Last winter in the United States

by F. Barham Zincke

The same causes, in the winter of 1866-67, made a place called Julesburg, about one hundred and fifty miles back from Shyenne, the point at which for the time extreme rowdyism, but of a lower class and on a smaller scale, was concentrated. Being then the extreme point of the Pacific Railway, the teamsters, freighters, and their hangers-on, and those from the neighbourhood who join such gatherings, were all here collected together. A town of waggon corals and wooden houses was soon formed in this way, containing about one thousand inhabitants—almost all men, and almost all reckless and violent characters. I asked a man who was himself connected with the freighting business, and had been part of last winter at Julesburg, how things had gone on at the place, and how order had been maintained? He said that at first no attempt at all was made to have things right, but that when it began to be known as a hell upon earth—almost every day two or three men being murdered or killed in rows—a few policemen were sent. They did not, however, prove of the slightest use, for they were quite unable to arrest anybody, or to hinder anything. If they had made the attempt, they would have been shot as readily as anyone else. When I was at the spot in February 1868, not a trace of the Julesburg of the previous year remained. Everything, both houses and men, had moved on to Shyenne. A prairie station on the railway alone marked the place where the town had been.

The difference between last year’s and this year’s headquarters of rowdyism arises out of the better chance Shyenne has, as it is situated at the foot of the mountains, of maintaining a permanent existence, and if so of rapidly becoming a flourishing place of business. This has attracted to it a large number of storekeepers, who of course set up, as soon as they were strong enough to do so, the reign of vigilance committees and lynch law. In such places these are the means universally adopted for enforcing honesty and order.

I reached Shyenne a little after dark. Having been fully warned of the character of the place, I had taken the precaution of enquiring what were the names of the two least rowdy hotels. The moment the train reached the station, I was off, bag in hand, for the first chance of a bed-room. On my asking, at the larger of the two, for a room I might occupy alone, I was told they had no such accommodation. I then went on to the other, where the same answer was given to the same enquiry. I was determined not to take the chances of a night with a Shyenne desperado, so I again sallied forth in search of a lodging—this time, however, not knowing where to turn. At last my from-house-to-house investigation brought me to a wooden structure, on which were painted the words ‘The Wyoming House.’ It was far from having an inviting look: in fact it had more the appearance of a drinking-booth than of a place where one could find a bed-room. But as it was the only house I had seen (hotels are here all called houses), I thought the best thing I could do would be to go to some tradesman, and take my chance of his telling me whether it was, or was not, a safe place. A chemist, it appeared to me, would be as little likely as any to be dependent on the rowdies; so I entered the first shop of that kind I could see, to make the enquiry. If I had looked in through the window, I should certainly not have opened the door; for the first object that met my eyes was a rough, lying on the ground in front of the stove. His hair and beard appeared not to have been combed for months, and by his side was lying a gigantic mastiff. But, as it was too late to recede, I turned to the chemist—a youth apparently of less than twenty years of age, who was seated on the counter—and put my enquiry to him. ‘Wall, stranger,’ he said, taking his cigar from his mouth, and speaking very deliberately, ‘if it is a night when they have got no dance—for they give a dance twice a-week to the ladies and gentlemen of the city—I calculate you may get through; but if it is a dancing night, I calculate you will do better outside.’ On looking in, and finding that it was not a dancing night, I applied for and was shown to a bed-room. On entering, however, I observed that the lock of the door had been lately forced, for it was hanging loose by a single nail. In a house that admitted of such proceedings, I declined to take a room the door of which could not be locked. After making some difficulties, the attendant showed me to another room. On entering it I turned the key, and as it appeared to act properly, I told him it would do, and took possession. But on attempting to get the bolt of the lock into the doorpost, I found that things were not so square as that it could be done in a moment, some violence having been used against this door also. While I was ‘fixing’ this matter, which I eventually succeeded in doing, I fancied I heard men and women gambling in the next room a great deal too distinctly; and on looking in that quarter I saw a considerable hole in the wall, which admitted of anyone observing from the next room what I was about. This I stopped up with a Chicago newspaper I happened to have with me. My last thought was to ascertain whether the window which opened at the head of my bed had any fastening, and whether one could escape through it in case of a fire—a matter that must always be attended to in these wooden towns. I found that it opened into a back courtyard; that it had no fastening of any kind; and that one might open it from the outside with a single finger. I did not like this, nor anything that I had seen in the house; but as Judge Lynch had hung up two men in the main street of the town only a few nights before, I thought that all the good effect had probably not yet evaporated, and so was soon asleep. The next morning, when I offered payment, the landlord demurred accepting it immediately, and beckoning to one of his men, sent him off to see if all was right. On the man’s returning, and giving him a nod, he took my money. I asked what was the meaning of this. ‘Oh,’ he replied, ‘it is not the custom to settle accounts here till you are sure that none of your blankets have been made away with in the night through the window.’ Blankets here are hard to get, and of some value for camping out.

