The death of Levi Farrington made the recovery of the missing checks, papers, and money an impossibility, since neither Barton nor Taylor were able to conduct the officers to the place where they were hidden. Barton gave the company a bill of sale of the goods in the store at Lester's Landing, however, and an assignment of all debts due the firm, from which about five or six hundred dollars were eventually realized. Robert and Brown attended to this matter and returned to Chicago. William was on duty until the two remaining prisoners were safely lodged in jail in Memphis, and then, having settled up all the business of which he had had charge, he also returned home.
At the next term of court in Obion County, Tennessee, Barton and Taylor pleaded guilty of grand larceny, and were each sentenced to five years' confinement at hard labor in the penitentiary. Thus, out of a party of four engaged in this robbery, two were finally brought to trial and appropriately punished, while the other two would have been so punished also, had not a higher penalty been demanded by the circumstances of their cases, aggravated by their own brutal and revengeful dispositions. No reminiscence in my experience shows a more striking illustration of the certainty of retribution for crime than does the career and fate of these outlaws of the Southwest.
THE END.
DON PEDRO AND THE DETECTIVES.
CHAPTER I.
A Fraudulent Scheme contemplated.—A Dashing Peruvian Don and Donna.—A Regal Forger.—Mr. Pinkerton engaged by Senator Muirhead to unveil the Mystery of his Life.—The Don and Donna Morito arrive at Gloster.—"Personnel" of Gloster's "First Families."
The history of crimes against prosperity is of vital interest to the public. The ingenuity of thieves, burglars, forgers, and confidence men is active and incessant, so that their plans are often successful even against the experience and precautions of men of the most wary and cautious character. This seems to be especially true when the amounts at stake are large, for petty attempts to defraud are so frequent, that when a criminal plays for a large sum, the suspicion of the capitalist is wholly allayed by the improbability that a mere swindler should undertake an operation of such magnitude. Indeed, in many cases the cupidity of the victim is so great that the sharper hardly offers the bait ere it is swallowed by some confiding simpleton. Hence, as a warning for the future, the lessons of past frauds possess no small degree of interest and value to the world; and as there is no portion of society free from the depredations of these schemers, their various wiles and snares cannot be exposed too often.
More than twenty years ago, the city of Gloster was one of the most thriving cities of the West. Controlling the interior trade to a large extent, its interests were of the most varied character, and its inhabitants were already distinguished as being more cosmopolitan than those of any other city in the Union, except New York. They had imbibed, perhaps, some of the genius of the prairies, and their scorn of petty methods of doing business, their breadth of charity and hearty hospitality, were as boundless as the great plains of which the city was the business center at that time. Among such a people, a plausible adventurer had a fine field of operation, and I was not surprised when I was asked to go to Gloster in the latter part of the winter to investigate the character of some persons who were living there.