Boone Helm--_A Murderer, Cannibal, and Robber_--_A Typical Specimen of
Absolute Human Depravity_.
Henry Plummer was what might be called a good instance of the gentleman
desperado, if such a thing be possible; a man of at least a certain
amount of refinement, and certainly one who, under different
surroundings, might have led a different life. For the sake of contrast,
if for nothing else, we may take the case of Boone Helm, one of
Plummer's gang, who was the opposite of Plummer in every way except the
readiness to rob and kill. Boone Helm was bad, and nothing in the world
could ever have made him anything but bad. He was, by birth and
breeding, low, coarse, cruel, animal-like and utterly depraved, and for
him no name but ruffian can fitly apply.
Helm was born in Kentucky, but his family moved to Missouri during his
early youth, so that the boy was brought up on the borderland between
civilization and the savage frontier; for this was about the time of the
closing days of the old Santa Fé Trail, and the towns of Independence
and Westport were still sending out their wagon trains to the far
mountain regions. By the time Boone Helm was grown, and soon after his
marriage, the great gold craze of California broke out, and he joined
the rush westward. Already he was a murderer, and already he had a
reputation as a quarrelsome and dangerous man. He was of powerful build
and turbulent temper, delighting in nothing so much as feats of
strength, skill, and hardihood. His community was glad to be rid of him,
as was, indeed, any community in which he ever lived.
In the California diggings, Helm continued the line of life mapped out
for him from birth. He met men of his own kidney there, and was ever
ready for a duel with weapons. In this way he killed several men, no one
knows how many; but this sort of thing was so common in the case of so
many men in those days that little attention was paid to it. It must
have been a very brutal murder which at length caused him to flee the
Coast to escape the vengeance of the miners. He headed north and east,
after a fashion of the times following the California boom, and was
bound for the mountain placers in 1853, when he is recorded as appearing
at the Dalles, Oregon. He and a half-dozen companions, whom he had
picked up on the way, and most of whom were strangers to each other, now
started out for Fort Hall, Idaho, intending to go from there to a point
below Salt Lake City.
The beginning of the terrible mountain winter season caught these men
somewhere west of the main range in eastern Oregon, in the depths of as
rugged a mountain region as any of the West. They were on horseback, and
so could carry small provisions; but in some way they pushed on deeper
and deeper into the mountains, until they got to the Bannack river,
where they were attacked by Indians and chased into a country none of
them knew. At last they got over east as far as the Soda Springs on the
Bear river, where they were on well-known ground. By this time, however,
their horses had given out, and their food was exhausted. They killed
their horses, made snowshoes with the hides, and sought to reach Fort
Hall. The party was now reduced to one of those awful starving marches
of the wilderness which are now and then chronicled in Western life.
This meant that the weak must perish where they fell.
The strength of Helm and one of the others, Burton, enabled them to push
on ahead, leaving their companions behind in the mountains. Almost
within reach of Fort Hall, Burton gave out and was left behind in an
abandoned cabin. Helm pushed on into the old stockade, but found it also
abandoned for the winter season, and he could get no food there. He then
went back to where he had left Burton, and, according to his own report,
he was trying to get wood for a fire when he heard a pistol-shot and
returned to find that Burton had killed himself. He stayed on at this
spot, and, like a hyena, preyed upon the dead body of his companion. He
ate one leg of the body, and then, wrapping up the other in a piece of
old shirt, threw it across his shoulder and started on further east. He
had, before this on the march, declared to the party that he had
practiced cannibalism at an earlier time, and proposed to do so again if
it became necessary on this trip across the mountains. His calm threat
was now verified. Helm was found at last at an Indian camp by John W.
Powell, who learned that he was as hard a character as he had ever run
across. None the less, he took care of Helm, gave him food and clothes,
and took him to the settlements around Salt Lake. Powell found that Helm
had a bag containing over fourteen hundred dollars in coin, which he had
carried across the divide with him through all his hardships. He would
take no pay from Helm, and the latter never even thanked him for his
kindness, but left him as soon as he reached the Mormon settlements.
Here the abandoned ruffian boasted of what he had done, and settled down
for a brief time to the customary enjoyments of the rough when in town.
He spent his money, hired out as a Danite, killed a couple of men whom
the Mormons wanted removed, and soon got so bad that he had to leave.
Once more he headed west to California, and once more he started back
north from San Francisco, for reasons satisfactory to himself. While in
California, as was later learned, he undertook to rob and kill a man at
an outlying ranch, who had taken him in and befriended him when he was
in need and in flight from vengeance. He showed no understanding of the
feeling of gratitude, no matter what was done for him or how great was
his own extremity.
