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 daring, adventurous, and courageous elements of character are necessarily developed and brought into frequent action in a mining country; and whenever these are found in combination with high moral principle, they are held in continual fear by men of criminal life. One bold, honest man will demoralize the guilty designs of a host of rascals. Nothing was so much dreaded by Plummer’s murderous gang as the possible organization of a Vigilance Committee; and any man who favored it was marked for early destruction. Such a man was Patrick Ford, the keeper of a saloon in Lewiston. Ford was an active man in his own business,—eager in the pursuit of gain, but entirely upright in his dealings, and the open and avowed enemy of the roughs. He, more than any other member of the community, had urged the people of Lewiston to unite for their protection, and hang every suspected individual in the place; and he taunted them with cowardice when they disbanded without punishing the known murderers of Hiltebrant. As fearless as he was uncompromising, he denounced the ruffians in person, and warned them that a time would come ere long when they would meet their deserts at the hands of an outraged people. He did not conceal from them his intention of following in the track of the prosperous miner, lead where it might,—which purpose they resolved to prevent. His death they regarded as necessary to their future prosperity. Having ascertained that he intended to leave Lewiston with a half-dozen dancing girls for the saloon he had established at Oro Fino, they laid a plan to insult him and involve him in a quarrel on his arrival at their shebang, and kill him. Ford was admonished of the design, which he foiled by avoiding the shebang. Being assured of his safe passage to Oro Fino, the robbers, led by Plummer, Ridgely, and Reeves, mounted their horses and started for the interior. Of the particular events of the early part of the trip, further than that it was marked by the frequent robbery of travellers, I am unable to speak. When within seven or eight miles of Oro Fino, the robbers observed two Frenchmen, some distance apart, approaching them on foot. The one in advance was ordered to stop and throw up his hands, as in that position he was powerless and could not offer any resistance. After a careful search of his person they found nothing of value, and bade him move on as rapidly as possible, telling him that it was “a rough country to be in without money” and that he “had better get out of it as soon as possible.” With the other, whom they subjected to a like process, they were more fortunate, and, despite his solemn denial, found in his pocket a purse containing a thousand dollars in dust, which they appropriated, dismissing him with the remark that if he had done the square thing and not lied they would have given him enough to take him to the Columbia,—but as it was, he might be thankful to get off with a whole carcass. Some idea may be formed of the daring and recklessness of this robbery when it is understood to have occurred at mid-day, near a town containing a population of several thousands, and on a thoroughfare thronged with travellers.