LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume I, Issue 93, 17 September 1874, Page 3

LITERATURE.

ADVENTURE of a digger in COLARADO. (From Chambers' Journal,') Concluded. ‘Now, Joe Blakey, and you, Phil Marll, I reckon you know why we have come V said the man who seemed spokesman. ‘ Guess we do,’ said Joe, in his usual apathetic tone. ‘ You expected a visit,’ continued the man. ‘We have heard all your bragging agin the Vigilantes ’ ‘Never said so,’ interrupted Joe. I was amazed at these words. Here was I in the presence of the promptest, most terrible tribunal of modern times, and I divined only too dearly their errand. The Vigilantes, or Vigilance Committee, as may be known, is a self-constituted body, which, in the remote parts of the United States, springs into spontaneous existence to remedy in a rough fashion the monstrous defects of the prevalently imperfect courts of justice. Acting without, and, in fact, in defiance of, law, these committees, though doing things roughly, help materially to make life endurable for well-disposed citizens. Without the sense of justice which these vigilant and self-constituted bodies exercise, the great western wildernesses, with their sparsely settled population, and feeble judicial administration, would not be tolerable. I soon understood the purport of the visit, as addressed to my host. ‘You’ve been a terror to this here neighborhood,’ continued the spokesman; ‘you’ve stole horses and cattle for more than two years past, and tried to put it all on the Indians. You have murdered men ; and this here traveller would never have seen daylight again, if we hadn’t come in. You got the Jew from Santa Fe into your shanty, and robbed and killed him.’

‘ No, captain !’ burst out Joe ; ‘ I bar that. I don’t deny the bosses, nor the cattle ; and I may hev killed a man or two ; so may hev Phil; but I never touched the Jew, nor killed a man in my own shanty ; and this here traveller should have gone his way a safe man. 1 Then turning to me, he said : ‘ You don’t believe I meant killing of you, stranger ?’ ‘ I do not!’ I said very emphatically, for I meant it. ‘ Well, there’s enough agin you without that,’ said the spokesman ; ‘though we know you ain’t so bad as Phil. You’ve been warned to go, time after time.’ ‘ Not reglar warned, captain,’ argued Joe ; ‘ and now we are agoin.’ 1 No, you ain’t, you bet,’ said the captain with a meaning smile, which ran responsively through his band; ‘no, you ain’t. Your time has come ; but you shall have a fair trial from the Vigilant- s here assembled ; and what their judgment is, you must abide by.’ In an instant, a sort of formality was given to the assembly, the captain and another being the centre of a semicircle, while opposite to them were the two prisoners, guarded by four men, I suppose there must have been seventeen or eighteen of the Vigilantes altogether. With a rapidity that almost stunned me, the trial began and concluded. The prisoners offered no particular defence, they seemed conscious of its inutility, and the ‘evidence’ against them was chiefly accusation —but it sufficed. When the captain asked the verdict, there was a unanimous reply of ‘Guilty ;’ and he addressed the culprits thus ; ‘ Say—Joe Blakey and Phil Marll, you hev heard the evidence in this honorable Committee of Vigilantes, and the verdict of guilty. We therefore intend to string you up. and we mean to clear the country of all thieves, right away. You have ten minuses allowed you to leave any message you wish.’ The apathy of the two men was extraordinary : Phil only scowled savagely at the speaker ; while Joe absolutely turned to his nearest guard, and asked him for a ‘ chew ;’ and the guard, pulling a cake of tobacco from his breast, handed it to Joe, who broke a piece off, and began masticating it with apparent relish. Just then, 1 caught his eye, and I thought it was fixed on me with such a hopeless yet appealing look, that I could hesitate no longer. With an energy which surprised myself, I broke out into an appeal for the lives of the condemned, explained how I had been received by them, and given

the best they had, and how Joe had helped me to find my horse in the day. ‘ I will be security,’ I concluded, ‘ that they leave the neighborhood. I bear letters from good houses in New York to several persons in this vicinity, some of whom may be known to you, and which will prove I can bear out my offer.’ I drew my letters from my pocket, and read the addresses : 1 Captain Hiram Banks; Major Julius Blumper; Sheriff Gollopy ; Colonel Yanwoort; Captain Himpus’—

‘That’s me,’ said a rough-looking man, ‘ Give it here.,

He wasn’t much after ray idea of a captain ; but, as it could do no harm, I gave him the letter. He read it, and handed it to the captain, a leader of the band, who read it also.

