A LIVELY COMMENCEMENT--THE FIGHT IN THE DESERT--EXTERMINATION OF A
BAND OF CUT-THROATS--THE CAVALRY SABRE--A CONTRAST--PERMITTED TO
RETIRE AND RECEIVING PROMOTION--A LITTLE LOVE--CHANCE AND
TROUBLE--WHAT CAME OF IT--"SMOKING OUT A VARMINT"--A FEW
PRISONERS--THE INDIAN AGENT--NEW FRUIT ON A TREE--ALONE ON A
TRAIL--THE END.
After a brief council, in which Captain Smith, Harry Arnold, and myself
were the principal ones who took a part, it was determined to surround
them on the side where we then were, and immediately day had broken, to
drive them to the desert. By doing this, we calculated scarcely one of
them would have a chance of escaping.
"At last, Mose!" said Le Roy, who happened to be near me, "we have the
blood-thirsty devils! and may God not spare me, if I fail to kill, while
a single one of them is left alive."
He scarcely seemed to be aware of the meaning of his muttered words. But
I knew of what he was thinking. It was of the death of Al. Simmons.
In some forty minutes the necessary orders had been given, and we had
advanced nearly within gun-shot of them. We had moved into our position
with the most complete silence. What had startled the Indians, I was and
still am unable to imagine. They had, however, discovered our approach,
and yelling out their war-whoop, dashed towards us, on our centre. It
was just light enough for them to make out our strength. When they
found this, they recoiled, and, almost at the same instant, made a
charge upon our left. For some few minutes the boys and soldiers on that
side of our position had lively work, and then, finding out that there
also we were too strong for them, the red-skins started out on the
desert.
We pursued them leisurely for some six miles. Then putting the spur to
our horses, we galloped up and surrounded them.
It was now daylight. We could see the work before us.
Justice must be done even to such a rascally set of murdering thieves as
Smoke-creek Sam's gang. When caught, they did fight, as I honestly
believe no Pah-utes have ever before done. However, the blue-coated
servants of Uncle Sam and the Buckskin Rangers fought better. The
soldiers rode amongst the red-skins, hewing them down with their sabres,
while our boys were equally busy with revolver and knife.
This had scarcely been going on for as many minutes as we had covered
miles of the desert, when I marked one Indian. From descriptions of
Smoke-creek Sam, which we had almost all of us heard, I determined that
this must be the scoundrel, and rode up to him. I was lying on the side
of my horse when he saw me. Lifting his revolver, he fired three or four
shots at me as rapidly as he could.
The last of these crashed through the skull of the noble brute, that had
borne me so well and gallantly for so many years. I felt, even at the
moment in which he fell--in spite of the enemy who were in the front and
on all sides of me--a cruel pang.
It so happened that when I fell, Arnold was near me and had seen the
shot take effect on the animal I was mounted on. He knew how greatly I
valued the gift of Jack Bird, not simply on account of the giver, but on
its own account. I heard his voice, as the report of his own pistol rang
on the ear, almost immediately following that of the red-skin's. Giving
utterance to a fierce cry, he yelled out:
"You have killed the Tipton Slasher. Take that, you red devil!"
Harry's ball had broken the right arm of Smoke-creek Sam, and he had
gone to grass as it struck him, or, at all events, I thought so. The red
ruffian had certainly fallen, and, extricating myself from the panting
body of my dying horse, I leapt towards him for the purpose of raising
his hair. While I was in the act of doing this, I saw that he was not
yet dead. With a desperate clutch of his left hand, he was trying to
grasp the revolver which had fallen from his maimed limb upon the
ground. It was lying a trifle beyond his reach, and before I had time
even to think of putting him out of his misery, I saw the gleam of a
cavalry sabre flashing through the air.
The blade fell.
In another instant, the savagely brutal head of Smoke-creek Sam was
hanging from his shorn neck, attached to it merely by a small portion of
bleeding flesh. At the same moment when this was effected, a voice
shrieked out:
"Buckeeskin Mose, he now see whether Shoshonee John fight. Think him
kill heap."
There was clearly no more reason for doubting the sincerity of our
Indian ally.
"Smoke-creek Sam?"
This demand was made by me with an inquiring gesture, as, in doing so,
I extended to him the scalp I had just lifted. Looking first at it, and
then at the head he had so nearly severed from the body it belonged to,
as if to make sure of their former connection, he replied:
"Heap sure."
