

themselves upon us, and what his remembrance of the subsequent sounds

was, and the order of their occurrence. And we theorized, too, but there

was never a theory that would account for our driver’s voice being out

there, nor yet account for his Indian murderers talking such good

English, if they _were_ Indians.

So we chatted and smoked the rest of the night comfortably away, our

boding anxiety being somehow marvelously dissipated by the real presence

of something to be anxious _about_.

We never did get much satisfaction about that dark occurrence. All that

we could make out of the odds and ends of the information we gathered in

the morning, was that the disturbance occurred at a station; that we

changed drivers there, and that the driver that got off there had been

talking roughly about some of the outlaws that infested the region (“for

there wasn’t a man around there but had a price on his head and didn’t

dare show himself in the settlements,” the conductor said); he had

talked roughly about these characters, and ought to have “drove up there

with his pistol cocked and ready on the seat alongside of him, and begun

business himself, because any softy would know they would be laying for

him.”

That was all we could gather, and we could see that neither the

conductor nor the new driver were much concerned about the matter. They

plainly had little respect for a man who would deliver offensive

opinions of people and then be so simple as to come into their presence

unprepared to “back his judgment,” as they pleasantly phrased the

killing of any fellow-being who did not like said opinions. And likewise

they plainly had a contempt for the man’s poor discretion in venturing

to rouse the wrath of such utterly reckless wild beasts as those

outlaws—and the conductor added:

“I tell you it’s as much as Slade himself wants to do!”

This remark created an entire revolution in my curiosity. I cared

nothing now about the Indians, and even lost interest in the murdered

driver. There was such magic in that name, SLADE! Day or night, now, I

stood always ready to drop any subject in hand, to listen to something

new about Slade and his ghastly exploits. Even before we got to Overland

City, we had begun to hear about Slade and his “division” (for he was a

“division-agent”) on the Overland; and from the hour we had left

Overland City we had heard drivers and conductors talk about only three

things—“Californy,” the Nevada silver mines, and this desperado Slade.

And a deal the most of the talk was about Slade. We had gradually come

to have a realizing sense of the fact that Slade was a man whose heart

and hands and soul were steeped in the blood of offenders against his

dignity; a man who awfully avenged all injuries, affront, insults or

slights, of whatever kind—on the spot if he could, years afterward if

lack of earlier opportunity compelled it; a man whose hate tortured him

day and night till vengeance appeased it—and not an ordinary vengeance

either, but his enemy’s absolute death—nothing less; a man whose face

would light up with a terrible joy when he surprised a foe and had him

at a disadvantage. A high and efficient servant of the Overland, an

outlaw among outlaws and yet their relentless scourge, Slade was at once

the most bloody, the most dangerous and the most valuable citizen that

inhabited the savage fastnesses of the mountains.

CHAPTER X.

Really and truly, two thirds of the talk of drivers and conductors had

been about this man Slade, ever since the day before we reached

Julesburg. In order that the eastern reader may have a clear conception

of what a Rocky Mountain desperado is, in his highest state of

development, I will reduce all this mass of overland gossip to one

straightforward narrative, and present it in the following shape:

Slade was born in Illinois, of good parentage. At about twenty-six years

of age he killed a man in a quarrel and fled the country. At St. Joseph,

Missouri, he joined one of the early California-bound emigrant trains,

and was given the post of train-master. One day on the plains he had an

angry dispute with one of his wagon-drivers, and both drew their

revolvers. But the driver was the quicker artist, and had his weapon

cocked first. So Slade said it was a pity to waste life on so small a

matter, and proposed that the pistols be thrown on the ground and the

quarrel settled by a fist-fight. The unsuspecting driver agreed, and

threw down his pistol—whereupon Slade laughed at his simplicity, and

shot him dead!

He made his escape, and lived a wild life for awhile, dividing his time

between fighting Indians and avoiding an Illinois sheriff, who had been

sent to arrest him for his first murder. It is said that in one Indian

battle he killed three savages with his own hand, and afterward cut

their ears off and sent them, with his compliments, to the chief of the

tribe.

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Slade soon gained a name for fearless resolution, and this was

sufficient merit to procure for him the important post of overland

division-agent at Julesburg, in place of Mr. Jules, removed. For some

time previously, the company’s horses had been frequently stolen, and

the coaches delayed, by gangs of outlaws, who were wont to laugh at the

idea of any man’s having the temerity to resent such outrages. Slade

resented them promptly.

The outlaws soon found that the new agent was a man who did not fear

anything that breathed the breath of life. He made short work of all

offenders. The result was that delays ceased, the company’s property was

let alone, and no matter what happened or who suffered, Slade’s coaches

went through, every time! True, in order to bring about this wholesome

change, Slade had to kill several men—some say three, others say four,

and others six—but the world was the richer for their loss. The first

prominent difficulty he had was with the ex-agent Jules, who bore the

reputation of being a reckless and desperate man himself. Jules hated

Slade for supplanting him, and a good fair occasion for a fight was all

he was waiting for. By and by Slade dared to employ a man whom Jules had

once discharged. Next, Slade seized a team of stage-horses which he

accused Jules of having driven off and hidden somewhere for his own use.

War was declared, and for a day or two the two men walked warily about

the streets, seeking each other, Jules armed with a double-barreled shot

gun, and Slade with his history-creating revolver. Finally, as Slade

stepped into a store Jules poured the contents of his gun into him from

behind the door. Slade was pluck, and Jules got several bad pistol

wounds in return.

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Then both men fell, and were carried to their respective lodgings, both

swearing that better aim should do deadlier work next time. Both were

bedridden a long time, but Jules got to his feet first, and gathering

his possessions together, packed them on a couple of mules, and fled to

the Rocky Mountains to gather strength in safety against the day of

reckoning. For many months he was not seen or heard of, and was

gradually dropped out of the remembrance of all save Slade himself. But

Slade was not the man to forget him. On the contrary, common report said

that Slade kept a reward standing for his capture, dead or alive!

After awhile, seeing that Slade’s energetic administration had restored

peace and order to one of the worst divisions of the road, the overland

stage company transferred him to the Rocky Ridge division in the Rocky

Mountains, to see if he could perform a like miracle there. It was the

very paradise of outlaws and desperadoes. There was absolutely no

semblance of law there. Violence was the rule. Force was the only

recognized authority. The commonest misunderstandings were settled on

the spot with the revolver or the knife. Murders were done in open day,

and with sparkling frequency, and nobody thought of inquiring into them.

It was considered that the parties who did the killing had their private

reasons for it; for other people to meddle would have been looked upon

as indelicate. After a murder, all that Rocky Mountain etiquette

required of a spectator was, that he should help the gentleman bury his

game—otherwise his churlishness would surely be remembered against him

the first time he killed a man himself and needed a neighborly turn in

interring him.

Slade took up his residence sweetly and peacefully in the midst of this

hive of horse-thieves and assassins, and the very first time one of them

aired his insolent swaggerings in his presence he shot him dead! He

began a raid on the outlaws, and in a singularly short space of time he

had completely stopped their depredations on the stage stock, recovered

a large number of stolen horses, killed several of the worst desperadoes

of the district, and gained such a dread ascendancy over the rest that

they respected him, admired him, feared him, obeyed him! He wrought the

same marvelous change in the ways of the community that had marked his

administration at Overland City. He captured two men who had stolen

overland stock, and with his own hands he hanged them. He was supreme

judge in his district, and he was jury and executioner likewise—and not

only in the case of offences against his employers, but against passing

emigrants as well. On one occasion some emigrants had their stock lost

or stolen, and told Slade, who chanced to visit their camp. With a

single companion he rode to a ranch, the owners of which he suspected,

and opening the door, commenced firing, killing three, and wounding the

fourth.

From a bloodthirstily interesting little Montana book.—[“The Vigilantes

of Montana,” by Prof. Thos. J. Dimsdale.]—I take this paragraph:

“While on the road, Slade held absolute sway. He would ride down to a

station, get into a quarrel, turn the house out of windows, and maltreat

the occupants most cruelly. The unfortunates had no means of redress,

and were compelled to recuperate as best they could.”

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On one of these occasions, it is said he killed the father of the fine

little half-breed boy Jemmy, whom he adopted, and who lived with his

widow after his execution. Stories of Slade’s hanging men, and of

innumerable assaults, shootings, stabbings and beatings, in which he was

a principal actor, form part of the legends of the stage line. As for

minor quarrels and shootings, it is absolutely certain that a minute

history of Slade’s life would be one long record of such practices.

“The Vigilantes of Montana” by Prof. Thomas J. Dimsdale

Slade was a matchless marksman with a navy revolver. The legends say

that one morning at Rocky Ridge, when he was feeling comfortable, he saw

a man approaching who had offended him some days before—observe the fine

memory he had for matters like that—and, “Gentlemen,” said Slade,

drawing, “it is a good twenty-yard shot—I’ll clip the third button on

his coat!” Which he did. The bystanders all admired it. And they all

attended the funeral, too.

On one occasion a man who kept a little whisky-shelf at the station did

something which angered Slade—and went and made his will. A day or two

afterward Slade came in and called for some brandy. The man reached

under the counter (ostensibly to get a bottle—possibly to get something

else), but Slade smiled upon him that peculiarly bland and satisfied

smile of his which the neighbors had long ago learned to recognize as a

death-warrant in disguise, and told him to “none of that!—pass out the

high-priced article.” So the poor bar-keeper had to turn his back and

get the high-priced brandy from the shelf; and when he faced around

again he was looking into the muzzle of Slade’s pistol. “And the next

instant,” added my informant, impressively, “he was one of the deadest

men that ever lived.”

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The stage-drivers and conductors told us that sometimes Slade would

leave a hated enemy wholly unmolested, unnoticed and unmentioned, for

weeks together—had done it once or twice at any rate. And some said they

believed he did it in order to lull the victims into unwatchfulness, so

that he could get the advantage of them, and others said they believed

he saved up an enemy that way, just as a schoolboy saves up a cake, and

made the pleasure go as far as it would by gloating over the

anticipation. One of these cases was that of a Frenchman who had

offended Slade. To the surprise of everybody Slade did not kill him on

the spot, but let him alone for a considerable time. Finally, however,

he went to the Frenchman’s house very late one night, knocked, and when

his enemy opened the door, shot him dead—pushed the corpse inside the

door with his foot, set the house on fire and burned up the dead man,

his widow and three children! I heard this story from several different

people, and they evidently believed what they were saying. It may be

true, and it may not. “Give a dog a bad name,” etc.

Slade was captured, once, by a party of men who intended to lynch him.

They disarmed him, and shut him up in a strong log-house, and placed a

guard over him. He prevailed on his captors to send for his wife, so

that he might have a last interview with her. She was a brave, loving,

spirited woman. She jumped on a horse and rode for life and death. When

she arrived they let her in without searching her, and before the door

could be closed she whipped out a couple of revolvers, and she and her

lord marched forth defying the party. And then, under a brisk fire, they

mounted double and galloped away unharmed!

In the fulness of time Slade’s myrmidons captured his ancient enemy

Jules, whom they found in a well-chosen hiding-place in the remote

fastnesses of the mountains, gaining a precarious livelihood with his

rifle. They brought him to Rocky Ridge, bound hand and foot, and

deposited him in the middle of the cattle-yard with his back against a

post. It is said that the pleasure that lit Slade’s face when he heard

of it was something fearful to contemplate. He examined his enemy to see

that he was securely tied, and then went to bed, content to wait till

morning before enjoying the luxury of killing him. Jules spent the night

in the cattle-yard, and it is a region where warm nights are never

known. In the morning Slade practised on him with his revolver, nipping

the flesh here and there, and occasionally clipping off a finger, while

Jules begged him to kill him outright and put him out of his misery.

Finally Slade reloaded, and walking up close to his victim, made some

characteristic remarks and then dispatched him. The body lay there half

a day, nobody venturing to touch it without orders, and then Slade

detailed a party and assisted at the burial himself. But he first cut

off the dead man’s ears and put them in his vest pocket, where he

carried them for some time with great satisfaction. That is the story as

I have frequently heard it told and seen it in print in California

newspapers. It is doubtless correct in all essential particulars.