‘Yes; that’s all squ'.r enough,’ said the latter ; ‘hut the V gilautes out. here don’t vidly New Yorker ? and don’t work according to New York laws '

1 Nor the.? don’t want no New York money,’ said a voice from the rear.

As assenting murmur endorsed this sentiment, and I felt things were looking very black for my hosts. They were evidently of the same opinion, for Joe smiled sadly and said ; ‘lt ain’t of no use, squire ; we’re just as much obliged, though. I wouldn’t say no more, or you’ll maybe get into trorrble yourself.—lf things is ready, I’m ready,’ he continued, turning to the leader. ‘ Well, we shan’t keep you a-waiting long, Joe Blakey, responded the latter; I hear the young men a-coming back ; they have been choosing a tree.’ With horror, I exclaimed; ‘I never dreamt of such cold-blooded work as this ! Look here ; captain ; the only reason I don’t offer money is, because I believe I should do more harm than good by it ; but, if you hang these men, you will send me away with the feeling that I have their blood on my head, for they expected your visit, and I believe that, but for my presence, they would have made their escape to-night. If you won’t listen to anything else, you might think of that,’

I was pleased to see that my words made some impression, for instead of answering me in his calm, cruel style, the captain turned to his gang, and a low but earnest discussion took place. At last he turned round, and, in a very stern voice, quite different to that in which he had previously spoken, said : ‘ Hear me, stranger ! The Vigilantes are sorry for your position, and respect your feelin’s; but this is their decision, and I warn you that if you question it by a single word, you will ruin the man you most seek to help.—Joe Blakey, you are considered by this honourable court as the best of the two, but you are very bad for all that. Your life is spared on condition that you hev cleared out from here in six hours, and are not found within a hundred miles of here ever after. Of course we give you time to go the journey, — Phil Marll, we know yer are a murderer, and a treacherous one—you die ! These is the sentence.—Boys ! string up Phil Marll. —lf you like to see justice done in these western parts, stranger, come. out with us ; if not, good-bye.’ I turned deathly sick, as the procession left the shanty, Joe and I being its only occupants. One man, however, turned back, and said : 1 O squire I you must excuse my neglect; but I am Captain Himpus, and I live at Three Creek Farm, over yonder. My wife and the young ladies will be glad to see you ; and if you will stop a month with us. we shall be all the more pleased. I will introduce you to all our best citizens, and I’ll answer they will be happy to have you among them.’ I stammered out a few words, and he hurried off, to be present at the catastrophe. We saw no more of them ; but, after a few minutes of almost agonising silence, we heard a band of horsemen ride past the cabin, and could even hear their voices and laughter. I looked almost timidly at Joe, who heaved a heavy sigh, and breaking silence for the first time since his reprieve, said ; 1 They’ve done with Phil : there was worse men in the room than him, when the Vigilantes was here; though I don’t deny, squire, that we hev been hard wretches.’ He paused, as if taking a mental retrospect of the wretched portion of his life, then, very suddenly changing his tone, said : ‘ Now, squire, I must go, and that right away. I know where they’ve hung Phil; I shall cut him down, and leave some money with old Padre Francisco to have him buried, and all that ; but before I go I have something important to say to you.’ ‘ Do you require ’ I began, putting my hand into my breast-pocket, for I thought he wished to borrow money ; but he waved his hand and said ;‘No ; quite different. I have plenty of stamps, and if I hadn’t got to clear out now, should soon be the richest man in these diggings. You saved my life, stranger, and hevn’tmade no fuss about it; and I feel it, You came down from the mountains by this long gulch at the back, I suppose ?’ I assented. ‘ Thought so,’ he continued. ‘Well, stranger, about half a mile up that gulch, a smaller gulch turns off—you’ll know it, because its the first on the left you come to—that gulch contains Ihe richest lead of gold in Colorado, and its a fortin for a man in a single season. I can’t touch it now, but I hev got the claim, and I hereby give you over that claim Work it, and you’re a millionaire.’ I strove to thank him, and to offer him the proceeds, or half; but he silenced me, and said he didn’t want to hear any more of the place. ‘You stop in here, squire,’ he said, ‘ while I go and do what I’ve got to do for Phil.’ Bo he went, and I sat alone in the shanty until dawn, when he returned, looking as cold and impassive as ever. He mounted his horse—the Vigilantes had left one for him, and ray own, out of several—and rode away, and I saw or heard of him again—unless Joe Baker, from Colorado, who was shot at a saloon in Nevada, was my friend, as some of my mining acquaintances declared to be the case. I had mining acquaintances, and I followed the counsel given me, and worked the gulch, which, by the bye, I proposed to call Anuabella Laurcntina Gulch, after my eldest daughter ; but which the people about, and even the county surveyor, would call Ugly Barney Gulch. Why, or who Barney was, I had not the least idea. But as Blakey averred, it was the * richest lead’ in Colorado: I took many thousand dollars from it that summer, and then sold it to a company for many thousand dollars more. It is exhausted now, but its original purchasers were enriched. No amount of gold, however, would tempt me to reside in a country where Vigilantes, with their Lynch law, are a permanent institution, and where I used, at twilight, to fancy I saw the phantom of the ill-favored Phil Marll lurking among the shadows and holes at the foot of the ravines,