The answering affirmative was uttered with a sententious gravity,
exemplarily characteristic of his red ancestry, as Cooper has painted
similar races long since wiped out by our rushing civilization. Striding
from us, he then looked around the battle-field for more of his
brethren, upon whom he could display the reality of his detestation of
them, as well as his capacity as a headsman.
However, by this time the strife was well-nigh over. Not one of
Smoke-creek Sam's gang could be seen standing upon his feet. The hard
soil of the desert, for more than quarter of a mile square, was strown
with their dead bodies. Eighty-one of the merciless scoundrels had paid
with an honorable end for their bloodily disgusting crimes. Not a single
red-skin had escaped from the bullet or the sabre. The band of torturing
and villanous cut-throats and murderers had been totally exterminated.
In this instance also, I can justly say, as I have done in Colonel
Connor's battle on Bear River, that Captain Smith, although an officer
in the regular service, did his work well and thoroughly.
The Pah-utes, however, had not been reduced to tranquillity. As I have
earlier explained, this gang was merely a section of that tribe whose
atrocities and lawlessness had compelled their expulsion from it. Not,
indeed, their atrocity and lawlessness against us, the white settlers,
but that which they displayed at the expense of their red brethren.
Scarcely had I returned and been, for a short time, in the society of my
little wife, settled down in Susanville, when an incident occurred which
fully demonstrated this fact.
At this time, a body of Uncle Sam's blue-coats were stationed in the
vicinity of Summit Lake. The cavalry was under the command of Captain
Hall, and the infantry under that of Captain Meyers. It happened that
two of our most prominent citizens were crossing the mountains, some
four miles nearer than this post, when they were attacked by a party of
red-skins. The leg of one of them, named Kesler, was broken by a
rifle-ball at the first volley aimed at them by the attacking Indians.
The other of the men was possessed of cool courage and indomitable
pluck. This was Frank Drake. No sooner did he see his companion fall,
than he asked briefly:
"Are you wounded?"
"The red cusses have broken my leg, Drake!"
"Yer must be off, then."
"How on airth can I?"
"We'll soon see," cried Frank cheerily.
Cutting one of the horses loose from their team, he helped Kesler on to
it, in spite of the bullets which were rattling on the other side of the
wagon. Then, bidding him ride to the Lake to ask for assistance from the
soldiers, he proposed to fight it out alone with the Indians. Kesler
remonstrated vainly with him. Giving to the horse he had cut loose a
heavy lash with the whip he had previously been using, he said:
"Go, yer darned fool, unless yer wish both on us to be done for, by the
red skunks."
The animal started with Kesler, followed by a pelting shower of bullets.
None of them, however, struck either him or the horse. This unusual
hint, in all probability, accelerated the speed of the latter, for he
seems to have made good time. In about twenty minutes, Kesler arrived at
the place where the blue-coats were stationed, and on seeing Captain
Hall, told him the situation in which he had left Frank Drake, and
begged him to send his friend "help at once." This officer replied in
the usual official slang of the Plains:
"I've lost no Indians, and I'll be hung, if I'm going to trot out my men
for nothing."
"Nothing! Hain't I told yer Frank Drake is fighting the red devils, by
himself?"
"By this time," was Hall's reply, "the man is killed. We shan't find
him."
In spite of this refusal, in which Uncle Sam's servant persisted, some
few of his men, accompanied by several settlers who chanced to be
present, at once mounted their horses and galloped off, leaving Kesler
behind, to have his leg attended to by the army surgeon, if the post
rejoiced in such an appendage. This is by no means invariably the case.
The party galloping to save the plucky Frank Drake, made even better
speed than his companion had done.
No sooner were their rapidly advancing hoofs heard, than the cowardly
Indians fled.
Upon arriving at the point where the team had been left standing, they,
at first, saw no living creature save one of the remaining horses. Frank
Drake was found by them stretched under the wagon. When the red-skins
ran, he knew relief was at hand, and had fainted away from loss of
blood. Wounded in almost every part of his body as he was, by great
luck, not one of the holes made by the Pah-utes was dangerous. Two of
them were lying dead on the farther side of the road; and when he
revived, he told those who had rescued him he thought he had seen a
third of them carried away as they were approaching.