In due time we rattled up to a stage-station, and sat down to breakfast

with a half-savage, half-civilized company of armed and bearded

mountaineers, ranchmen and station employees. The most gentlemanly-

appearing, quiet and affable officer we had yet found along the road in

the Overland Company’s service was the person who sat at the head of the

table, at my elbow. Never youth stared and shivered as I did when I

heard them call him SLADE!

Here was romance, and I sitting face to face with it!—looking upon

it—touching it—hobnobbing with it, as it were! Here, right by my side,

was the actual ogre who, in fights and brawls and various ways, _had

taken the lives of twenty-six human beings_, or all men lied about him!

I suppose I was the proudest stripling that ever traveled to see strange

lands and wonderful people.

He was so friendly and so gentle-spoken that I warmed to him in spite of

his awful history. It was hardly possible to realize that this pleasant

person was the pitiless scourge of the outlaws, the raw-head-and-bloody-

bones the nursing mothers of the mountains terrified their children

with. And to this day I can remember nothing remarkable about Slade

except that his face was rather broad across the cheek bones, and that

the cheek bones were low and the lips peculiarly thin and straight. But

that was enough to leave something of an effect upon me, for since then

I seldom see a face possessing those characteristics without fancying

that the owner of it is a dangerous man.

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The coffee ran out. At least it was reduced to one tin-cupful, and Slade

was about to take it when he saw that my cup was empty.

He politely offered to fill it, but although I wanted it, I politely

declined. I was afraid he had not killed anybody that morning, and might

be needing diversion. But still with firm politeness he insisted on

filling my cup, and said I had traveled all night and better deserved it

than he—and while he talked he placidly poured the fluid, to the last

drop. I thanked him and drank it, but it gave me no comfort, for I could

not feel sure that he would not be sorry, presently, that he had given

it away, and proceed to kill me to distract his thoughts from the loss.

But nothing of the kind occurred. We left him with only twenty-six dead

people to account for, and I felt a tranquil satisfaction in the thought

that in so judiciously taking care of No. 1 at that breakfast-table I

had pleasantly escaped being No. 27. Slade came out to the coach and saw

us off, first ordering certain rearrangements of the mail-bags for our

comfort, and then we took leave of him, satisfied that we should hear of

him again, some day, and wondering in what connection.

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CHAPTER XI.

And sure enough, two or three years afterward, we did hear him again.

News came to the Pacific coast that the Vigilance Committee in Montana

(whither Slade had removed from Rocky Ridge) had hanged him. I find an

account of the affair in the thrilling little book I quoted a paragraph

from in the last chapter—“The Vigilantes of Montana; being a Reliable

Account of the Capture, Trial and Execution of Henry Plummer’s Notorious

Road Agent Band: By Prof. Thos. J. Dimsdale, Virginia City, M.T.” Mr.

Dimsdale’s chapter is well worth reading, as a specimen of how the

people of the frontier deal with criminals when the courts of law prove

inefficient. Mr. Dimsdale makes two remarks about Slade, both of which

are accurately descriptive, and one of which is exceedingly picturesque:

“Those who saw him in his natural state only, would pronounce him to be

a kind husband, a most hospitable host and a courteous gentleman; on the

contrary, those who met him when maddened with liquor and surrounded by

a gang of armed roughs, would pronounce him a fiend incarnate.” And

this: “From Fort Kearney, west, _he was feared A GREAT DEAL MORE THAN

THE ALMIGHTY_.” For compactness, simplicity and vigor of expression, I

will “back” that sentence against anything in literature. Mr. Dimsdale’s

narrative is as follows. In all places where italics occur, they are

mine:

After the execution of the five men on the 14th of January, the

Vigilantes considered that their work was nearly ended. They had freed

the country of highwaymen and murderers to a great extent, and they

determined that in the absence of the regular civil authority they would

establish a People’s Court where all offenders should be tried by judge

and jury. This was the nearest approach to social order that the

circumstances permitted, and, though strict legal authority was wanting,

yet the people were firmly determined to maintain its efficiency, and to

enforce its decrees. It may here be mentioned that the overt act which

was the last round on the fatal ladder leading to the scaffold on which

Slade perished, was the tearing in pieces and stamping upon a writ of

this court, followed by his arrest of the Judge Alex. Davis, by

authority of a presented Derringer, and with his own hands.

J. A. Slade was himself, we have been informed, a Vigilante; he openly

boasted of it, and said he knew all that they knew. He was never

accused, or even suspected, of either murder or robbery, committed in

this Territory (the latter crime was never laid to his charge, in any

place); but that he had killed several men in other localities was

notorious, and his bad reputation in this respect was a most powerful

argument in determining his fate, when he was finally arrested for the

offence above mentioned. On returning from Milk River he became more and

more addicted to drinking, until at last it was a common feat for him

and his friends to “take the town.” He and a couple of his dependents

might often be seen on one horse, galloping through the streets,

shouting and yelling, firing revolvers, etc. On many occasions he would

ride his horse into stores, break up bars, toss the scales out of doors

and use most insulting language to parties present. Just previous to the

day of his arrest, he had given a fearful beating to one of his

followers; but such was his influence over them that the man wept

bitterly at the gallows, and begged for his life with all his power. It

had become quite common, when Slade was on a spree, for the shop-keepers

and citizens to close the stores and put out all the lights; being

fearful of some outrage at his hands. For his wanton destruction of

goods and furniture, he was always ready to pay, when sober, if he had

money; but there were not a few who regarded payment as small

satisfaction for the outrage, and these men were his personal enemies.

From time to time Slade received warnings from men that he well knew

would not deceive him, of the certain end of his conduct. There was not

a moment, for weeks previous to his arrest, in which the public did not

expect to hear of some bloody outrage. The dread of his very name, and

the presence of the armed band of hangers-on who followed him alone

prevented a resistance which must certainly have ended in the instant

murder or mutilation of the opposing party.

Slade was frequently arrested by order of the court whose organization

we have described, and had treated it with respect by paying one or two

fines and promising to pay the rest when he had money; but in the

transaction that occurred at this crisis, he forgot even this caution,

and goaded by passion and the hatred of restraint, he sprang into the

embrace of death.

Slade had been drunk and “cutting up” all night. He and his companions

had made the town a perfect hell. In the morning, J. M. Fox, the

sheriff, met him, arrested him, took him into court and commenced

reading a warrant that he had for his arrest, by way of arraignment. He

became uncontrollably furious, and seizing the writ, he tore it up,

threw it on the ground and stamped upon it.

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The clicking of the locks of his companions’ revolvers was instantly

heard, and a crisis was expected. The sheriff did not attempt his

retention; but being at least as prudent as he was valiant, he

succumbed, leaving Slade the master of the situation and the conqueror

and ruler of the courts, law and law-makers. This was a declaration of

war, and was so accepted. The Vigilance Committee now felt that the

question of social order and the preponderance of the law-abiding

citizens had then and there to be decided. They knew the character of

Slade, and they were well aware that they must submit to his rule

without murmur, or else that he must be dealt with in such fashion as

would prevent his being able to wreak his vengeance on the committee,

who could never have hoped to live in the Territory secure from outrage

or death, and who could never leave it without encountering his friends,

whom his victory would have emboldened and stimulated to a pitch that

would have rendered them reckless of consequences. The day previous he

had ridden into Dorris’s store, and on being requested to leave, he drew

his revolver and threatened to kill the gentleman who spoke to him.

Another saloon he had led his horse into, and buying a bottle of wine,

he tried to make the animal drink it. This was not considered an

uncommon performance, as he had often entered saloons and commenced

firing at the lamps, causing a wild stampede.

A leading member of the committee met Slade, and informed him in the

quiet, earnest manner of one who feels the importance of what he is

saying: “Slade, get your horse at once, and go home, or there will

be——to pay.” Slade started and took a long look, with his dark and

piercing eyes, at the gentleman. “What do you mean?” said he. “You have

no right to ask me what I mean,” was the quiet reply, “get your horse at

once, and remember what I tell you.” After a short pause he promised to

do so, and actually got into the saddle; but, being still intoxicated,

he began calling aloud to one after another of his friends, and at last

seemed to have forgotten the warning he had received and became again

uproarious, shouting the name of a well-known courtezan in company with

those of two men whom he considered heads of the committee, as a sort of

challenge; perhaps, however, as a simple act of bravado. It seems

probable that the intimation of personal danger he had received had not

been forgotten entirely; though fatally for him, he took a foolish way

of showing his remembrance of it. He sought out Alexander Davis, the

Judge of the Court, and drawing a cocked Derringer, he presented it at

his head, and told him that he should hold him as a hostage for his own

safety. As the judge stood perfectly quiet, and offered no resistance to

his captor, no further outrage followed on this score. Previous to this,

on account of the critical state of affairs, the committee had met, and

at last resolved to arrest him. His execution had not been agreed upon,

and, at that time, would have been negatived, most assuredly. A

messenger rode down to Nevada to inform the leading men of what was on

hand, as it was desirable to show that there was a feeling of unanimity

on the subject, all along the gulch.

The miners turned out almost en masse, leaving their work and forming in

solid column about six hundred strong, armed to the teeth, they marched

up to Virginia. The leader of the body well knew the temper of his men

on the subject. He spurred on ahead of them, and hastily calling a

meeting of the executive, he told them plainly that the miners meant

“business,” and that, if they came up, they would not stand in the

street to be shot down by Slade’s friends; but that they would take him

and hang him. The meeting was small, as the Virginia men were loath to

act at all. This momentous announcement of the feeling of the Lower Town

was made to a cluster of men, who were deliberating behind a wagon, at

the rear of a store on Main street.

The committee were most unwilling to proceed to extremities. All the

duty they had ever performed seemed as nothing to the task before them;

but they had to decide, and that quickly. It was finally agreed that if

the whole body of the miners were of the opinion that he should be

hanged, that the committee left it in their hands to deal with him. Off,

at hot speed, rode the leader of the Nevada men to join his command.

Slade had found out what was intended, and the news sobered him

instantly. He went into P. S. Pfouts’ store, where Davis was, and

apologized for his conduct, saying that he would take it all back.

The head of the column now wheeled into Wallace street and marched up at

quick time. Halting in front of the store, the executive officer of the

committee stepped forward and arrested Slade, who was at once informed

of his doom, and inquiry was made as to whether he had any business to

settle. Several parties spoke to him on the subject; but to all such

inquiries he turned a deaf ear, being entirely absorbed in the

terrifying reflections on his own awful position. He never ceased his

entreaties for life, and to see his dear wife. The unfortunate lady

referred to, between whom and Slade there existed a warm affection, was

at this time living at their ranch on the Madison. She was possessed of

considerable personal attractions; tall, well-formed, of graceful

carriage, pleasing manners, and was, withal, an accomplished horsewoman.

A messenger from Slade rode at full speed to inform her of her husband’s

arrest. In an instant she was in the saddle, and with all the energy

that love and despair could lend to an ardent temperament and a strong

physique, she urged her fleet charger over the twelve miles of rough and

rocky ground that intervened between her and the object of her

passionate devotion.

Meanwhile a party of volunteers had made the necessary preparations for

the execution, in the valley traversed by the branch. Beneath the site

of Pfouts and Russell’s stone building there was a corral, the gate-

posts of which were strong and high. Across the top was laid a beam, to

which the rope was fastened, and a dry-goods box served for the

platform. To this place Slade was marched, surrounded by a guard,

composing the best armed and most numerous force that has ever appeared

in Montana Territory.

The doomed man had so exhausted himself by tears, prayers and

lamentations, that he had scarcely strength left to stand under the

fatal beam. He repeatedly exclaimed, “My God! my God! must I die? Oh, my

dear wife!”

On the return of the fatigue party, they encountered some friends of

Slade, staunch and reliable citizens and members of the committee, but

who were personally attached to the condemned. On hearing of his

sentence, one of them, a stout-hearted man, pulled out his handkerchief

and walked away, weeping like a child. Slade still begged to see his

wife, most piteously, and it seemed hard to deny his request; but the

bloody consequences that were sure to follow the inevitable attempt at a

rescue, that her presence and entreaties would have certainly incited,

forbade the granting of his request. Several gentlemen were sent for to

see him, in his last moments, one of whom (Judge Davis) made a short

address to the people; but in such low tones as to be inaudible, save to

a few in his immediate vicinity. One of his friends, after exhausting

his powers of entreaty, threw off his coat and declared that the

prisoner could not be hanged until he himself was killed. A hundred guns

were instantly leveled at him; whereupon he turned and fled; but, being

brought back, he was compelled to resume his coat, and to give a promise

of future peaceable demeanor.

