"Friend Meeker.—Sir: Your letter dated Nov. 26, 1904, at hand. Sir, I am quite sick. I will try to sit up long enough to scratch an answer to your questions. Kirtley's men fell out among themselves. I well remember Jack Perkins had a black eye. Kirtley, as I understood, was to go (to) Wenass creek, thence cut a wagon road from Wenass to the Natchess River, thence up the Natchess River until they met Allen's party. It is my opinion they did commence at Wenass. There were three notches cut in many of the large trees (logs). I can find some of these trees yet where these notches show. Allen did not know Kirtley and his party had abandoned the enterprise until Ehformer told him. He expressed much surprise and regret. I packed the provisions for Allen's party. The last trip I made I found Allen and his party six or eight miles down the Natchess River. I was sent back to the summit of the mountain to search for a pack mule and a pack horse. These two animals were used by the working party to move their camp outfit, and their provisions. When they returned they told me that they cut the road down to where Kirtley's party left off. Of my own knowledge I can safely say Allen's party cut the road from John Montgomery's [16] to some six or maybe eight miles down the Natchess River, and it was four days after that before they came to the summit on their return.
"It is possible Kirtley's party slighted their work to the extent that made it necessary for the immigrants to take their axes in hand. I consider Kirtley a dead failure at anything. Kirtley's party came home more than a month before we came in. If Van Ogle is not insane he ought to remember.
"Allen's party cut the road out from six to eight miles down the Natchess River from John Montgomery's. The valley on the Natchess River is too narrow for any mistake to occur.
"The first men that came through came with James and his brother, Charles Biles, Sargent, Downey, James Longmire, Van Ogle, two Atkins, Lane, a brother-in-law of Sargent, Kincaid, two Woolery's, Lane of Puyallup, E. A. Light, John Eagan (Reagan), Charley Fitch. Meeker, I am quite sick; when I get well I will write more detailed account; it is as much as I can do to sit up."
"Yours in haste, as ever,
"A. J. BURGE."
This man I have known for over fifty years, and it touched me to think at the age bordering on eighty, he should get up out of a sick bed to comply with my request. He has written the truth, and some of the information we could get in no other way.
It seems that some people live a charmed life. Burge was shot by a would-be assassin a few miles out from Steilacoom over forty years ago, the bullet going through his neck, just missing the jugular vein.
While it is a complete digression, nevertheless, just as interesting here as elsewhere, so I will tell the story of this shooting to further illustrate conditions of early settlement on the Nisqually plains. The man with the thirteen cows and thirty calves mentioned elsewhere, lived near Burge. The most desperate character I ever knew, Charles McDaniel, also was a near neighbor, but a friend of Andy, as we used to call Burge. Both lost stock that could be traced directly to their neighbor, Wren, the man with the extra calves, but it was no use to prosecute him as a jury could not be procured that would convict. I had myself tried it in our court with the direct evidence of the branded hide taken from him, but a bribed juryman refused to convict. For a few years and for this district and with the class previously described as occupying the country adjacent to Steilacoom, there seemed to be no redress through our courts. Finally Burge and McDaniel waylaid their neighbor a few miles out from Steilacoom, tied him to a tree, and whipped him most unmercifully. I have never yet given my approval to mob law and never will, believing that it is better to suffer awhile, bide one's time until laws can be enforced, rather than to join in actions that will breed contempt for law and lead to anarchy; but, if ever there was a justifiable case of men taking the law in their own hands, this was one of them, and is introduced here to illustrate a condition of affairs that had grown up which seemed well nigh intolerable. After the whipping Wren was warned to leave the country, which he could not well do, tied to a tree as he was until third parties discovered and released him, but which he speedily did, although the wealthiest man in the county. No prosecutions followed, but in the lapse of time a colored man appeared at Steilacoom and spent much time hunting herbs on the prairies, until one day Burge was going home from Steilacoom in his wagon, when this centre shot was fired with the result as related. The colored man disappeared as mysteriously as he came, but everyone believed he had been hired to assassinate Burge and McDaniel, and as afterwards proven was the case.