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

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Nowhere are the conventionalities of social life sooner abandoned than in a mining camp. To call a man by his proper name there generally implies that he is either a stranger or one with whom you do not care to make acquaintance. The gamblers were generally known by diminutive surnames or appellations significant of their characters. I shall so designate those of them who were thus known, in this narrative.

Prominent among the associates of Plummer at Lewiston were Jack Cleveland, Cherokee Bob, and Bill Bunton. Cleveland was an old California acquaintance, familiar with Plummer’s early history. He used this fatal knowledge, as it afterwards proved, in a dictatorial and offensive manner, often presuming upon it to arrogate a position in the band which by common consent was assigned to Plummer.

Cherokee Bob was a native Georgian, and received his name from the fact that he was a quarter-blood Indian. He was bitter in his hatred of the loyal cause and all engaged in it. Before he came to Lewiston he had, in an affray of his own plotting, killed two or three soldiers in the Walla Walla theatre. He fled to Lewiston to escape the vengeance of their comrades.