The scene is now laid at Golden. Gen. Cook, for the Rocky Mountain Detective Association, had taken the murderers to Golden, that being the county seat of Jefferson county, on the 9th of December, and hearing that there was a likelihood of an effort being made to lynch the scamps, took precautions to prevent such a result. It had long been his boast that no prisoner had ever been taken from his hands and lynched, and he did not propose to have his creditable reputation blackened now. He was fully prepared to meet any attempt upon the lives of the men that might be made, and appreciating the sort of man they were dealing with, the Jefferson vigilantes wisely decided to await “a more convenient season” for the putting into execution of any designs they might have. The prisoners feared lynching, and trembled when Cook and his party left them after they had been identified and placed in jail. Woodruff said: “I fear those old farmers who were Hayward’s neighbors. They are a great deal more determined and bitter than miners.”
His fears were well founded. The dreadful hour came shortly after midnight on the cool, crisp Sunday morning of Christmas week of ’79.
A few minutes before 12 o’clock Saturday night the late habitues of saloons and billiard halls, as well as others who happened to be awake at that hour, noticed the riding along the principal street of numerous horsemen, who came from apparently all directions and in little squads of two, three, half a dozen or so. They noticed that these silent horsemen all rode toward the jail, and all seemed to be intent on some urgent business. Then, remembering the oft-repeated murmurs of lynching made against the imprisoned murderers of poor old Hayward, a number of citizens followed in the wake of the strangers, who made at the jail a cavalcade of at least a hundred men, armed to the teeth and grimly seated upon their horses, not even talking or whispering among themselves.
A consultation between the chief and his lieutenants took place upon the steps leading to the first floor above the basement of the court house, and a few minutes later, without noise or confusion, a large circle of guards was spread around the jail and some two or three hundred yards distant from it. These grim sentinels were but a few paces apart, and some were mounted and some on foot. Every member of this avenging band wore a mask, or a handkerchief across the face, or had his features blackened with burnt cork, so that recognition was absolutely impossible. No one was permitted to pass this cordon of guards, no matter what the excuse. One man climbed a telegraph pole and the telephone wire from the jail was cut, and thus all communication to and from the building was ended. Then the horses were ridden to a vacant lot opposite and tied, while the riders dismounted and closed in upon the jail. There was no noise or confusion. Everything had been carefully planned, and every man had a certain position and a certain duty assigned, and he silently took the one and performed the other.
There were in the building, aside from the prisoners in the cells, Under Sheriff Joseph Boyd, who was asleep with his family in a rear room, and an extra watchman, Edgar Cox, who was lying upon a bench in the sheriff’s office. Hearing the sound of feet on the frozen earth outside, Cox rose to a sitting position and looked up at the windows, the curtains of which were raised. At each window he saw, to his stupefaction, two or three men, who had rifles in their hands. Their gleaming barrels pointed directly at him, and a stern voice simply said:
“Don’t move, or you’ll get hurt.”
Under the circumstances Cox did not move, but sat gazing at the deadly weapons which so steadily and unrelentingly covered him, while he could hear the heavy tramp of men marching in at the front door and filing down the inside stairs to the basement.
This same tramp, tramp of many feet, foretelling something unusual, reached the ears of Under Sheriff Boyd, who was in bed, and he suddenly awoke with the feeling that there was trouble ahead. Hastily pulling on his clothes he rushed out of his room, and saw the two rooms from which the two doors open into the jail part, teeming with masked and armed men, who apparently paid no attention to him whatever. As he passed the “feeding” door—so termed because through this the prisoners’ meals are taken in to them—he noticed that the outer wooden door was splintered and the lock broken off. Pushing his way through to the front room, he mounted to the third step of the stairs leading to the first floor, and raising his voice, said:
“Gentlemen, listen to me one moment. You are, or I take you to be, law-abiding and law-loving citizens, and yet you are now engaged in unlawful proceedings. I beg of you to cease, and not in your indignation or passionate feelings take the law into your own hands. Rest assured justice will be obtained, even though it take a little longer.”
At this juncture three men at the foot of the stairs pulled their revolvers and covered the speaker, while one said: