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

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Many of the early emigrants arrived at Bannack so late in the fall that they could provide themselves with no better shelter from the weather during the winter than was afforded by their wagons. Of this number were Dr. Biddle and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Short, and their hired man from Minnesota. While seated around their camp-fire one dismal afternoon, engaged in conversation with Mr. J. M. Castner, a bullet whizzed so near the ear of Castner that he felt its sting for several days. Castner ascertained that it was fired by one Cy. Skinner, a rough, who excused himself with the plea that he thought they were Indians, and by way of amends invited Dr. Biddle and Castner to drink with him. Castner had the good taste to decline.

The very composition of the society of Bannack at the time was such as to excite suspicion in all minds. Outside of their immediate acquaintances, men knew not whom to trust. They were in the midst of a people which had come from all parts of this country and from many of the nations of the Old World. Laws which could not be executed were no better than none. A people, however disposed to the preservation of order and punishment of crimes, was powerless for either so long as every man distrusted his neighbor. The robbers, united by a bond of sympathetic atrocity, assumed the right to control the affairs of the camp by the bloody code. No one was safe. The miner fortunate enough to accumulate a few thousands, the merchant whose business gave evidence of success, the saloon-keeper whose patronage was supposed to be productive, were all marked as victims by these lawless adventurers. If one of them needed clothing, ammunition, or food, he obtained it on a credit which no one dared refuse, and settled it by threatening to shoot the person bold enough to ask for payment. Such a condition of society, as all foresaw, must sooner or later terminate in disaster to the lovers of law and order or to the villains who depredated upon them. Which were the stronger? The roughs knew their power, but their antagonists, separately hedged about by suspicion as indiscriminate as it was inflexible, knew not how to establish confidence in each other upon which to base an effective opposition. Meantime the carnival of crime was progressing. Scarcely a day passed unsignalled by outrage or murder. The numerous tenants of the little graveyard had all died by violence. People walked the streets in fear.