Scarcely a leading man in Virginia could be found, though numbers of the

citizens joined the ranks of the guard when the arrest was made. All

lamented the stern necessity which dictated the execution.

Everything being ready, the command was given, “Men, do your duty,” and

the box being instantly slipped from beneath his feet, he died almost

instantaneously.

The body was cut down and carried to the Virginia Hotel, where, in a

darkened room, it was scarcely laid out, when the unfortunate and

bereaved companion of the deceased arrived, at headlong speed, to find

that all was over, and that she was a widow. Her grief and heart-

piercing cries were terrible evidences of the depth of her attachment

for her lost husband, and a considerable period elapsed before she could

regain the command of her excited feelings.

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There is something about the desperado-nature that is wholly

unaccountable—at least it looks unaccountable. It is this. The true

desperado is gifted with splendid courage, and yet he will take the most

infamous advantage of his enemy; armed and free, he will stand up before

a host and fight until he is shot all to pieces, and yet when he is

under the gallows and helpless he will cry and plead like a child. Words

are cheap, and it is easy to call Slade a coward (all executed men who

do not “die game” are promptly called cowards by unreflecting people),

and when we read of Slade that he “had so exhausted himself by tears,

prayers and lamentations, that he had scarcely strength left to stand

under the fatal beam,” the disgraceful word suggests itself in a

moment—yet in frequently defying and inviting the vengeance of banded

Rocky Mountain cut-throats by shooting down their comrades and leaders,

and never offering to hide or fly, Slade showed that he was a man of

peerless bravery. No coward would dare that. Many a notorious coward,

many a chicken-livered poltroon, coarse, brutal, degraded, has made his

dying speech without a quaver in his voice and been swung into eternity

with what looked liked the calmest fortitude, and so we are justified in

believing, from the low intellect of such a creature, that it was not

_moral_ courage that enabled him to do it. Then, if moral courage is not

the requisite quality, what could it have been that this stout-hearted

Slade lacked?—this bloody, desperate, kindly-mannered, urbane gentleman,

who never hesitated to warn his most ruffianly enemies that he would

kill them whenever or wherever he came across them next! I think it is a

conundrum worth investigating.

CHAPTER XII.

Just beyond the breakfast-station we overtook a Mormon emigrant train of

thirty-three wagons; and tramping wearily along and driving their herd

of loose cows, were dozens of coarse-clad and sad-looking men, women and

children, who had walked as they were walking now, day after day for

eight lingering weeks, and in that time had compassed the distance our

stage had come in _eight days and three hours_—seven hundred and ninety-

eight miles! They were dusty and uncombed, hatless, bonnetless and

ragged, and they did look so tired!

After breakfast, we bathed in Horse Creek, a (previously) limpid,

sparkling stream—an appreciated luxury, for it was very seldom that our

furious coach halted long enough for an indulgence of that kind. We

changed horses ten or twelve times in every twenty-four hours—changed

mules, rather—six mules—and did it nearly every time in _four minutes_.

It was lively work. As our coach rattled up to each station six

harnessed mules stepped gayly from the stable; and in the twinkling of

an eye, almost, the old team was out, and the new one in and we off and

away again.

During the afternoon we passed Sweetwater Creek, Independence Rock,

Devil’s Gate and the Devil’s Gap. The latter were wild specimens of

rugged scenery, and full of interest—_we were in the heart of the Rocky

Mountains, now_. And we also passed by “Alkali” or “Soda Lake,” and we

woke up to the fact that our journey had stretched a long way across the

world when the driver said that the Mormons often came there from Great

Salt Lake City to haul away saleratus. He said that a few days gone by

they had shoveled up enough pure saleratus from the ground (it was a

_dry_ lake) to load two wagons, and that when they got these two wagons-

loads of a drug that cost them nothing, to Salt Lake, they could sell it

for twenty-five cents a pound.

In the night we sailed by a most notable curiosity, and one we had been

hearing a good deal about for a day or two, and were suffering to see.

This was what might be called a natural ice-house. It was August, now,

and sweltering weather in the daytime, yet at one of the stations the

men could scape the soil on the hill-side under the lee of a range of

boulders, and at a depth of six inches cut out pure blocks of ice—hard,

compactly frozen, and clear as crystal!

Toward dawn we got under way again, and presently as we sat with raised

curtains enjoying our early-morning smoke and contemplating the first

splendor of the rising sun as it swept down the long array of mountain

peaks, flushing and gilding crag after crag and summit after summit, as

if the invisible Creator reviewed his gray veterans and they saluted

with a smile, we hove in sight of South Pass City. The hotel-keeper, the

postmaster, the blacksmith, the mayor, the constable, the city marshal

and the principal citizen and property holder, all came out and greeted

us cheerily, and we gave him good day. He gave us a little Indian news,

and a little Rocky Mountain news, and we gave him some Plains

information in return. He then retired to his lonely grandeur and we

climbed on up among the bristling peaks and the ragged clouds. South

Pass City consisted of four log cabins, one of which was unfinished, and

the gentleman with all those offices and titles was the chiefest of the

ten citizens of the place. Think of hotel-keeper, postmaster,

blacksmith, mayor, constable, city marshal and principal citizen all

condensed into one person and crammed into one skin. Bemis said he was

“a perfect Allen’s revolver of dignities.” And he said that if he were

to die as postmaster, or as blacksmith, or as postmaster and blacksmith

both, the people might stand it; but if he were to die all over, it

would be a frightful loss to the community.

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Two miles beyond South Pass City we saw for the first time that

mysterious marvel which all Western untraveled boys have heard of and

fully believe in, but are sure to be astounded at when they see it with

their own eyes, nevertheless—banks of snow in dead summer time. We were

now far up toward the sky, and knew all the time that we must presently

encounter lofty summits clad in the “eternal snow” which was so common

place a matter of mention in books, and yet when I did see it glittering

in the sun on stately domes in the distance and knew the month was

August and that my coat was hanging up because it was too warm to wear

it, I was full as much amazed as if I never had heard of snow in August

before. Truly, “seeing is believing”—and many a man lives a long life

through, thinking he believes certain universally received and well

established things, and yet never suspects that if he were confronted by

those things once, he would discover that he did not really believe them

before, but only thought he believed them.

In a little while quite a number of peaks swung into view with long

claws of glittering snow clasping them; and with here and there, in the

shade, down the mountain side, a little solitary patch of snow looking

no larger than a lady’s pocket-handkerchief but being in reality as

large as a “public square.”

And now, at last, we were fairly in the renowned SOUTH PASS, and

whirling gayly along high above the common world. We were perched upon

the extreme summit of the great range of the Rocky Mountains, toward

which we had been climbing, patiently climbing, ceaselessly climbing,

for days and nights together—and about us was gathered a convention of

Nature’s kings that stood ten, twelve, and even thirteen thousand feet

high—grand old fellows who would have to stoop to see Mount Washington,

in the twilight. We were in such an airy elevation above the creeping

populations of the earth, that now and then when the obstructing crags

stood out of the way it seemed that we could look around and abroad and

contemplate the whole great globe, with its dissolving views of

mountains, seas and continents stretching away through the mystery of

the summer haze.

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As a general thing the Pass was more suggestive of a valley than a

suspension bridge in the clouds—but it strongly suggested the latter at

one spot. At that place the upper third of one or two majestic purple

domes projected above our level on either hand and gave us a sense of a

hidden great deep of mountains and plains and valleys down about their

bases which we fancied we might see if we could step to the edge and

look over. These Sultans of the fastnesses were turbaned with tumbled

volumes of cloud, which shredded away from time to time and drifted off

fringed and torn, trailing their continents of shadow after them; and

catching presently on an intercepting peak, wrapped it about and brooded

there—then shredded away again and left the purple peak, as they had

left the purple domes, downy and white with new-laid snow. In passing,

these monstrous rags of cloud hung low and swept along right over the

spectator’s head, swinging their tatters so nearly in his face that his

impulse was to shrink when they came closest. In the one place I speak

of, one could look below him upon a world of diminishing crags and

canyons leading down, down, and away to a vague plain with a thread in

it which was a road, and bunches of feathers in it which were trees,—a

pretty picture sleeping in the sunlight—but with a darkness stealing

over it and glooming its features deeper and deeper under the frown of a

coming storm; and then, while no film or shadow marred the noon

brightness of his high perch, he could watch the tempest break forth

down there and see the lightnings leap from crag to crag and the sheeted

rain drive along the canyon-sides, and hear the thunders peal and crash

and roar. We had this spectacle; a familiar one to many, but to us a

novelty.

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We bowled along cheerily, and presently, at the very summit (though it

had been all summit to us, and all equally level, for half an hour or

more), we came to a spring which spent its water through two outlets and

sent it in opposite directions. The conductor said that one of those

streams which we were looking at, was just starting on a journey

westward to the Gulf of California and the Pacific Ocean, through

hundreds and even thousands of miles of desert solitudes. He said that

the other was just leaving its home among the snow-peaks on a similar

journey eastward—and we knew that long after we should have forgotten

the simple rivulet it would still be plodding its patient way down the

mountain sides, and canyon-beds, and between the banks of the

Yellowstone; and by and by would join the broad Missouri and flow

through unknown plains and deserts and unvisited wildernesses; and add a

long and troubled pilgrimage among snags and wrecks and sandbars; and

enter the Mississippi, touch the wharves of St. Louis and still drift

on, traversing shoals and rocky channels, then endless chains of

bottomless and ample bends, walled with unbroken forests, then

mysterious byways and secret passages among woody islands, then the

chained bends again, bordered with wide levels of shining sugar-cane in

place of the sombre forests; then by New Orleans and still other chains

of bends—and finally, after two long months of daily and nightly

harassment, excitement, enjoyment, adventure, and awful peril of parched

throats, pumps and evaporation, pass the Gulf and enter into its rest

upon the bosom of the tropic sea, never to look upon its snow-peaks

again or regret them.

I freighted a leaf with a mental message for the friends at home, and

dropped it in the stream. But I put no stamp on it and it was held for

postage somewhere.

On the summit we overtook an emigrant train of many wagons, many tired

men and women, and many a disgusted sheep and cow.

In the wofully dusty horseman in charge of the expedition I recognized

John ——. Of all persons in the world to meet on top of the Rocky

Mountains thousands of miles from home, he was the last one I should

have looked for. We were school-boys together and warm friends for

years. But a boyish prank of mine had disruptured this friendship and it

had never been renewed. The act of which I speak was this. I had been

accustomed to visit occasionally an editor whose room was in the third

story of a building and overlooked the street. One day this editor gave

me a watermelon which I made preparations to devour on the spot, but

chancing to look out of the window, I saw John standing directly under

it and an irresistible desire came upon me to drop the melon on his

head, which I immediately did. I was the loser, for it spoiled the

melon, and John never forgave me and we dropped all intercourse and

parted, but now met again under these circumstances.

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We recognized each other simultaneously, and hands were grasped as

warmly as if no coldness had ever existed between us, and no allusion

was made to any. All animosities were buried and the simple fact of

meeting a familiar face in that isolated spot so far from home, was

sufficient to make us forget all things but pleasant ones, and we parted

again with sincere “good-bye” and “God bless you” from both.

We had been climbing up the long shoulders of the Rocky Mountains for

many tedious hours—we started _down_ them, now. And we went spinning

away at a round rate too.

We left the snowy Wind River Mountains and Uinta Mountains behind, and

sped away, always through splendid scenery but occasionally through long

ranks of white skeletons of mules and oxen—monuments of the huge

emigration of other days—and here and there were up-ended boards or

small piles of stones which the driver said marked the resting-place of

more precious remains.

It was the loneliest land for a grave! A land given over to the cayote

and the raven—which is but another name for desolation and utter

solitude. On damp, murky nights, these scattered skeletons gave forth a

soft, hideous glow, like very faint spots of moonlight starring the

vague desert. It was because of the phosphorus in the bones. But no

scientific explanation could keep a body from shivering when he drifted

by one of those ghostly lights and knew that a skull held it.