The preceding incident of frontier life is mentioned by me for the
purpose of striking a just balance with regard to the protection
afforded the settlements by the Government. This will be the better
appreciated by the reader, when he hears I have been told that Captain
Smith was "permitted to retire," while Captain Hall has since received
the reward due to his services, by promotion.
Let me, before closing this volume, relate another incident which
displays, in an even more striking light, the love for Uncle Sam's
relatives which is so very generally exhibited by his servants.
Some time in 1865 or 1866, a family had moved into Honey Lake Valley
consisting of an old man and his wife, with a daughter, whose charming
face and winning manners might have entitled her to a place in far
better society than Susanville could by any possibility afford her. The
name of the family was Pierson. Their child was called Hattie. They had
settled on a ranche just below Laithrop's place and near the Hot
Springs. Butch' Hasbrouck had, shortly after the family arrived, become
acquainted with them, and greatly to the pleasure of the parents, had
made arrangements to reside under their roof.
Of course, such fair readers as I may not have terrified into closing
this volume, by the too bloody tales I have written out in these pages,
will readily enough divine the reason which had led him so quickly into
an intimacy with the parents and their daughter.
Hasbrouck loved Hattie Pierson.
He had, I believe, told me, only, of his happiness when he became
engaged to her. Certainly, it was not generally known. She was still so
young, that her father had insisted upon the marriage being deferred
until the following year.
In the meantime, Hattie's beauty had attracted other admirers.
These she had managed to make understand that she did not love them,
without inflicting upon them, or her own kindly and gentle nature, the
pain of a refusal. One of them was, however, more obstinately
pertinacious. This was a man of the name of Cockrell, who, in spite of
every hint she had given him, persisted in his attentions, and at last
made her an offer of marriage. Being thus cornered, as it were, the girl
was compelled to refuse him. In the hope of softening her refusal by
giving him a positive reason for it, she blushingly owned that she was
engaged to Butch' Hasbrouck. She had learnt to give him the same
appellation which all his friends had so long done.
What was her horror when Cockrell burst into a furious fit of passion,
not only reproaching her in the vilest manner, but swearing not only to
kill him but the girl also.
When this occurred, Butch' had been absent with the Rangers. This was
only for a short time, and on his return, Hattie told him how Cockrell
had terrified her. Her lover comforted her by laughing away her fears.
However, on the next day, he made his appearance where I was living, and
asked me to go with him in search of this man.
"What for, Butch'?" I asked.
"Nare yer mind, Mose! When I find the darned cuss, yer'll know, soon
enough."
Of course, I went with him. But our search was a fruitless one. Cockrell
had disappeared from Susanville the day before. No sooner had he heard
that the Rangers had returned than he had quitted the place. When
Hasbrouck found that this was positively so, he frankly told me the
reason which induced him to search for the fellow.
"But if you had found him, Butch', what was it you meant to do?"
"What war it I meant to do? In course, shoot the darned blackguard."
Up to this moment, he had been as cool as a cucumber, or, rather, as the
winter snow on Bear River during my campaign in that locality. Your
quiet men are always dangerous, and so I told him. At the same time, I
consoled him with the reflection that Cockrell's conduct had proved this
fact. After abusing little Hattie Pierson like a dastardly cur, he had
cleared out, immediately after the return of her plighted lover.
"P'raps yer're right, Mose!"
"I know I am, my boy! A white liver always tells. So has his."
"The varmint has run tu the nearest hole he could find," he said with a
smile.
"If we catch him, we'll smoke him out."
We both laughed, and we were both wrong to laugh. In the following year,
we again went upon the Humboldt, and shortly after we had done so, old
Mr. Pierson decided to move further south, to Winamucca Valley, near Red
Rock. When the family were passing up the east side of Honey Lake, they
were attacked by Indians and all of them were murdered. When found, the
body of the old man was literally riddled with bullets. Mrs. Pierson and
Hattie were lying in each other's arms, clasped tightly, as if in the
effort to shield each other from death. They had been slain in the same
manner.
Intelligence of this was brought to us. And I can never forget the
effect it had upon Butch' Hasbrouck when he heard it.
His face became lividly white, in spite of the tanning by exposure it
had so long had. Without a word, he turned, lifted his rifle and his
shot-pouch, took a small bag which he filled with parched corn, and was
leaving us. Throwing my arm around his neck, I said:
"Where are you going?"
"After them as killed my Hattie."
"Do you think I shall not go with you?" I asked.
"Hand H'i too?" exclaimed Brighton Bill.
