CHARLEY HARPER
A new candidate for bloody laurels now appears in the person of Charley
Harper. He arrived in Walla Walla in the Fall of 1861. A young man of
twenty-five, of medium size, of erect carriage, clear, florid
complexion, and profuse auburn hair, he could, but for the leer in his
small inexpressive gray eye, have passed in any society for a gentleman.
His previous life is a sealed book;—but the readiness with which he
engaged in crime showed that he was not without experience. He told his
landlord that he had no money, but that partners were coming who would
relieve his necessities. The second night after his arrival, several
hundred dollars in gold coin was stolen from a lodger who occupied the
room adjoining his. While intoxicated the next day, he exhibited by the
handful eagles which he said were borrowed from an acquaintance. No one
doubted that he had stolen them; but where officers were believed to
wink at crime, prosecution was useless. Charley was not even arrested
upon suspicion. The money he had obtained introduced him to the society
of the roughs, with whom he became so popular that he aspired to be
their leader. This honor was disputed by Ridgely, whom we left wounded
in the last chapter, and by Cherokee Bob, both of whom claimed
precedence from longer residence and greater familiarity with the
opportunities for distinction.
Circumstances soon occurred which enabled Charley, without disputation,
to assume the role of chief of the Walla Walla desperadoes. Cherokee
Bob, heretofore mentioned as an associate of Plummer at Lewiston, was an
uneducated Southerner. His mother was a half-blood Cherokee,—hence his
name. With a hatred of the North and the Northern soldiery born of
prejudice and ignorance, and a constitutional faith in the superior
prowess of the Southern people, and with mercurial passions inflamed by
the contest that was still raging, this ruffian was nearly a maniac in
his adherence to the cause of Secession. He could talk or think of
little else than the great inferiority of the Northern to the Southern
soldiers, and was continually boasting of his own superior physical
power. He would often taunt the soldiers of the garrison near Walla
Walla. In ingenuity of vaunting expression, he far excelled Captain
Bobadil himself;—but like that hero of dramatic fiction he was destined
to experience a reverse more humiliating, if possible, than that of his
great prototype. With shotgun in hand and revolver in his belt, it was
his frequent boast that he could take a negro along with him, carrying
two baskets loaded with pistols, and put to flight the bravest regiment
of the Federal army.
No person who has witnessed a theatrical performance in a mining camp
can forget the general din and noise with which the audience fill up the
intervals between the acts. Whistling, singing, hooting, yelling, and a
general shuffling of feet and moving about are so invariable as to form,
in fact, a feature of the performance. So long as they are unaccompanied
by quarrelsome demonstrations, and do not become too boisterous, efforts
are seldom made to suppress them. The boys are permitted to have a good
time in their own way, and the lookers-on, accustomed to the scene, are
often compensated for any annoyance that may be occasioned, by strokes
of border humor more enjoyable than the play itself.
Cherokee Bob, eager for an opportunity when he could wreak his demoniac
wrath upon some of the Federal soldiers, with the aid and complicity of
Deputy Sheriff Porter, who like himself was a Secessionist, contrived
the following plan as favorable to his purpose; it was agreed between
them, that on a certain evening Bob and his friends should attend the
theatre, fully armed. Porter, under pretext of quelling disturbances
between the acts, should by his insulting language and manner provoke an
affray with the soldiers present, in the progress of which he would
command Bob and those with him to assist, and thus under the seeming
protection of law, save them from the consequences of any acts of
vengeance they desired to commit. On the evening appointed, six or seven
soldiers were seated side by side in the pit, a single one occupying a
seat in the gallery behind them. Porter was near them, and Bob and his
associates in a position convenient to him. When the curtain fell upon
the first act, the usual noises commenced, the soldiers joining in
making them. Porter sprang from his seat, and striding in front of them,
vociferated,
“Dry up there, you brass-mounted hirelings, or I’ll snatch you
bald-headed.”
This insulting language produced the desired effect. Smarting under the
implied reproach it conveyed, one of the soldiers sharply inquired,
“Why do you single us out, when there are others more boisterous?”
Porter waited for no further provocation, but drawing and cocking his
revolver with one hand, and seizing the soldier nearest to him with the
other, he dragged him ignominiously into the circle where he was
standing, ordering the deputy city marshal and Bob and his friends to
assist in arresting him. The soldiers offered resistance. An immediate
_mêlée_ was the consequence. The women and children in the audience
screamed in affright. The other soldiers present rushed with drawn
pistols to the rescue of their comrade. The one in the gallery sprang
upon one of the officers with the ferocity of a wild beast. Cherokee Bob
with a pistol in one hand and a bowie-knife in the other, his voice
wildly ringing above all other sounds, was in his true element. More
than a dozen pistol shots followed in quick succession. Two of the
soldiers were killed, and others fearfully mangled. Porter and his
deputy assistant were each shot through a leg, the latter crippled for
life. The work of blood was progressing, and but for the interference of
an officer of the garrison, would have ended only with the death of the
assassins.
The next day the soldiers appealed to their commanding officer for
redress. He ordered those of them engaged in the affray to be placed
under arrest, and dismissed the subject from his thoughts. Indignant at
this unexpected treatment, about fifty of the soldiers armed themselves,
and marched into town, with the determination to capture and hang
Cherokee Bob, whom they knew to be the chief mover of the murderous
assault. Disavowing all riotous intentions they informed the citizens of
their design and commenced a thorough search for the murderer. He,
meanwhile, fearful of their revenge, eluded them by leaving the town
before the dawn of morning on a stolen horse, for Lewiston.
The year before his appearance in Walla Walla, Ridgely was living in
Sacramento. During his sojourn there he acquired notoriety for his
thievish and villainous propensities. One of the police corps, detecting
him in the commission of a larceny, arrested him. He was convicted, and
sentenced to imprisonment in the county jail. He vowed revenge against
Gilchrist the policeman, but on his release fled to the gold mines. Soon
after his arrival at Walla Walla he fell in with his old enemy, and
secretly renewed the determination to take his life. Calling upon a
friend to accompany him, he boldly entered a saloon where he knew
Gilchrist to be and fired several shots at him. Gilchrist fell at the
first fire. Ridgely, believing he had killed him, left the saloon,
saying as he went, “I have thrown a load off my mind, and now feel
easy.” Gilchrist was badly wounded, but recovered. Ridgely, escaping
arrest on the night of the assault, crossed the river into Oregon the
next day, beyond the jurisdiction of the authorities of Walla Walla,
which was in Washington Territory. Thence he went to Lewiston and joined
Plummer.
Cherokee Bob and Ridgely being out of the way, Charley Harper, as next
in rank on the scale of villainous preferment, became the Walla Walla
chief.