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At midnight it began to rain, and I never saw anything like it—indeed, I

did not even see this, for it was too dark. We fastened down the

curtains and even caulked them with clothing, but the rain streamed in

in twenty places, nothwithstanding. There was no escape. If one moved

his feet out of a stream, he brought his body under one; and if he moved

his body he caught one somewhere else. If he struggled out of the

drenched blankets and sat up, he was bound to get one down the back of

his neck. Meantime the stage was wandering about a plain with gaping

gullies in it, for the driver could not see an inch before his face nor

keep the road, and the storm pelted so pitilessly that there was no

keeping the horses still. With the first abatement the conductor turned

out with lanterns to look for the road, and the first dash he made was

into a chasm about fourteen feet deep, his lantern following like a

meteor. As soon as he touched bottom he sang out frantically:

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“Don’t come here!”

To which the driver, who was looking over the precipice where he had

disappeared, replied, with an injured air: “Think I’m a dam fool?”

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The conductor was more than an hour finding the road—a matter which

showed us how far we had wandered and what chances we had been taking.

He traced our wheel-tracks to the imminent verge of danger, in two

places. I have always been glad that we were not killed that night. I do

not know any particular reason, but I have always been glad. In the

morning, the tenth day out, we crossed Green River, a fine, large,

limpid stream—stuck in it with the water just up to the top of our mail-

bed, and waited till extra teams were put on to haul us up the steep

bank. But it was nice cool water, and besides it could not find any

fresh place on us to wet.

At the Green River station we had breakfast—hot biscuits, fresh antelope

steaks, and coffee—the only decent meal we tasted between the United

States and Great Salt Lake City, and the only one we were ever really

thankful for.

Think of the monotonous execrableness of the thirty that went before it,

to leave this one simple breakfast looming up in my memory like a shot-

tower after all these years have gone by!

At five P.M. we reached Fort Bridger, one hundred and seventeen miles

from the South Pass, and one thousand and twenty-five miles from St.

Joseph. Fifty-two miles further on, near the head of Echo Canyon, we met

sixty United States soldiers from Camp Floyd. The day before, they had

fired upon three hundred or four hundred Indians, whom they supposed

gathered together for no good purpose. In the fight that had ensued,

four Indians were captured, and the main body chased four miles, but

nobody killed. This looked like business. We had a notion to get out and

join the sixty soldiers, but upon reflecting that there were four

hundred of the Indians, we concluded to go on and join the Indians.

Echo Canyon is twenty miles long. It was like a long, smooth, narrow

street, with a gradual descending grade, and shut in by enormous

perpendicular walls of coarse conglomerate, four hundred feet high in

many places, and turreted like mediaeval castles. This was the most

faultless piece of road in the mountains, and the driver said he would

“let his team out.” He did, and if the Pacific express trains whiz

through there now any faster than we did then in the stage-coach, I envy

the passengers the exhilaration of it. We fairly seemed to pick up our

wheels and fly—and the mail matter was lifted up free from everything

and held in solution! I am not given to exaggeration, and when I say a

thing I mean it.

However, time presses. At four in the afternoon we arrived on the summit

of Big Mountain, fifteen miles from Salt Lake City, when all the world

was glorified with the setting sun, and the most stupendous panorama of

mountain peaks yet encountered burst on our sight. We looked out upon

this sublime spectacle from under the arch of a brilliant rainbow! Even

the overland stage-driver stopped his horses and gazed!

Half an hour or an hour later, we changed horses, and took supper with a

Mormon “Destroying Angel.”

“Destroying Angels,” as I understand it, are Latter-Day Saints who are

set apart by the Church to conduct permanent disappearances of obnoxious

citizens. I had heard a deal about these Mormon Destroying Angels and

the dark and bloody deeds they had done, and when I entered this one’s

house I had my shudder all ready. But alas for all our romances, he was

nothing but a loud, profane, offensive, old blackguard! He was murderous

enough, possibly, to fill the bill of a Destroyer, but would you have

_any_ kind of an Angel devoid of dignity? Could you abide an Angel in an

unclean shirt and no suspenders? Could you respect an Angel with a

horse-laugh and a swagger like a buccaneer?

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There were other blackguards present—comrades of this one. And there was

one person that looked like a gentleman—Heber C. Kimball’s son, tall and

well made, and thirty years old, perhaps. A lot of slatternly women

flitted hither and thither in a hurry, with coffee-pots, plates of

bread, and other appurtenances to supper, and these were said to be the

wives of the Angel—or some of them, at least. And of course they were;

for if they had been hired “help” they would not have let an angel from

above storm and swear at them as he did, let alone one from the place

this one hailed from.

This was our first experience of the western “peculiar institution,” and

it was not very prepossessing. We did not tarry long to observe it, but

hurried on to the home of the Latter-Day Saints, the stronghold of the

prophets, the capital of the only absolute monarch in America—Great Salt

Lake City. As the night closed in we took sanctuary in the Salt Lake

House and unpacked our baggage.

CHAPTER XIII.

We had a fine supper, of the freshest meats and fowls and vegetables—a

great variety and as great abundance. We walked about the streets some,

afterward, and glanced in at shops and stores; and there was fascination

in surreptitiously staring at every creature we took to be a Mormon.

This was fairy-land to us, to all intents and purposes—a land of

enchantment, and goblins, and awful mystery. We felt a curiosity to ask

every child how many mothers it had, and if it could tell them apart;

and we experienced a thrill every time a dwelling-house door opened and

shut as we passed, disclosing a glimpse of human heads and backs and

shoulders—for we so longed to have a good satisfying look at a Mormon

family in all its comprehensive ampleness, disposed in the customary

concentric rings of its home circle.

By and by the Acting Governor of the Territory introduced us to other

“Gentiles,” and we spent a sociable hour with them. “Gentiles” are

people who are not Mormons. Our fellow-passenger, Bemis, took care of

himself, during this part of the evening, and did not make an

overpowering success of it, either, for he came into our room in the

hotel about eleven o’clock, full of cheerfulness, and talking loosely,

disjointedly and indiscriminately, and every now and then tugging out a

ragged word by the roots that had more hiccups than syllables in it.

This, together with his hanging his coat on the floor on one side of a

chair, and his vest on the floor on the other side, and piling his pants

on the floor just in front of the same chair, and then comtemplating the

general result with superstitious awe, and finally pronouncing it “too

many for _him_” and going to bed with his boots on, led us to fear that

something he had eaten had not agreed with him.

But we knew afterward that it was something he had been drinking. It was

the exclusively Mormon refresher, “valley tan.”

Valley tan (or, at least, one form of valley tan) is a kind of whisky,

or first cousin to it; is of Mormon invention and manufactured only in

Utah. Tradition says it is made of (imported) fire and brimstone. If I

remember rightly no public drinking saloons were allowed in the kingdom

by Brigham Young, and no private drinking permitted among the faithful,

except they confined themselves to “valley tan.”

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Next day we strolled about everywhere through the broad, straight, level

streets, and enjoyed the pleasant strangeness of a city of fifteen

thousand inhabitants with no loafers perceptible in it; and no visible

drunkards or noisy people; a limpid stream rippling and dancing through

every street in place of a filthy gutter; block after block of trim

dwellings, built of “frame” and sunburned brick—a great thriving orchard

and garden behind every one of them, apparently—branches from the street

stream winding and sparkling among the garden beds and fruit trees—and a

grand general air of neatness, repair, thrift and comfort, around and

about and over the whole. And everywhere were workshops, factories, and

all manner of industries; and intent faces and busy hands were to be

seen wherever one looked; and in one’s ears was the ceaseless clink of

hammers, the buzz of trade and the contented hum of drums and fly-

wheels.

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The armorial crest of my own State consisted of two dissolute bears

holding up the head of a dead and gone cask between them and making the

pertinent remark, “UNITED, WE STAND—(hic!)—DIVIDED, WE FALL.” It was

always too figurative for the author of this book. But the Mormon crest

was easy. And it was simple, unostentatious, and fitted like a glove. It

was a representation of a GOLDEN BEEHIVE, with the bees all at work!

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The city lies in the edge of a level plain as broad as the State of

Connecticut, and crouches close down to the ground under a curving wall

of mighty mountains whose heads are hidden in the clouds, and whose

shoulders bear relics of the snows of winter all the summer long.

Seen from one of these dizzy heights, twelve or fifteen miles off, Great

Salt Lake City is toned down and diminished till it is suggestive of a

child’s toy-village reposing under the majestic protection of the

Chinese wall.

On some of those mountains, to the southwest, it had been raining every

day for two weeks, but not a drop had fallen in the city. And on hot

days in late spring and early autumn the citizens could quit fanning and

growling and go out and cool off by looking at the luxury of a glorious

snow-storm going on in the mountains. They could enjoy it at a distance,

at those seasons, every day, though no snow would fall in their streets,

or anywhere near them.

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Salt Lake City was healthy—an extremely healthy city. They declared

there was only one physician in the place and he was arrested every week

regularly and held to answer under the vagrant act for having “no

visible means of support.” They always give you a good substantial

article of truth in Salt Lake, and good measure and good weight, too.

[Very often, if you wished to weigh one of their airiest little

commonplace statements you would want the hay scales.]

We desired to visit the famous inland sea, the American “Dead Sea,” the

great Salt Lake—seventeen miles, horseback, from the city—for we had

dreamed about it, and thought about it, and talked about it, and yearned

to see it, all the first part of our trip; but now when it was only

arm’s length away it had suddenly lost nearly every bit of its interest.

And so we put it off, in a sort of general way, till next day—and that

was the last we ever thought of it. We dined with some hospitable

Gentiles; and visited the foundation of the prodigious temple; and

talked long with that shrewd Connecticut Yankee, Heber C. Kimball (since

deceased), a saint of high degree and a mighty man of commerce.

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We saw the “Tithing-House,” and the “Lion House,” and I do not know or

remember how many more church and government buildings of various kinds

and curious names. We flitted hither and thither and enjoyed every hour,

and picked up a great deal of useful information and entertaining

nonsense, and went to bed at night satisfied.

The second day, we made the acquaintance of Mr. Street (since deceased)

and put on white shirts and went and paid a state visit to the king. He

seemed a quiet, kindly, easy-mannered, dignified, self-possessed old

gentleman of fifty-five or sixty, and had a gentle craft in his eye that

probably belonged there. He was very simply dressed and was just taking

off a straw hat as we entered. He talked about Utah, and the Indians,

and Nevada, and general American matters and questions, with our

secretary and certain government officials who came with us. But he

never paid any attention to me, notwithstanding I made several attempts

to “draw him out” on federal politics and his high handed attitude

toward Congress. I thought some of the things I said were rather fine.

But he merely looked around at me, at distant intervals, something as I

have seen a benignant old cat look around to see which kitten was

meddling with her tail.

By and by I subsided into an indignant silence, and so sat until the

end, hot and flushed, and execrating him in my heart for an ignorant

savage. But he was calm. His conversation with those gentlemen flowed on

as sweetly and peacefully and musically as any summer brook. When the

audience was ended and we were retiring from the presence, he put his

hand on my head, beamed down on me in an admiring way and said to my

brother:

“Ah—your child, I presume? Boy, or girl?”

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CHAPTER XIV.

Mr. Street was very busy with his telegraphic matters—and considering

that he had eight or nine hundred miles of rugged, snowy, uninhabited

mountains, and waterless, treeless, melancholy deserts to traverse with

his wire, it was natural and needful that he should be as busy as

possible. He could not go comfortably along and cut his poles by the

road-side, either, but they had to be hauled by ox teams across those

exhausting deserts—and it was two days’ journey from water to water, in

one or two of them. Mr. Street’s contract was a vast work, every way one

looked at it; and yet to comprehend what the vague words “eight hundred

miles of rugged mountains and dismal deserts” mean, one must go over the

ground in person—pen and ink descriptions cannot convey the dreary

reality to the reader. And after all, Mr. S.’s mightiest difficulty

turned out to be one which he had never taken into the account at all.

Unto Mormons he had sub-let the hardest and heaviest half of his great

undertaking, and all of a sudden they concluded that they were going to

make little or nothing, and so they tranquilly threw their poles

overboard in mountain or desert, just as it happened when they took the

notion, and drove home and went about their customary business! They

were under written contract to Mr. Street, but they did not care

anything for that. They said they would “admire” to see a “Gentile”

force a Mormon to fulfil a losing contract in Utah! And they made

themselves very merry over the matter. Street said—for it was he that

told us these things:

“I was in dismay. I was under heavy bonds to complete my contract in a

given time, and this disaster looked very much like ruin. It was an

astounding thing; it was such a wholly unlooked-for difficulty, that I

was entirely nonplussed. I am a business man—have always been a business

man—do not know anything _but_ business—and so you can imagine how like

being struck by lightning it was to find myself in a country _where

written contracts were worthless!_—that main security, that sheet-

anchor, that absolute necessity, of business. My confidence left me.

