APPENDIX.
THE HARDSHIPS AND PRIVATIONS OF A DETECTIVE'S LIFE
Every person who may have survived the experience has undoubtedly a lively recollection of the wild groups of people which the building of the Union and Central Pacific Railroads brought together from all directions, and from all causes.
There were millions upon millions of dollars to be expended; and as the points of construction neared each other, and the twin bands of iron crept along the earth's surface like two huge serpents, spanning mighty rivers, penetrating vast mountains, and trailing through majestic forests, creeping slowly but surely towards each other, there was always the greatest dread at the most advanced points, which, like the heads of serpents, always contained danger and death; and the vast cities of a day that then sprang into existence, and melted away like school-children's snow-houses, were the points where such wild scenes were enacted as will probably never again occur in the history of railroad building.
Everything contributed to make these places typical of Babelic confusion, or Pandemoniac contention. Foreigners were told of the exhaustless work, and the exhaustless wealth, of this new country which was being so rapidly developed, and they came; men—brave men, too—who had been on the wrong side during the late irritation, and who had lost all, having staked all on the result of the war, saw a possible opportunity of retrieving their fortunes rapidly, and they came; the big-headed youth of the village whose smattering of books at the academy, or the seminary, had enlarged his brain and contracted his sense so that he was too good for the common duties and everyday drudgeries which, with patience, lead to success, learned of the glory and grandeur of that new land, and he came; the speculating shirk and the peculating clerk came; the almond-eyed sons of the Orient in herds—herds of quick-witted, patient, plodding beings who could be beaten, starved, even murdered—came; the forger, the bruiser, the counterfeiter, the gambler, the garroter, the prostitute, the robber, and the murderer, each and every, came; there was adventure for the adventurous, gold for the thief, waiting throats for the murderer; while the few respectable people quickly became discouraged, and fell into the general looseness of habits that the loose life engendered, and gradually grew reckless as the most reckless, or quickly acquiesced in the wild orgies or startling crimes which were of common occurrence. In fact, as in the human system, when any portion of it becomes diseased and all the poison in the blood flows to it, further corrupting and diseasing it until arrested by a gradual purification of the whole body, or by some severe treatment, so from every portion of the country flowed these streams of morally corrupt people, until nearly every town west of Missouri, or east of the mountains, along these lines, became a terror to honest people, and continued so until an irresistible conflict compelled a moral revulsion, sometimes so sweeping and violent as to cause an application of that unwritten, though often exceedingly just law, the execution of which leaves offenders dangling to limbs of trees, lamp-posts, and other convenient points of suspension.
As a rule, in these places, every man, whatever his business and condition, was thoroughly armed, the question of self-defense being a paramount one, from the fact that laws which governed older communities were completely a dead letter; and the law of might, in a few instances made somewhat respectable by a faint outline of ruffianly honor, alone prevailed, until advancing civilization and altered conditions brought about a better state of society; so that in these reckless crowds which pushed after the constantly changing termini of the approaching roads, any instrument of bloodshed was considered valuable, and stores where arms and ammunition could be secured did quite as large a trade as those devoted to any other branch of business; while so outrageous was the price extorted for these instruments of aggression or defense, that they have often been known to sell for their weight in gold; and just as, during the war, the army was followed by enterprising traders who turned many an honest penny trafficking at the heels of the weary soldiers, so the same class of people were not slow to take advantage of such opportunities for gigantic profits which, though often lessened by the many risks run in such trading, were still heavy enough to prove peculiarly attractive.
As a consequence, there were many firms engaged in this particular business, but probably the heaviest was that of Kuhn Brothers, who were reported to be worth upwards of one hundred thousand dollars, which had principally been made along the line of the road, and who, with headquarters at Cheyenne, had established various "stores" at different points as the Union Pacific was pushed on, always keeping the largest stock at the most advanced point, and withdrawing stocks from the paper cities which had been left behind, though only in those towns which had not been altogether destroyed by the periodical exodus occasioned by each change of terminus.
For this reason the firms were obliged to entrust their business to the honesty of many different employés, who were subject to the vitiating influences and temptations, which were unusual and severe under the circumstances already mentioned, while the distances between the points, and the scarcity of secure means of safely keeping the large sums of money which would occasionally unavoidably accrue at certain points, left Kuhn Brothers, in many instances, really dependent on those dependent on them.
In this condition of affairs, and after a slight defalcation had occurred at one of their smaller stores in the spring of 1867, the firm were seeking a man whom they could place in actual charge of one or two of their establishments at the larger towns, and give a sort of general supervision over the others, when the senior member of the firm, being in Laramie, casually met a young gentleman, who happened to be able to do him so great a favor that the incident led to a close friendship and ultimate business relations, eventually resulting in this narrative of facts.
It was a pleasant May evening, and Mr. Kuhn had decided to returned to Cheyenne in order to secure a proper man for the superintendency nearer home. He was to have left Laramie for the East at a late hour of the evening and, being at a loss how to pass the intervening time, strolled out from the hotel with no particular destination in view and his mind fully occupied with the cares of his business, only occasionally noticing some peculiarity or strange sight more than usually striking among the thousands of weird things, to which his frontier business had compelled him to become accustomed, when suddenly he found himself in front of a mammoth dance-house, and, yielding to a momentary impulse of curiosity, turned into the place with the stream of gamblers, adventurers, greasers, and, in fact, everybody respectable or otherwise, who, so far from civilization, found such a place peculiarly attractive.