“Frasier was shot and killed day before yesterday evening.”
“Oh, Frank; how did it happen?”
“Hosstetter did it, but I think he was not much to blame.”
Frasier is the man who spoke to Cash, Neelie and I, as we were watching
the wagons ferried across the Missouri River, whose son ran away
from his mother, and home, to come to his father, and go with him to
Montana. Frasier had teams and wagons for freighting, and Hosstetter
some capital to invest in freight, to take to Montana. Frasier advised
the purchase of flour, and he would freight it to Virginia City for
fifteen dollars per cwt. He said flour was worth fifty and sixty
dollars per hundred in Virginia City. (So it was in the Spring of 1864,
and as high as seventy-five and one hundred dollars per hundred, which
was the cause of a bread riot in Virginia City.)
No doubt Frasier was honest in his advice, and would have invested in
flour for himself. He charged more freight than was right, for ten and
twelve cents is the prevailing price; but then Hosstetter should have
found that out for himself.
When he found he had been imposed upon and learned that flour is
retailing at Virginia City for $15 per hundred, he was angry,
dissatisfied, and perhaps quarrelsome. Frasier was no doubt very
aggravating. They had quarreled several times, and the evening of the
3d, Frasier was heard to say to Hosstetter in a threatening tone:
“You may consider yourself lucky if you ever see Montana. You need
not expect to get any of this flour. It will take it all to pay the
freight.”
It was getting dark, and Frasier stood with one hand on a wheel as he
talked. He then got into the wagon and out again, with something in
his hand, which Hosstetter thought was a revolver in the gathering
darkness. He came back to the wheel where he had been standing when he
made the threat, and Hosstetter thought he had come to shoot him, and
fired twice, as he thought, to save his own life. Frasier fell, shot
through the brain, and died instantly.
Then it was found he had a hatchet in his hand, and had come to tighten
a tire on the wheel, which he had found loose when he laid his hand
on it. Frasier’s eldest son of fourteen years is here. There are five
children and their mother at home. Hosstetter has three children and a
wife. Eleven innocent persons to suffer, no one knows how intensely,
for that rash act.
Frasier’s son knelt beside his father’s dead body, and placing his
hand on his breast, he swore a fearful oath that he would have but
one purpose in life until his father’s death is avenged. Oh, what a
shocking ambition for so young a boy.
Frasier and Hosstetter have traveled and camped near us all the way
from Plattsmouth. When the train was organized they came into it; when
it was divided they went with the others as there were not so many of
them, and the herd was smaller.
By the time Frank and I had discussed the direful circumstances
connected with Frasier’s death, in the presence of this greater
calamity Neelie’s sickness did not seem so sad an affliction as it had
before, for she is not dead, and while there is life there is hope.
We came in sight of three corrals about eight o’clock, camping near
together.