There was no use in making new contracts—that was plain. I talked with

first one prominent citizen and then another. They all sympathized with

me, first rate, but they did not know how to help me. But at last a

Gentile said, ‘Go to Brigham Young!—these small fry cannot do you any

good.’ I did not think much of the idea, for if the _law_ could not help

me, what could an individual do who had not even anything to do with

either making the laws or executing them? He might be a very good

patriarch of a church and preacher in its tabernacle, but something

sterner than religion and moral suasion was needed to handle a hundred

refractory, half-civilized sub-contractors. But what was a man to do? I

thought if Mr. Young could not do anything else, he might probably be

able to give me some advice and a valuable hint or two, and so I went

straight to him and laid the whole case before him. He said very little,

but he showed strong interest all the way through. He examined all the

papers in detail, and whenever there seemed anything like a hitch,

either in the papers or my statement, he would go back and take up the

thread and follow it patiently out to an intelligent and satisfactory

result. Then he made a list of the contractors’ names. Finally he said:

“‘Mr. Street, this is all perfectly plain. These contracts are strictly

and legally drawn, and are duly signed and certified. These men

manifestly entered into them with their eyes open. I see no fault or

flaw anywhere.’

“Then Mr. Young turned to a man waiting at the other end of the room and

said: ‘Take this list of names to So-and-so, and tell him to have these

men here at such-and-such an hour.’

“They were there, to the minute. So was I. Mr. Young asked them a number

of questions, and their answers made my statement good. Then he said to

them:

“‘You signed these contracts and assumed these obligations of your own

free will and accord?’

“‘Yes.’

“‘Then carry them out to the letter, if it makes paupers of you! Go!’

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“And they _did_ go, too! They are strung across the deserts now, working

like bees. And I never hear a word out of them.

“There is a batch of governors, and judges, and other officials here,

shipped from Washington, and they maintain the semblance of a republican

form of government—but the petrified truth is that Utah is an absolute

monarchy and Brigham Young is king!”

Mr. Street was a fine man, and I believe his story. I knew him well

during several years afterward in San Francisco.

Our stay in Salt Lake City amounted to only two days, and therefore we

had no time to make the customary inquisition into the workings of

polygamy and get up the usual statistics and deductions preparatory to

calling the attention of the nation at large once more to the matter.

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I had the will to do it. With the gushing self-sufficiency of youth I

was feverish to plunge in headlong and achieve a great reform here—until

I saw the Mormon women. Then I was touched. My heart was wiser than my

head. It warmed toward these poor, ungainly and pathetically “homely”

creatures, and as I turned to hide the generous moisture in my eyes, I

said, “No—the man that marries one of them has done an act of Christian

charity which entitles him to the kindly applause of mankind, not their

harsh censure—and the man that marries sixty of them has done a deed of

open-handed generosity so sublime that the nations should stand

uncovered in his presence and worship in silence.”

[For a brief sketch of Mormon history, and the noted Mountain Meadow

massacre, see Appendices A and B. ]

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CHAPTER XV.

It is a luscious country for thrilling evening stories about

assassinations of intractable Gentiles. I cannot easily conceive of

anything more cosy than the night in Salt Lake which we spent in a

Gentile den, smoking pipes and listening to tales of how Burton galloped

in among the pleading and defenceless “Morisites” and shot them down,

men and women, like so many dogs. And how Bill Hickman, a Destroying

Angel, shot Drown and Arnold dead for bringing suit against him for a

debt. And how Porter Rockwell did this and that dreadful thing. And how

heedless people often come to Utah and make remarks about Brigham, or

polygamy, or some other sacred matter, and the very next morning at

daylight such parties are sure to be found lying up some back alley,

contentedly waiting for the hearse.

And the next most interesting thing is to sit and listen to these

Gentiles talk about polygamy; and how some portly old frog of an elder,

or a bishop, marries a girl—likes her, marries her sister—likes her,

marries another sister—likes her, takes another—likes her, marries her

mother—likes her, marries her father, grandfather, great grandfather,

and then comes back hungry and asks for more. And how the pert young

thing of eleven will chance to be the favorite wife and her own

venerable grandmother have to rank away down toward D 4 in their mutual

husband’s esteem, and have to sleep in the kitchen, as like as not. And

how this dreadful sort of thing, this hiving together in one foul nest

of mother and daughters, and the making a young daughter superior to her

own mother in rank and authority, are things which Mormon women submit

to because their religion teaches them that the more wives a man has on

earth, and the more children he rears, the higher the place they will

all have in the world to come—and the warmer, maybe, though they do not

seem to say anything about that.

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According to these Gentile friends of ours, Brigham Young’s harem

contains twenty or thirty wives. They said that some of them had grown

old and gone out of active service, but were comfortably housed and

cared for in the henery—or the Lion House, as it is strangely named.

Along with each wife were her children—fifty altogether. The house was

perfectly quiet and orderly, when the children were still. They all took

their meals in one room, and a happy and home-like sight it was

pronounced to be. None of our party got an opportunity to take dinner

with Mr. Young, but a Gentile by the name of Johnson professed to have

enjoyed a sociable breakfast in the Lion House. He gave a preposterous

account of the “calling of the roll,” and other preliminaries, and the

carnage that ensued when the buckwheat cakes came in. But he embellished

rather too much. He said that Mr. Young told him several smart sayings

of certain of his “two-year-olds,” observing with some pride that for

many years he had been the heaviest contributor in that line to one of

the Eastern magazines; and then he wanted to show Mr. Johnson one of the

pets that had said the last good thing, but he could not find the child.

He searched the faces of the children in detail, but could not decide

which one it was. Finally he gave it up with a sigh and said:

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“I thought I would know the little cub again but I don’t.” Mr. Johnson

said further, that Mr. Young observed that life was a sad, sad

thing—“because the joy of every new marriage a man contracted was so apt

to be blighted by the inopportune funeral of a less recent bride.” And

Mr. Johnson said that while he and Mr. Young were pleasantly conversing

in private, one of the Mrs. Youngs came in and demanded a breast-pin,

remarking that she had found out that he had been giving a breast-pin to

No. 6, and _she_, for one, did not propose to let this partiality go on

without making a satisfactory amount of trouble about it. Mr. Young

reminded her that there was a stranger present. Mrs. Young said that if

the state of things inside the house was not agreeable to the stranger,

he could find room outside. Mr. Young promised the breast-pin, and she

went away. But in a minute or two another Mrs. Young came in and

demanded a breast-pin. Mr. Young began a remonstrance, but Mrs. Young

cut him short. She said No. 6 had got one, and No. 11 was promised one,

and it was “no use for him to try to impose on her—she hoped she knew

her rights.” He gave his promise, and she went. And presently three Mrs.

Youngs entered in a body and opened on their husband a tempest of tears,

abuse, and entreaty. They had heard all about No. 6, No. 11, and No. 14.

Three more breast-pins were promised. They were hardly gone when nine

more Mrs. Youngs filed into the presence, and a new tempest burst forth

and raged round about the prophet and his guest. Nine breast-pins were

promised, and the weird sisters filed out again. And in came eleven

more, weeping and wailing and gnashing their teeth. Eleven promised

breast-pins purchased peace once more.

“That is a specimen,” said Mr. Young. “You see how it is. You see what a

life I lead. A man _can’t_ be wise all the time. In a heedless moment I

gave my darling No. 6—excuse my calling her thus, as her other name has

escaped me for the moment—a breast-pin. It was only worth twenty-five

dollars—that is, _apparently_ that was its _whole_ cost—but its ultimate

cost was inevitably bound to be a good deal more. You yourself have seen

it climb up to six hundred and fifty dollars—and alas, even that is not

the end! For I have wives all over this Territory of Utah. I have dozens

of wives whose _numbers_, even, I do not know without looking in the

family Bible. They are scattered far and wide among the mountains and

valleys of my realm. And mark you, every solitary one of them will hear

of this wretched breast pin, and every last one of them will have one or

die. No. 6’s breast pin will cost me twenty-five hundred dollars before

I see the end of it. And these creatures will compare these pins

together, and if one is a shade finer than the rest, they will all be

thrown on my hands, and I will have to order a new lot to keep peace in

the family. Sir, you probably did not know it, but all the time you were

present with my children your every movement was watched by vigilant

servitors of mine. If you had offered to give a child a dime, or a stick

of candy, or any trifle of the kind, you would have been snatched out of

the house instantly, provided it could be done before your gift left

your hand. Otherwise it would be absolutely necessary for you to make an

exactly similar gift to all my children—and knowing by experience the

importance of the thing, I would have stood by and seen to it myself

that you did it, and did it thoroughly. Once a gentleman gave one of my

children a tin whistle—a veritable invention of Satan, sir, and one

which I have an unspeakable horror of, and so would you if you had

eighty or ninety children in your house. But the deed was done—the man

escaped. I knew what the result was going to be, and I thirsted for

vengeance. I ordered out a flock of Destroying Angels, and they hunted

the man far into the fastnesses of the Nevada mountains. But they never

caught him. I am not cruel, sir—I am not vindictive except when sorely

outraged—but if I had caught him, sir, so help me Joseph Smith, I would

have locked him into the nursery till the brats whistled him to death.

By the slaughtered body of St. Parley Pratt (whom God assoil!) there was

never anything on this earth like it! _I_ knew who gave the whistle to

the child, but I could, not make those jealous mothers believe me. They

believed _I_ did it, and the result was just what any man of reflection

could have foreseen: I had to order a hundred and ten whistles—I think

we had a hundred and ten children in the house then, but some of them

are off at college now—I had to order a hundred and ten of those

shrieking things, and I wish I may never speak another word if we didn’t

have to talk on our fingers entirely, from that time forth until the

children got tired of the whistles. And if ever another man gives a

whistle to a child of mine and I get my hands on him, I will hang him

higher than Haman! That is the word with the bark on it! Shade of Nephi!

_You_ don’t know anything about married life. I am rich, and everybody

knows it. I am benevolent, and everybody takes advantage of it. I have a

strong fatherly instinct and all the foundlings are foisted on me.

“Every time a woman wants to do well by her darling, she puzzles her

brain to cipher out some scheme for getting it into my hands. Why, sir,

a woman came here once with a child of a curious lifeless sort of

complexion (and so had the woman), and swore that the child was mine and

she my wife—that I had married her at such-and-such a time in such-and-

such a place, but she had forgotten her number, and of course I could

not remember her name. Well, sir, she called my attention to the fact

that the child looked like me, and really it did seem to resemble me—a

common thing in the Territory—and, to cut the story short, I put it in

my nursery, and she left.

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“And by the ghost of Orson Hyde, when they came to wash the paint off

that child it was an Injun! Bless my soul, you don’t know anything about

married life. It is a perfect dog’s life, sir—a perfect dog’s life. You

can’t economize. It isn’t possible. I have tried keeping one set of

bridal attire for all occasions. But it is of no use. First you’ll marry

a combination of calico and consumption that’s as thin as a rail, and

next you’ll get a creature that’s nothing more than the dropsy in

disguise, and then you’ve got to eke out that bridal dress with an old

balloon. That is the way it goes. And think of the wash-bill—(excuse

these tears)—nine hundred and eighty-four pieces a week! No, sir, there

is no such a thing as economy in a family like mine. Why, just the one

item of cradles—think of it! And vermifuge! Soothing syrup! Teething

rings! And ‘papa’s watches’ for the babies to play with! And things to

scratch the furniture with! And lucifer matches for them to eat, and

pieces of glass to cut themselves with! The item of glass alone would

support _your_ family, I venture to say, sir. Let me scrimp and squeeze

all I can, I still can’t get ahead as fast as I feel I ought to, with my

opportunities. Bless you, sir, at a time when I had seventy-two wives in

this house, I groaned under the pressure of keeping thousands of dollars

tied up in seventy-two bedsteads when the money ought to have been out

at interest; and I just sold out the whole stock, sir, at a sacrifice,

and built a bedstead seven feet long and ninety-six feet wide.”

