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

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If we are to credit the early history of New England, Miles Standish was a central character of Puritanic chivalry and fidelity. The people had faith in his Christian character, and entire confidence in his strong arm and fertility of expedients in the hour of danger. Some such sentiment, qualified by the wide difference in the moral character of the two men, attached the mining community of Florence to Pinkham. He was a bold, outspoken, truthful, self-reliant man, without a particle of braggadocio or bluster, careful always to say what he meant, and to do what he said. Fear was a stranger to him, and desperate chances never found him without desperate means.

Pinkham was a native of Maine, and physically a fine type of the stalwart New Englander. In stature he was more than six feet, and in weight upwards of two hundred pounds. To the agility of a mountain cat he added the quick, sharp eye of an Indian and the strength of a giant. Trained by years of frontier exposure, he was skilled in the ready use of all defensive weapons. When aroused, the habitual frown upon his brow gathered into a fierce scowl, and the steely gray eyes fairly blazed in their sockets. At such times he was dangerous, because it was his custom to settle all disputes with a word and a blow, and the blow always came first. The intensity of his nature could not brook altercation.