Читать книгу Vigilante Days and Ways. The pioneers of the Rockies; the makers and making of Montana and Idaho онлайн

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The place of meeting was partially obscured by several clumps of mountain pines, which grew along the sides of the ravine, and enclosed it in their sombre shade. It was bright starlight. When the gathering was complete and had settled into that grim composure which seemed to await an opportunity for a hundred voices to be raised, the chairman called upon a Methodist clergyman present to open their proceedings with prayer. This request, at such a time, must appear strange to the minds of many of my readers. And yet, why should it? It bore testimony to some sincerity and some solemnity in the hearts of the people, even though they had assembled for an unlawful, perhaps some of them for a revengeful, purpose. They felt, doubtless, that the law did not and would not protect them, and if they had known that the person whose doom they were there to decide, at that very moment stood near, armed, a secret observer of their proceedings, with friends within the call of his voice to aid him or obey his orders, they might very properly have concluded that the law exposed them to outrage and murder. Prayer had no mockery in it in such an exigency. Patterson afterwards jocosely remarked that it was the first prayer he had listened to for twenty years. Its various petitions, certainly, could not have fallen pleasantly upon his ears.