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“But it was a failure, sir. I could _not_ sleep. It appeared to me that

the whole seventy-two women snored at once. The roar was deafening. And

then the danger of it! That was what I was looking at. They would all

draw in their breath at once, and you could actually see the walls of

the house suck in—and then they would all exhale their breath at once,

and you could see the walls swell out, and strain, and hear the rafters

crack, and the shingles grind together. My friend, take an old man’s

advice, and _don’t_ encumber yourself with a large family—mind, I tell

you, don’t do it. In a small family, and in a small family only, you

will find that comfort and that peace of mind which are the best at last

of the blessings this world is able to afford us, and for the lack of

which no accumulation of wealth, and no acquisition of fame, power, and

greatness can ever compensate us. Take my word for it, ten or eleven

wives is all you need—never go over it.”

Some instinct or other made me set this Johnson down as being

unreliable. And yet he was a very entertaining person, and I doubt if

some of the information he gave us could have been acquired from any

other source. He was a pleasant contrast to those reticent Mormons.

CHAPTER XVI.

All men have heard of the Mormon Bible, but few except the “elect” have

seen it, or, at least, taken the trouble to read it. I brought away a

copy from Salt Lake. The book is a curiosity to me, it is such a

pretentious affair, and yet so “slow,” so sleepy; such an insipid mess

of inspiration. It is chloroform in print. If Joseph Smith composed this

book, the act was a miracle—keeping awake while he did it was, at any

rate. If he, according to tradition, merely translated it from certain

ancient and mysteriously-engraved plates of copper, which he declares he

found under a stone, in an out-of-the-way locality, the work of

translating was equally a miracle, for the same reason.

The book seems to be merely a prosy detail of imaginary history, with

the Old Testament for a model; followed by a tedious plagiarism of the

New Testament. The author labored to give his words and phrases the

quaint, old-fashioned sound and structure of our King James’s

translation of the Scriptures; and the result is a mongrel—half modern

glibness, and half ancient simplicity and gravity. The latter is awkward

and constrained; the former natural, but grotesque by the contrast.

Whenever he found his speech growing too modern—which was about every

sentence or two—he ladled in a few such Scriptural phrases as “exceeding

sore,” “and it came to pass,” etc., and made things satisfactory again.

“And it came to pass” was his pet. If he had left that out, his Bible

would have been only a pamphlet.

The title-page reads as follows:

THE BOOK OF MORMON: AN ACCOUNT WRITTEN BY THE HAND OF MORMON, UPON

PLATES TAKEN FROM THE PLATES OF NEPHI.

Wherefore it is an abridgment of the record of the people of Nephi, and

also of the Lamanites; written to the Lamanites, who are a remnant of

the House of Israel; and also to Jew and Gentile; written by way of

commandment, and also by the spirit of prophecy and of revelation.

Written and sealed up, and hid up unto the Lord, that they might not be

destroyed; to come forth by the gift and power of God unto the

interpretation thereof; sealed by the hand of Moroni, and hid up unto

the Lord, to come forth in due time by the way of Gentile; the

interpretation thereof by the gift of God. An abridgment taken from the

Book of Ether also; which is a record of the people of Jared; who were

scattered at the time the Lord confounded the language of the people

when they were building a tower to get to Heaven.

“Hid up” is good. And so is “wherefore”—though why “wherefore”? Any

other word would have answered as well—though—in truth it would not have

sounded so Scriptural.

Next comes:

THE TESTIMONY OF THREE WITNESSES. Be it known unto all nations,

kindreds, tongues, and people unto whom this work shall come, that we,

through the grace of God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, have

seen the plates which contain this record, which is a record of the

people of Nephi, and also of the Lamanites, their brethren, and also of

the people of Jared, who came from the tower of which hath been spoken;

and we also know that they have been translated by the gift and power of

God, for His voice hath declared it unto us; wherefore we know of a

surety that the work is true. And we also testify that we have seen the

engravings which are upon the plates; and they have been shown unto us

by the power of God, and not of man. And we declare with words of

soberness, that an angel of God came down from heaven, and he brought

and laid before our eyes, that we beheld and saw the plates, and the

engravings thereon; and we know that it is by the grace of God the

Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, that we beheld and bear record that

these things are true; and it is marvellous in our eyes; nevertheless

the voice of the Lord commanded us that we should bear record of it;

wherefore, to be obedient unto the commandments of God, we bear

testimony of these things. And we know that if we are faithful in

Christ, we shall rid our garments of the blood of all men, and be found

spotless before the judgment-seat of Christ, and shall dwell with Him

eternally in the heavens. And the honor be to the Father, and to the

Son, and to the Holy Ghost, which is one God. Amen. OLIVER COWDERY,

DAVID WHITMER, MARTIN HARRIS.

Some people have to have a world of evidence before they can come

anywhere in the neighborhood of believing anything; but for me, when a

man tells me that he has “seen the engravings which are upon the

plates,” and not only that, but an angel was there at the time, and saw

him see them, and probably took his receipt for it, I am very far on the

road to conviction, no matter whether I ever heard of that man before or

not, and even if I do not know the name of the angel, or his nationality

either.

Next is this:

AND ALSO THE TESTIMONY OF EIGHT WITNESSES. Be it known unto all nations,

kindreds, tongues, and people unto whom this work shall come, that

Joseph Smith, Jr., the translator of this work, has shown unto us the

plates of which hath been spoken, which have the appearance of gold; and

as many of the leaves as the said Smith has translated, we did handle

with our hands; and we also saw the engravings thereon, all of which has

the appearance of ancient work, and of curious workmanship. And this we

bear record with words of soberness, that the said Smith has shown unto

us, for we have seen and hefted, and know of a surety that the said

Smith has got the plates of which we have spoken. And we give our names

unto the world, to witness unto the world that which we have seen; and

we lie not, God bearing witness of it. CHRISTIAN WHITMER, JACOB WHITMER,

PETER WHITMER, JR., JOHN WHITMER, HIRAM PAGE, JOSEPH SMITH, SR., HYRUM

SMITH, SAMUEL H. SMITH.

And when I am far on the road to conviction, and eight men, be they

grammatical or otherwise, come forward and tell me that they have seen

the plates too; and not only seen those plates but “hefted” them, I am

convinced. I could not feel more satisfied and at rest if the entire

Whitmer family had testified.

The Mormon Bible consists of fifteen “books”—being the books of Jacob,

Enos, Jarom, Omni, Mosiah, Zeniff, Alma, Helaman, Ether, Moroni, two

“books” of Mormon, and three of Nephi.

In the first book of Nephi is a plagiarism of the Old Testament, which

gives an account of the exodus from Jerusalem of the “children of Lehi”;

and it goes on to tell of their wanderings in the wilderness, during

eight years, and their supernatural protection by one of their number, a

party by the name of Nephi. They finally reached the land of

“Bountiful,” and camped by the sea. After they had remained there “for

the space of many days”—which is more Scriptural than definite—Nephi was

commanded from on high to build a ship wherein to “carry the people

across the waters.” He travestied Noah’s ark—but he obeyed orders in the

matter of the plan. He finished the ship _in a single day_, while his

brethren stood by and made fun of it—and of him, too—“saying, our

brother is a fool, for he thinketh that he can build a ship.” They did

not wait for the timbers to dry, but the whole tribe or nation sailed

the next day. Then a bit of genuine nature cropped out, and is revealed

by outspoken Nephi with Scriptural frankness—they all got on a spree!

They, “and also their wives, began to make themselves merry, insomuch

that they began to dance, and to sing, and to speak with much rudeness;

yea, they were lifted up unto exceeding rudeness.”

Nephi tried to stop these scandalous proceedings; but they tied him neck

and heels, and went on with their lark. But observe how Nephi the

prophet circumvented them by the aid of the invisible powers:

And it came to pass that after they had bound me, insomuch that I could

not move, the compass, which had been prepared of the Lord, did cease to

work; wherefore, they knew not whither they should steer the ship,

insomuch that there arose a great storm, yea, a great and terrible

tempest, and we were driven back upon the waters for the space of three

days; and they began to be frightened exceedingly, lest they should be

drowned in the sea; nevertheless they did not loose me. And on the

fourth day, which we had been driven back, the tempest began to be

exceeding sore. And it came to pass that we were about to be swallowed

up in the depths of the sea.

Then they untied him.

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And it came to pass after they had loosed me, behold, I took the

compass, and it did work whither I desired it. And it came to pass that

I prayed unto the Lord; and after I had prayed, the winds did cease, and

the storm did cease, and there was a great calm.

Equipped with their compass, these ancients appear to have had the

advantage of Noah.

Their voyage was toward a “promised land”—the only name they give it.

They reached it in safety.

Polygamy is a recent feature in the Mormon religion, and was added by

Brigham Young after Joseph Smith’s death. Before that, it was regarded

as an “abomination.” This verse from the Mormon Bible occurs in Chapter

II. of the book of Jacob:

For behold, thus saith the Lord, this people begin to wax in iniquity;

they understand not the Scriptures; for they seek to excuse themselves

in committing whoredoms, because of the things which were written

concerning David, and Solomon his son. Behold, David and Solomon truly

had many wives and concubines, which thing was abominable before me,

saith the Lord; wherefore, thus saith the Lord, I have led this people

forth out of the land of Jerusalem, by the power of mine arm, that I

might raise up unto me a righteous branch from the fruit of the loins of

Joseph. Wherefore, I the Lord God, will no suffer that this people shall

do like unto them of old.

However, the project failed—or at least the modern Mormon end of it—for

Brigham “suffers” it. This verse is from the same chapter:

Behold, the Lamanites your brethren, whom ye hate, because of their

filthiness and the cursings which hath come upon their skins, are more

righteous than you; for they have not forgotten the commandment of the

Lord, which was given unto our fathers, that they should have, save it

were one wife; and concubines they should have none.

The following verse (from Chapter IX. of the Book of Nephi) appears to

contain information not familiar to everybody:

And now it came to pass that when Jesus had ascended into heaven, the

multitude did disperse, and every man did take his wife and his

children, and did return to his own home.

And it came to pass that on the morrow, when the multitude was gathered

together, behold, Nephi and his brother whom he had raised from the

dead, whose name was Timothy, and also his son, whose name was Jonas,

and also Mathoni, and Mathonihah, his brother, and Kumen, and Kumenenhi,

and Jeremiah, and Shemnon, and Jonas, and Zedekiah, and Isaiah; now

these were the names of the disciples whom Jesus had chosen.

In order that the reader may observe how much more grandeur and

picturesqueness (as seen by these Mormon twelve) accompanied one of the

tenderest episodes in the life of our Saviour than other eyes seem to

have been aware of, I quote the following from the same “book”—Nephi:

And it came to pass that Jesus spake unto them, and bade them arise. And

they arose from the earth, and He said unto them, Blessed are ye because

of your faith. And now behold, My joy is full. And when He had said

these words, He wept, and the multitude bear record of it, and He took

their little children, one by one, and blessed them, and prayed unto the

Father for them. And when He had done this He wept again, and He spake

unto the multitude, and saith unto them, Behold your little ones. And as

they looked to behold, they cast their eyes toward heaven, and they saw

the heavens open, and they saw angels descending out of heaven as it

were, in the midst of fire; and they came down and encircled those

little ones about, and they were encircled about with fire; and the

angels did minister unto them, and the multitude did see and hear and

bear record; and they know that their record is true, for they all of

them did see and hear, every man for himself; and they were in number

about two thousand and five hundred souls; and they did consist of men,

women, and children.

And what else would they be likely to consist of?

The Book of Ether is an incomprehensible medley of “history,” much of it

relating to battles and sieges among peoples whom the reader has

possibly never heard of; and who inhabited a country which is not set

down in the geography. There was a King with the remarkable name of

Coriantumr, and he warred with Shared, and Lib, and Shiz, and others, in

the “plains of Heshlon”; and the “valley of Gilgal”; and the “wilderness

of Akish”; and the “land of Moran”; and the “plains of Agosh”; and

“Ogath,” and “Ramah,” and the “land of Corihor,” and the “hill Comnor,”

by “the waters of Ripliancum,” etc., etc., etc. “And it came to pass,”

after a deal of fighting, that Coriantumr, upon making calculation of

his losses, found that “there had been slain two millions of mighty men,

and also their wives and their children”—say 5,000,000 or 6,000,000 in

all—“and he began to sorrow in his heart.” Unquestionably it was time.