In Oregon Helm went back to robbery as his customary means of support,
and he killed several men at this time of his life, how many will never
be known. In 1862, as the mountain placers were now beginning to draw
the crowds of mining men, it was natural that Boone Helm should show up
at Florence. Here he killed a man in cold blood, in treachery, while his
enemy was not armed, and after their quarrel had been compromised. This
victim was Dutch Fred, a man of reputation as a fighter, but he had
never offended Helm, who killed him at the instigation of an enemy of
his victim, and possibly for hire. He shot Fred while the latter stood
looking him in the face, unarmed, and, missing him with the first shot,
took deliberate aim with the second and murdered his man in cold blood.
This was pretty bad even for Florence, and he had to leave. That fall he
turned up far to the north, on the Fraser river, in British Columbia.
Here he was once more reduced to danger on a starving foot march in the
wilderness, and here, once more, he was guilty of eating the body of
his companion, whom he is supposed to have slain. He was sent back by
the British authorities, and for a time was held at Portland, Oregon,
for safe keeping. Later he was tried at Florence for killing Dutch Fred,
but the witnesses had disappeared, and people had long ago lost interest
in the crime by reason of others more recent. Helm escaped justice and
was supposed to have gone to Texas; but he soon appeared in the several
settlements which have been mentioned in the foregoing pages, and moved
from one to the other. He killed many more men, how many in all was
never known.
The courage and hardihood of Boone Helm were in evidence to the close of
his life. Three men of the Vigilantes did the dangerous work of
arresting him, and took him by closing in on him as he stood in the
street talking. "If I'd had a chance," said he, "or if I had guessed
what you all were up to, you'd never have taken me." He claimed not to
know what was wanted of him when brought before the judges of the
Vigilante court, and solemnly declared that he had never killed a man in
all his life! They made him kiss the Bible and swear to this over again
just to see to what lengths his perjured and depraved soul would go. He
swore on the Bible with perfect calmness! His captors were not moved by
this, and indeed Helm was little expectant that they would be. He called
aside one of them whom he knew, declined a clergyman, and confessed to a
murder or so in Missouri and in California, admitted that he had been
imprisoned once or twice, but denied that he had been a road agent. He
accused some of his warmest friends of the latter crime. Jack Gallegher,
also under arrest, heard him thus incriminate himself and others of the
gang and called him all the names in the calendar, telling him he ought
to die.
"I have looked at death in all forms," said Helm, coolly, "and I am not
afraid to die." He then asked for a glass of whiskey, as did a good many
of these murderers when they were brought to the gallows. From that time
on he was cool and unconcerned, and showed a finish worthy of one
ambitious to be thought wholly bad.
There were six thousand men assembled in Virginia City to see the
executions of these criminals, who were fast being rounded up and hung
by the citizens. The place of execution was in a half-finished log
building. The ropes were passed over the ridge-pole, and, as the front
of the building was open, a full view was offered of the murderers as
they stood on the boxes arranged for the drops. Boone Helm looked around
at his friends placed for death, and told Jack Gallegher to "stop making
such a fuss." "There's no use being afraid to die," said he; and indeed
there probably never lived a man more actually devoid of all sense of
fear. He valued neither the life of others nor his own. He saw that the
end had come, and was careless about the rest. He had a sore finger,
which was tied up, and this seemed to trouble him more than anything
else. There was some delay about the confessions and the last offices of
those who prayed for the condemned, and this seemed to irritate Boone
Helm.
"For God's sake," said he, "if you're going to hang me, I want you to do
it and get through with it. If not, I want you to tie up my finger for
me."
"Give me that overcoat of yours, Jack," he said to Gallegher, as the
latter was stripped for the noose.
"You won't need it now," replied Gallegher, who was dying blasphemous.
About then, George Lane, one of the line of men about to be hung,
jumped off his box on his own account. "There's one gone to hell,"
remarked Boone Helm, philosophically. Gallegher was hanged next, and as
he struggled his former friend watched him calmly. "Kick away, old
fellow," said Boone Helm. Then, as though suddenly resolved to end it,
he commented, "My turn next. I'll be in hell with you in a minute!"
Boone Helm was a Confederate and a bitter one, and this seems to have
remained with him to the last. "Every man for his principles!" he
shouted. "Hurrah for Jeff Davis! Let her rip!" He sprang off the box;
and so he finished, utterly hard and reckless to the last.