I passed part of another night at Shyenne, on my return from the mountains. The coach reached the chief hotel of the place at three o’clock in the morning. I had expected at that hour to find things tolerably quiet; but on entering, I had to pass, first some people in a state of riotous drunkenness at the bar; then about twenty men sitting or sleeping round the stove; and, lastly, a parcel of people playing and rowing at two billiard-tables. Beyond all these was the clerk’s counter. On entering my name, and asking whether I could have a room to myself, I was assured that I could.

‘Give me a receipt, then,’ I said, ‘for my bag and rug, and let me be shown to my room.’

‘Is there any other passenger on board the coach?’ the clerk enquired.

I told him there was one. He asked me to wait till he had come in, and then the boy—the new name for manservant—would only have to make one journey in showing us to our rooms. I assented. At last the other passenger came in, and the clerk gave his instructions to the boy. In doing this I observed that he only gave him one key, from which I instantly inferred that I was done, and was only to have, after all, a part of a room; but I decided to submit, for there were only three hours to be passed in bed, and my fellow-passenger was a highly respectable storekeeper of Denver; and if I had gone out of the hotel, at that hour of the morning, with my luggage in my hand, all the rowdies about the billiard-tables, the stove, and the bar, would have known that I was going in search of a lodging, and some might perhaps have followed me out. But on the boy’s opening the door, and setting down the lamp, while he said, ‘Gentlemen, here is your apartment,’ I was no longer equal to the occasion; for now I saw—the possibility of which had never before crossed my mind—that I was expected to occupy the same bed with another man; and I gave vent to my indignation by observing, ‘that it was really too bad to be billeted off to half a bed, when I had been promised a room to myself.’ ‘As to the room to yourself,’ replied the boy, ‘I know nothing about that, and the thing is passed; but it is very unreasonable in you to complain about having half a bed, when it is a bed that is intended to hold three people.’

I asked my fellow-passenger not to regard it as anything personal that I was unable to occupy the same bed as himself, telling him that I would lie down in my clothes. Our first care, however, was to arrange what we should do in case of fire, for part of the house we were in had been in flames only a few nights before. In such a place sleep was impossible. Our room was exactly over the kitchen, and the floor having been made originally of unseasoned wood, the heat had shrunk it, so that there were gaps everywhere. Through these came up all night from the kitchen the effluvium of beefsteaks and onions, which were being cooked incessantly for the gamblers, who would themselves have kept anyone awake with the noise they made, the chief part of it consisting of the most ingenious and horrible oaths one ever heard, or will ever hear, as swearing is everywhere else becoming obsolete. On coming down, a little after six, for the seven-o’clock train, I found a few persons still drunk about the bar; and all the rest of those I had seen three hours before were now asleep on the floor, on chairs, or on the billiard-tables. These are persons who do not care for beds, or who would rather spend the price of them in drinking and gambling.

Lynch Law and the Pistol.

I mentioned that in my first night at Shyenne, I calculated on the effect two recent lynch-law executions would have in keeping things quiet for a season. About that time I heard of five other executions of the same kind in that neighbourhood. There are people who denounce this method of maintaining order, but they do so without understanding the circumstances. At all events, a man has been known to exclaim loudly against it in New England, and before he had been in the West a month, to join a vigilance committee. The fact is that the ordinary method of administering law is quite impracticable in a place where you can get no policemen, no constables, no lawyers, no juries, no jails, no judges; and where, if it were possible to get the apparatus of justice, it would be next to impossible to work it. Some one or other would be bribed, or some flaw would be established in the evidence, and there would be time and opportunity enough, in one way or another, for the escape of the prisoner. Instead of this, here is a system which has no officers or jails, which costs nothing, and is very terrifying to evildoers by the rapidity and certainty with which it acts, and the mystery with which it is involved. It would be a very unnecessary and evil system in a settled community, but where none of the ordinary appliances of law are possible, and where at the same time all the scum of the great world behind is concentrated, it is a necessity, and a highly beneficial one. It does really what Napoleon III. claims to have done for France: it saves society, which without it would cease to exist, for it would be overwhelmed by these reckless and desperate characters. Everyone in America knows how completely in California it got rid of all the disorderly and dangerous elements which were collected there in such force, that it would have been quite hopeless to have attempted to deal with them in any other way. Just so, again, it was at Denver, a town on this side the mountains, of eight thousand inhabitants, now as orderly and well-disposed as any other eight thousand persons anywhere to be found. Four or five years ago Denver was what Shyenne is now. But lynch law has purified it, and in a way in which ordinary law has never purified any community in the world. All the rogues and violent fellows have been hanged, and all the suspected have been made to clear out. There are now no other such eight thousand souls in any part of the Old States. A man who knows both would rather leave his baggage out all night in the street at Denver than in any city of New England. This is the state into which a community has been brought when lynch law hands it over to ordinary law.