So he wrote to Shiz, asking a cessation of hostilities, and offering to

give up his kingdom to save his people. Shiz declined, except upon

condition that Coriantumr would come and let him cut his head off

first—a thing which Coriantumr would not do. Then there was more

fighting for a season; then _four years_ were devoted to gathering the

forces for a final struggle—after which ensued a battle, which, I take

it, is the most remarkable set forth in history,—except, perhaps, that

of the Kilkenny cats, which it resembles in some respects. This is the

account of the gathering and the battle:

7. And it came to pass that they did gather together all the people,

upon all the face of the land, who had not been slain, save it was

Ether. And it came to pass that Ether did behold all the doings of the

people; and he beheld that the people who were for Coriantumr, were

gathered together to the army of Coriantumr; and the people who were for

Shiz, were gathered together to the army of Shiz; wherefore they were

for the space of four years gathering together the people, that they

might get all who were upon the face of the land, and that they might

receive all the strength which it was possible that they could receive.

And it came to pass that when they were all gathered together, every one

to the army which he would, with their wives and their children; both

men, women, and children being armed with weapons of war, having

shields, and breast-plates, and head-plates, and being clothed after the

manner of war, they did march forth one against another, to battle; and

they fought all that day, and conquered not. And it came to pass that

when it was night they were weary, and retired to their camps; and after

they had retired to their camps, they took up a howling and a

lamentation for the loss of the slain of their people; and so great were

their cries, their howlings and lamentations, that it did rend the air

exceedingly. And it came to pass that on the morrow they did go again to

battle, and great and terrible was that day; nevertheless they conquered

not, and when the night came again, they did rend the air with their

cries, and their howlings, and their mournings, for the loss of the

slain of their people.

8. And it came to pass that Coriantumr wrote again an epistle unto Shiz,

desiring that he would not come again to battle, but that he would take

the kingdom, and spare the lives of the people. But behold, the Spirit

of the Lord had ceased striving with them, and Satan had full power over

the hearts of the people, for they were given up unto the hardness of

their hearts, and the blindness of their minds that they might be

destroyed; wherefore they went again to battle. And it came to pass that

they fought all that day, and when the night came they slept upon their

swords; and on the morrow they fought even until the night came; and

when the night came they were drunken with anger, even as a man who is

drunken with wine; and they slept again upon their swords; and on the

morrow they fought again; and when the night came they had all fallen by

the sword save it were fifty and two of the people of Coriantumr, and

sixty and nine of the people of Shiz. And it came to pass that they

slept upon their swords that night, and on the morrow they fought again,

and they contended in their mights with their swords, and with their

shields, all that day; and when the night came there were thirty and two

of the people of Shiz, and twenty and seven of the people of Coriantumr.

9. And it came to pass that they ate and slept, and prepared for death

on the morrow. And they were large and mighty men, as to the strength of

men. And it came to pass that they fought for the space of three hours,

and they fainted with the loss of blood. And it came to pass that when

the men of Coriantumr had received sufficient strength, that they could

walk, they were about to flee for their lives, but behold, Shiz arose,

and also his men, and he swore in his wrath that he would slay

Coriantumr, or he would perish by the sword: wherefore he did pursue

them, and on the morrow he did overtake them; and they fought again with

the sword. And it came to pass that when they had all fallen by the

sword, save it were Coriantumr and Shiz, behold Shiz had fainted with

loss of blood. And it came to pass that when Coriantumr had leaned upon

his sword, that he rested a little, he smote off the head of Shiz. And

it came to pass that after he had smote off the head of Shiz, that Shiz

raised upon his hands and fell; and after that he had struggled for

breath, he died. And it came to pass that Coriantumr fell to the earth,

and became as if he had no life. And the Lord spake unto Ether, and said

unto him, go forth. And he went forth, and beheld that the words of the

Lord had all been fulfilled; and he finished his record; and the

hundredth part I have not written.

It seems a pity he did not finish, for after all his dreary former

chapters of commonplace, he stopped just as he was in danger of becoming

interesting.

The Mormon Bible is rather stupid and tiresome to read, but there is

nothing vicious in its teachings. Its code of morals is

unobjectionable—it is “smouched” [Milton] from the New Testament and no

credit given.

CHAPTER XVII.

At the end of our two days’ sojourn, we left Great Salt Lake City hearty

and well fed and happy—physically superb but not so very much wiser, as

regards the “Mormon question,” than we were when we arrived, perhaps. We

had a deal more “information” than we had before, of course, but we did

not know what portion of it was reliable and what was not—for it all

came from acquaintances of a day—strangers, strictly speaking. We were

told, for instance, that the dreadful “Mountain Meadows Massacre” was

the work of the Indians entirely, and that the Gentiles had meanly tried

to fasten it upon the Mormons; we were told, likewise, that the Indians

were to blame, partly, and partly the Mormons; and we were told,

likewise, and just as positively, that the Mormons were almost if not

wholly and completely responsible for that most treacherous and pitiless

butchery. We got the story in all these different shapes, but it was not

till several years afterward that Mrs. Waite’s book, “The Mormon

Prophet,” came out with Judge Cradlebaugh’s trial of the accused parties

in it and revealed the truth that the latter version was the correct one

and that the Mormons _were_ the assassins. All our “information” had

three sides to it, and so I gave up the idea that I could settle the

“Mormon question” in two days. Still I have seen newspaper

correspondents do it in one.

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I left Great Salt Lake a good deal confused as to what state of things

existed there—and sometimes even questioning in my own mind whether a

state of things existed there at all or not. But presently I remembered

with a lightening sense of relief that we had learned two or three

trivial things there which we could be certain of; and so the two days

were not wholly lost. For instance, we had learned that we were at last

in a pioneer land, in absolute and tangible reality.

The high prices charged for trifles were eloquent of high freights and

bewildering distances of freightage. In the east, in those days, the

smallest moneyed denomination was a penny and it represented the

smallest purchasable quantity of any commodity. West of Cincinnati the

smallest coin in use was the silver five-cent piece and no smaller

quantity of an article could be bought than “five cents’ worth.” In

Overland City the lowest coin appeared to be the ten-cent piece; but in

Salt Lake there did not seem to be any money in circulation smaller than

a quarter, or any smaller quantity purchasable of any commodity than

twenty-five cents’ worth. We had always been used to half dimes and

“five cents’ worth” as the minimum of financial negotiations; but in

Salt Lake if one wanted a cigar, it was a quarter; if he wanted a chalk

pipe, it was a quarter; if he wanted a peach, or a candle, or a

newspaper, or a shave, or a little Gentile whiskey to rub on his corns

to arrest indigestion and keep him from having the toothache, twenty-

five cents was the price, every time. When we looked at the shot-bag of

silver, now and then, we seemed to be wasting our substance in riotous

living, but if we referred to the expense account we could see that we

had not been doing anything of the kind.

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But people easily get reconciled to big money and big prices, and fond

and vain of both—it is a descent to little coins and cheap prices that

is hardest to bear and slowest to take hold upon one’s toleration. After

a month’s acquaintance with the twenty-five cent minimum, the average

human being is ready to blush every time he thinks of his despicable

five-cent days. How sunburnt with blushes I used to get in gaudy Nevada,

every time I thought of my first financial experience in Salt Lake. It

was on this wise (which is a favorite expression of great authors, and a

very neat one, too, but I never hear anybody _say_ on this wise when

they are talking). A young half-breed with a complexion like a yellow-

jacket asked me if I would have my boots blacked. It was at the Salt

Lake House the morning after we arrived. I said yes, and he blacked

them. Then I handed him a silver five-cent piece, with the benevolent

air of a person who is conferring wealth and blessedness upon poverty

and suffering. The yellow-jacket took it with what I judged to be

suppressed emotion, and laid it reverently down in the middle of his

broad hand. Then he began to contemplate it, much as a philosopher

contemplates a gnat’s ear in the ample field of his microscope. Several

mountaineers, teamsters, stage-drivers, etc., drew near and dropped into

the tableau and fell to surveying the money with that attractive

indifference to formality which is noticeable in the hardy pioneer.

Presently the yellow-jacket handed the half dime back to me and told me

I ought to keep my money in my pocket-book instead of in my soul, and

then I wouldn’t get it cramped and shriveled up so!

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What a roar of vulgar laughter there was! I destroyed the mongrel

reptile on the spot, but I smiled and smiled all the time I was

detaching his scalp, for the remark he made _was_ good for an “Injun.”

Yes, we had learned in Salt Lake to be charged great prices without

letting the inward shudder appear on the surface—for even already we had

overheard and noted the tenor of conversations among drivers,

conductors, and hostlers, and finally among citizens of Salt Lake, until

we were well aware that these superior beings despised “emigrants.” We

permitted no tell-tale shudders and winces in our countenances, for we

wanted to seem pioneers, or Mormons, half-breeds, teamsters, stage-

drivers, Mountain Meadow assassins—anything in the world that the plains

and Utah respected and admired—but we were wretchedly ashamed of being

“emigrants,” and sorry enough that we had white shirts and could not

swear in the presence of ladies without looking the other way.

And many a time in Nevada, afterwards, we had occasion to remember with

humiliation that we were “emigrants,” and consequently a low and

inferior sort of creatures. Perhaps the reader has visited Utah, Nevada,

or California, even in these latter days, and while communing with

himself upon the sorrowful banishment of these countries from what he

considers “the world,” has had his wings clipped by finding that _he_ is

the one to be pitied, and that there are entire populations around him

ready and willing to do it for him—yea, who are complacently doing it

for him already, wherever he steps his foot.

Poor thing, they are making fun of his hat; and the cut of his New York

coat; and his conscientiousness about his grammar; and his feeble

profanity; and his consumingly ludicrous ignorance of ores, shafts,

tunnels, and other things which he never saw before, and never felt

enough interest in to read about. And all the time that he is thinking

what a sad fate it is to be exiled to that far country, that lonely

land, the citizens around him are looking down on him with a blighting

compassion because he is an “emigrant” instead of that proudest and

blessedest creature that exists on all the earth, a “FORTY-NINER.”

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The accustomed coach life began again, now, and by midnight it almost

seemed as if we never had been out of our snuggery among the mail sacks

at all. We had made one alteration, however. We had provided enough

bread, boiled ham and hard boiled eggs to last double the six hundred

miles of staging we had still to do.

And it was comfort in those succeeding days to sit up and contemplate

the majestic panorama of mountains and valleys spread out below us and

eat ham and hard boiled eggs while our spiritual natures revelled

alternately in rainbows, thunderstorms, and peerless sunsets. Nothing

helps scenery like ham and eggs. Ham and eggs, and after these a pipe—an

old, rank, delicious pipe—ham and eggs and scenery, a “down grade,” a

flying coach, a fragrant pipe and a contented heart—these make

happiness. It is what all the ages have struggled for.

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CHAPTER XVIII.

At eight in the morning we reached the remnant and ruin of what had been

the important military station of “Camp Floyd,” some forty-five or fifty

miles from Salt Lake City. At four P.M. we had doubled our distance and

were ninety or a hundred miles from Salt Lake. And now we entered upon

one of that species of deserts whose concentrated hideousness shames the

diffused and diluted horrors of Sahara—an “_alkali_” desert. For sixty-

eight miles there was but one break in it. I do not remember that this

was really a break; indeed it seems to me that it was nothing but a

watering depot _in the midst_ of the stretch of sixty-eight miles. If my

memory serves me, there was no well or spring at this place, but the

water was hauled there by mule and ox teams from the further side of the

desert. There was a stage station there. It was forty-five miles from

the beginning of the desert, and twenty-three from the end of it.

We plowed and dragged and groped along, the whole live-long night, and

at the end of this uncomfortable twelve hours we finished the forty-five

mile part of the desert and got to the stage station where the imported

water was. The sun was just rising. It was easy enough to cross a desert

in the night while we were asleep; and it was pleasant to reflect, in

the morning, that we in actual person _had_ encountered an absolute

desert and could always speak knowingly of deserts in presence of the

ignorant thenceforward. And it was pleasant also to reflect that this

was not an obscure, back country desert, but a very celebrated one, the

metropolis itself, as you may say. All this was very well and very

comfortable and satisfactory—but now we were to cross a desert in

_daylight_. This was fine—novel—romantic—dramatically

adventurous—_this_, indeed, was worth living for, worth traveling for!