Arnold and Painter were already preparing to accompany him, and, in less
than an hour, we were all upon the homeward road.
Our search was, for some two weeks, completely in vain. Although, near
the scene of the murder, keen eyes could make out the trail, it was lost
at a short distance from it, owing to the rocky nature of the soil.
However, where we had first seen it, Butch' affirmed that he had
discovered the track of a white man. Arnold and myself thought as he
did. If so, this man was Cockrell. The belief in this fact made
Hasbrouck untiring in his attempt to recover the trail.
In spite of every effort on his part and ours, we were unable to do so.
It was a providential chance which enabled us, at last, to fasten upon a
portion of the guilty parties. These were, unfortunately, all red-skins.
One morning, while on Willow Creek, we fell in with five Pah-utes. It
was a surprise party both for them and us, and a luckless surprise for
the red-skins. There was no chance for their showing fight. We were
nearly five times their own number. Neither could they fly; we had
surrounded them. Butch' had at once recognized upon them portions of old
Pierson's clothing and some of Hattie's trinkets. We could not shoot
them down in cold blood, and after a brief council, decided upon
disarming and taking them with us as prisoners to Susanville. Had
Cockrell been with them, I honestly believe he would never have left the
spot alive. Hasbrouck would certainly have slain him where he stood.
Nevertheless, he made no opposition to our present purpose. In his
horror and wrath at the crime of the white scoundrel, he seemed to pass
over that of the red devils who had aided him in accomplishing it, as
scarcely worthy of notice.
Accordingly, they were taken to Susanville and placed in a species of
lock-up which there did duty as a jail.
As we quitted Willow Creek, it may perhaps be mentioned that one of the
red ruffians appealed to us to let him go, on the score that he had done
nothing but "shoot him gun into old white man." This plea of innocence
was necessarily unattended to.
We had intended to give them a fair trial, and it was to come off very
quickly. It is only in large cities that justice is slow and dilatory.
But on the morning immediately preceding the day which had been fixed
for it, I mean the second morning of their imprisonment, Harry Arnold,
in company with Butch' Hasbrouck, met me. It was in front of J. I.
Steward's hotel. The former said:
"Cap! we were coming to see you."
"What is up now?"
He had given me the rank I had held when out with the Rangers. This he
seldom did, even then, unless we were in active and trying pursuit of
the red-skins. What did it mean?
"Wall, Mose, du yer want the infarnal red cusses who helped murder my
Hattie to git clean off?" demanded Butch'.
"Certainly not!"
"Shut up, Butch'," exclaimed Harry, "until we are somewhere, where none
can hear a word you are saying."
"Ye're jist right. I will."
When Arnold spoke last, I noticed that his strong fingers had grasped
the arm of his companion, tightly. Moreover, I was enabled to remark
that the face of the latter had more of its old vitality. This was,
however, at present, by no means of an alluringly agreeable character.
His eyes seemed to have the very devil in them. When he replied to
Harry, he strode rapidly up the street. Arnold and myself followed him,
until we had passed the last house or log shanty in it, and had reached
a clear and open spot. Here I came to a dead halt.
"And now, man, what is it you have to tell me?"
"Du yer know the skunk the folks in Washington sent to Pyramid Lake,
last fall, as [3]Injun agint?"
"Yes!"
"What d'yer think he's a' goin' tu du with the cuss'd red devils we
cotched up thar," as he said this, he gave a jerk with his thumb in the
direction leading to it, "at Willier Crik?"
"What can he do with them?"
"He's a' goin' to rin 'em off to-morrer, on to the Resarvation. So we
can't du nothing with them," Hasbrouck replied savagely.
"You must be dreaming, Butch'," I exclaimed angrily. "The thieving
scoundrel doesn't dare do it."
"Doesn't he?" asked Arnold, with a bitter smile. "Why! he isn't even one
of Uncle Sam's blue-coats!"
Arnold then explained to me how the other Ranger had learned that this
plan had actually been decided upon, and gave me the names of some of
our more timidly loyal fellow-citizens, who had been induced by the
agent to guarantee him their support. What was there for us to do? This
fellow actually represented our respected Uncle! He had probably called
for the assistance of the regulars stationed in the vicinity of
Susanville. Little doubt, perhaps, existed in our minds that our boys
could have whipped them with the help of their friends, who, I firmly
believe, would have turned out in mass, at such a call as we might have
made. But this would have been insurrection, or treason, or something of
the sort. I could see nothing left for us to do, but to grin and bear
it. That was a natural necessity.
But somehow or other, on that night the matter was removed from our
hands, as well as that of the Indian agent aforesaid. While we were all
sleeping the sound slumber of law-abiding citizens of the United States,
a party of masked men overpowered the jailer, and broke into the
prison.
On the next morning, a fine tree which stood at the side of Albert
Smith's dwelling-house bore a new kind of fruit. The red-skins who had
murdered Hattie Pierson and her parents were dangling from its branches.
They had paid for their crime with its legitimate penalty.
It was a sound and vigorous specimen of frontier justice.
Suspicion pointed its finger at many of my fellow-citizens, possibly,
myself included. The Indian agent was furious. But the perpetrators of
this act of justice, outside of law, kept their own counsel. Up to the
present, as I have reason to know, suspicion has failed to obtain
positive proof of the hands that hung the five Pah-ute assassins.
This volume is now drawing to a close, as in 1869 I quitted that portion
of the country in which I had so long been residing. Nevertheless, in
the preceding year, one more bloody act occurred which it may be
necessary to record. Hiram Partridge and Vesper Coburn were at this
period keeping the station at Deep Hole Springs, to which my pilgrimage
in the winter of 1861 with lame Tom Bear may be remembered by any one
who has not shrunken from my company up to the present time. Hiram was a
cousin of John Partridge, and had once been a partner with me in working
my claim at the mines on the Humboldt. Vesper Coburn was an old
schoolfellow and playmate of mine, when we were no more than children.
Consequently, I no sooner heard of their murder than I determined, were
it within my power, to avenge it.
Previous to this, the organization of the Buckskin Rangers had been
broken up.
Susanville had somewhat declined from its old prosperity. If the
settlement round Honey Lake had been growing at all, it was certainly
not doing so, at its right end. Montana had sprung into sudden
prominence, Idaho was greatly increasing in wealth and the number of its
inhabitants, while other places in the surrounding section of the
country, to the south and west, were rapidly outstripping us. Many of my
old comrades had gone to the two places I have more distinctly named,
while some of them had struck on beyond, as far as Lower California.
When this outrage occurred, I chanced to be at Reno, a small town on the
line of the Central Pacific Railroad, which was then completed as far as
Salt Lake City. It is at Reno the junction is now formed with the line
for Virginia City, Nevada.
Some months had passed subsequent to the death of Partridge and Coburn,
when I encountered three red-skins in the vicinity of this place, and
recognized the horse on which one of them was mounted as Hiram's
property. Beside this, they all of them wore articles of clothing which
were decidedly not made by the Indians. Had anything else been wanting
to convince me of their being the criminals, this was supplied by my
personal knowledge of the faces of two of them. These had been in the
actual employment of the murdered men.
They started on their return to the mountains, and I followed them.
My pursuit only counted one white, all told--myself. Their number was
triple mine. The odds were sufficient to justify the weaker party in
employing stratagem. Suffice it that I did so, and counted three scalps
against the deaths of my old playmate and recent partner.
If any doubt had been entertained by me of the justice of this action,
it would have been speedily dispelled by the additional proof shortly
after afforded me. It was only a few days after my return to the
Humboldt, that a red-skin, known by me as Pah-ute Jim, accused me of
killing his brother, one of the two Indians who had been employed by my
murdered friends.
"Yes!" I unhesitatingly answered. "I did kill him, because he helped to
kill Partridge and Coburn."
"Umph!" he ejaculated. "Natches heap tell 'um kill. No kill, Natches
heap kill Injin."
Natches, I ought possibly to mention, was, at this time, the chief of
the Pah-utes.
* * * * *
With this incident, I may fairly conclude. My Indian hunting, trapping,
and fighting ended with it. Since this I have been engaged in mining and
other pursuits, having resided for some length of time in Salt Lake City
among the Mormons. Should my first literary venture, my dear reader,
prove tolerably successful, Heaven only can tell whether it may not be
followed by another. If so, it is just within the range of possibility,
I may turn from Indian fighting to Mormon polygamy. I can scarcely say
which you may think the least interesting. But I can honestly vouch for
it, the many-wife business will be the most amusing.
FOOTNOTE:
[3] Unfortunately, I am unable to recall the name of this
individual, and therefore cannot pillory it.