We would write home all about it.

This enthusiasm, this stern thirst for adventure, wilted under the

sultry August sun and did not last above one hour. One poor little

hour—and then we were ashamed that we had “gushed” so. The poetry was

all in the anticipation—there is none in the reality. Imagine a vast,

waveless ocean stricken dead and turned to ashes; imagine this solemn

waste tufted with ash-dusted sage-bushes; imagine the lifeless silence

and solitude that belong to such a place; imagine a coach, creeping like

a bug through the midst of this shoreless level, and sending up tumbled

volumes of dust as if it were a bug that went by steam; imagine this

aching monotony of toiling and plowing kept up hour after hour, and the

shore still as far away as ever, apparently; imagine team, driver, coach

and passengers so deeply coated with ashes that they are all one

colorless color; imagine ash-drifts roosting above moustaches and

eyebrows like snow accumulations on boughs and bushes. This is the

reality of it.

The sun beats down with dead, blistering, relentless malignity; the

perspiration is welling from every pore in man and beast, but scarcely a

sign of it finds its way to the surface—it is absorbed before it gets

there; there is not the faintest breath of air stirring; there is not a

merciful shred of cloud in all the brilliant firmament; there is not a

living creature visible in _any_ direction whither one searches the

blank level that stretches its monotonous miles on every hand; there is

not a sound—not a sigh—not a whisper—not a buzz, or a whir of wings, or

distant pipe of bird—not even a sob from the lost souls that doubtless

people that dead air. And so the occasional sneezing of the resting

mules, and the champing of the bits, grate harshly on the grim

stillness, not dissipating the spell but accenting it and making one

feel more lonesome and forsaken than before.

The mules, under violent swearing, coaxing and whip-cracking, would make

at stated intervals a “spurt,” and drag the coach a hundred or may be

two hundred yards, stirring up a billowy cloud of dust that rolled back,

enveloping the vehicle to the wheel-tops or higher, and making it seem

afloat in a fog. Then a rest followed, with the usual sneezing and bit-

champing. Then another “spurt” of a hundred yards and another rest at

the end of it. All day long we kept this up, without water for the mules

and without ever changing the team. At least we kept it up ten hours,

which, I take it, is a day, and a pretty honest one, in an alkali

desert. It was from four in the morning till two in the afternoon. And

it was so hot! and so close! and our water canteens went dry in the

middle of the day and we got so thirsty! It was so stupid and tiresome

and dull! and the tedious hours did lag and drag and limp along with

such a cruel deliberation! It was so trying to give one’s watch a good

long undisturbed spell and then take it out and find that it had been

fooling away the time and not trying to get ahead any! The alkali dust

cut through our lips, it persecuted our eyes, it ate through the

delicate membranes and made our noses bleed and _kept_ them bleeding—and

truly and seriously the romance all faded far away and disappeared, and

left the desert trip nothing but a harsh reality—a thirsty, sweltering,

longing, hateful reality!

Two miles and a quarter an hour for ten hours—that was what we

accomplished. It was hard to bring the comprehension away down to such a

snail-pace as that, when we had been used to making eight and ten miles

an hour. When we reached the station on the farther verge of the desert,

we were glad, for the first time, that the dictionary was along, because

we never could have found language to tell how glad we were, in any sort

of dictionary but an unabridged one with pictures in it. But there could

not have been found in a whole library of dictionaries language

sufficient to tell how tired those mules were after their twenty-three

mile pull. To try to give the reader an idea of how _thirsty_ they were,

would be to “gild refined gold or paint the lily.”

Somehow, now that it is there, the quotation does not seem to fit—but no

matter, let it stay, anyhow. I think it is a graceful and attractive

thing, and therefore have tried time and time again to work it in where

it _would_ fit, but could not succeed. These efforts have kept my mind

distracted and ill at ease, and made my narrative seem broken and

disjointed, in places. Under these circumstances it seems to me best to

leave it in, as above, since this will afford at least a temporary

respite from the wear and tear of trying to “lead up” to this really apt

and beautiful quotation.

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CHAPTER XIX.

On the morning of the sixteenth day out from St. Joseph we arrived at

the entrance of Rocky Canyon, two hundred and fifty miles from Salt

Lake. It was along in this wild country somewhere, and far from any

habitation of white men, except the stage stations, that we came across

the wretchedest type of mankind I have ever seen, up to this writing. I

refer to the Goshoot Indians. From what we could see and all we could

learn, they are very considerably inferior to even the despised Digger

Indians of California; inferior to all races of savages on our

continent; inferior to even the Terra del Fuegans; inferior to the

Hottentots, and actually inferior in some respects to the Kytches of

Africa. Indeed, I have been obliged to look the bulky volumes of Wood’s

“Uncivilized Races of Men” clear through in order to find a savage tribe

degraded enough to take rank with the Goshoots. I find but one people

fairly open to that shameful verdict. It is the Bosjesmans (Bushmen) of

South Africa. Such of the Goshoots as we saw, along the road and hanging

about the stations, were small, lean, “scrawny” creatures; in complexion

a dull black like the ordinary American negro; their faces and hands

bearing dirt which they had been hoarding and accumulating for months,

years, and even generations, according to the age of the proprietor; a

silent, sneaking, treacherous looking race; taking note of everything,

covertly, like all the other “Noble Red Men” that we (do not) read

about, and betraying no sign in their countenances; indolent,

everlastingly patient and tireless, like all other Indians; prideless

beggars—for if the beggar instinct were left out of an Indian he would

not “go,” any more than a clock without a pendulum; hungry, always

hungry, and yet never refusing anything that a hog would eat, though

often eating what a hog would decline; hunters, but having no higher

ambition than to kill and eat jack-ass rabbits, crickets and

grasshoppers, and embezzle carrion from the buzzards and cayotes;

savages who, when asked if they have the common Indian belief in a Great

Spirit show a something which almost amounts to emotion, thinking

whiskey is referred to; a thin, scattering race of almost naked black

children, these Goshoots are, who produce nothing at all, and have no

villages, and no gatherings together into strictly defined tribal

communities—a people whose only shelter is a rag cast on a bush to keep

off a portion of the snow, and yet who inhabit one of the most rocky,

wintry, repulsive wastes that our country or any other can exhibit.

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The Bushmen and our Goshoots are manifestly descended from the self-same

gorilla, or kangaroo, or Norway rat, whichever animal-Adam the

Darwinians trace them to.

One would as soon expect the rabbits to fight as the Goshoots, and yet

they used to live off the offal and refuse of the stations a few months

and then come some dark night when no mischief was expected, and burn

down the buildings and kill the men from ambush as they rushed out. And

once, in the night, they attacked the stage-coach when a District Judge,

of Nevada Territory, was the only passenger, and with their first volley

of arrows (and a bullet or two) they riddled the stage curtains, wounded

a horse or two and mortally wounded the driver. The latter was full of

pluck, and so was his passenger. At the driver’s call Judge Mott swung

himself out, clambered to the box and seized the reins of the team, and

away they plunged, through the racing mob of skeletons and under a

hurtling storm of missiles. The stricken driver had sunk down on the

boot as soon as he was wounded, but had held on to the reins and said he

would manage to keep hold of them until relieved.

And after they were taken from his relaxing grasp, he lay with his head

between Judge Mott’s feet, and tranquilly gave directions about the

road; he said he believed he could live till the miscreants were outrun

and left behind, and that if he managed that, the main difficulty would

be at an end, and then if the Judge drove so and so (giving directions

about bad places in the road, and general course) he would reach the

next station without trouble. The Judge distanced the enemy and at last

rattled up to the station and knew that the night’s perils were done;

but there was no comrade-in-arms for him to rejoice with, for the

soldierly driver was dead.

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Let us forget that we have been saying harsh things about the Overland

drivers, now. The disgust which the Goshoots gave me, a disciple of

Cooper and a worshipper of the Red Man—even of the scholarly savages in

the “Last of the Mohicans” who are fittingly associated with

backwoodsmen who divide each sentence into two equal parts: one part

critically grammatical, refined and choice of language, and the other

part just such an attempt to talk like a hunter or a mountaineer, as a

Broadway clerk might make after eating an edition of Emerson Bennett’s

works and studying frontier life at the Bowery Theatre a couple of

weeks—I say that the nausea which the Goshoots gave me, an Indian

worshipper, set me to examining authorities, to see if perchance I had

been over-estimating the Red Man while viewing him through the mellow

moonshine of romance. The revelations that came were disenchanting. It

was curious to see how quickly the paint and tinsel fell away from him

and left him treacherous, filthy and repulsive—and how quickly the

evidences accumulated that wherever one finds an Indian tribe he has

only found Goshoots more or less modified by circumstances and

surroundings—but Goshoots, after all. They deserve pity, poor creatures;

and they can have mine—at this distance. Nearer by, they never get

anybody’s.

There is an impression abroad that the Baltimore and Washington Railroad

Company and many of its employees are Goshoots; but it is an error.

There is only a plausible resemblance, which, while it is apt enough to

mislead the ignorant, cannot deceive parties who have contemplated both

tribes. But seriously, it was not only poor wit, but very wrong to start

the report referred to above; for however innocent the motive may have

been, the necessary effect was to injure the reputation of a class who

have a hard enough time of it in the pitiless deserts of the Rocky

Mountains, Heaven knows! If we cannot find it in our hearts to give

those poor naked creatures our Christian sympathy and compassion, in

God’s name let us at least not throw mud at them.

CHAPTER XX.

On the seventeenth day we passed the highest mountain peaks we had yet

seen, and although the day was very warm the night that followed upon

its heels was wintry cold and blankets were next to useless.

On the eighteenth day we encountered the eastward-bound telegraph-

constructors at Reese River station and sent a message to his Excellency

Gov. Nye at Carson City (distant one hundred and fifty-six miles).

On the nineteenth day we crossed the Great American Desert—forty

memorable miles of bottomless sand, into which the coach wheels sunk

from six inches to a foot. We worked our passage most of the way across.

That is to say, we got out and walked. It was a dreary pull and a long

and thirsty one, for we had no water. From one extremity of this desert

to the other, the road was white with the bones of oxen and horses. It

would hardly be an exaggeration to say that we could have walked the

forty miles and set our feet on a bone at every step! The desert was one

prodigious graveyard. And the log-chains, wagon tyres, and rotting

wrecks of vehicles were almost as thick as the bones. I think we saw

log-chains enough rusting there in the desert, to reach across any State

in the Union. Do not these relics suggest something of an idea of the

fearful suffering and privation the early emigrants to California

endured?

At the border of the Desert lies Carson Lake, or The “Sink” of the

Carson, a shallow, melancholy sheet of water some eighty or a hundred

miles in circumference. Carson River empties into it and is lost—sinks

mysteriously into the earth and never appears in the light of the sun

again—for the lake has no outlet whatever.

There are several rivers in Nevada, and they all have this mysterious

fate. They end in various lakes or “sinks,” and that is the last of

them. Carson Lake, Humboldt Lake, Walker Lake, Mono Lake, are all great

sheets of water without any visible outlet. Water is always flowing into

them; none is ever seen to flow out of them, and yet they remain always

level full, neither receding nor overflowing. What they do with their

surplus is only known to the Creator.

On the western verge of the Desert we halted a moment at Ragtown. It

consisted of one log house and is not set down on the map.

This reminds me of a circumstance. Just after we left Julesburg, on the

Platte, I was sitting with the driver, and he said:

“I can tell you a most laughable thing indeed, if you would like to

listen to it. Horace Greeley went over this road once. When he was

leaving Carson City he told the driver, Hank Monk, that he had an

engagement to lecture at Placerville and was very anxious to go through

quick. Hank Monk cracked his whip and started off at an awful pace. The

coach bounced up and down in such a terrific way that it jolted the

buttons all off of Horace’s coat, and finally shot his head clean

through the roof of the stage, and then he yelled at Hank Monk and

begged him to go easier—said he warn’t in as much of a hurry as he was

awhile ago. But Hank Monk said, ‘Keep your seat, Horace, and I’ll get

you there on time’—and you bet you he did, too, what was left of him!”

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