Uttering a shout of exultation, the robbers dashed into the town of Oro Fino with the impetuosity of a cavalry charge. Reining up in front of Ford’s saloon, which they entered, they called loudly upon the bar-keeper for liquor. Ford was absent. When they had drunk, they commenced demolishing the contents of the saloon. Decanters, tumblers, chairs, and tables were broken and scattered over the apartment. One of their number, more fiendish than the others, seized a lap-dog from one of the females and cut off his tail. At this juncture Ford himself came upon the scene. Boldly confronting the rioters, pistol in hand, he ordered them instantly to leave his premises. He charged them with the robbery of the Frenchmen, and denounced them as thieves, robbers, and murderers. They saw and feared his determination, and obeyed his commands with alacrity. He followed them into the street, and threatened them with punishment if they remained in town. They were about to act upon this hint, when Ford, fully armed, came to them a second time, and demanded the cause of their delay. He was answered with a bullet, inflicting a dangerous wound. The fire was returned, and the fight became general,—three against one. The robbers were protected by their horses, while their antagonist was openly exposed to their fire. Ford emptied the charges from one six-shooter, made five shots with the other, and was in the act of aiming for the last, when he fell dead, riddled with the balls of his adversaries. Ridgely was shot through the leg twice, and Plummer’s horse disabled.
Such was the melancholy fate of Patrick Ford,—a man long to be remembered as the friend of law and order,—the first, indeed, in the northern mines who dared to urge the extermination of the robbers, as the only remedy for their depredations. He literally sealed his principles with his life’s blood.
Ridgely’s wounds disabled him for service. He was taken by his companions to a ranche near the town, and as well cared for as circumstances would admit. Leaving him there, the other members of the band, fearful of the friends of Ford, seldom ventured beyond the limits of their camp.
CHAPTER IV
CHARLEY HARPER
A new candidate for bloody laurels now appears in the person of Charley Harper. He arrived in Walla Walla in the Fall of 1861. A young man of twenty-five, of medium size, of erect carriage, clear, florid complexion, and profuse auburn hair, he could, but for the leer in his small inexpressive gray eye, have passed in any society for a gentleman. His previous life is a sealed book;—but the readiness with which he engaged in crime showed that he was not without experience. He told his landlord that he had no money, but that partners were coming who would relieve his necessities. The second night after his arrival, several hundred dollars in gold coin was stolen from a lodger who occupied the room adjoining his. While intoxicated the next day, he exhibited by the handful eagles which he said were borrowed from an acquaintance. No one doubted that he had stolen them; but where officers were believed to wink at crime, prosecution was useless. Charley was not even arrested upon suspicion. The money he had obtained introduced him to the society of the roughs, with whom he became so popular that he aspired to be their leader. This honor was disputed by Ridgely, whom we left wounded in the last chapter, and by Cherokee Bob, both of whom claimed precedence from longer residence and greater familiarity with the opportunities for distinction.
Circumstances soon occurred which enabled Charley, without disputation, to assume the role of chief of the Walla Walla desperadoes. Cherokee Bob, heretofore mentioned as an associate of Plummer at Lewiston, was an uneducated Southerner. His mother was a half-blood Cherokee,—hence his name. With a hatred of the North and the Northern soldiery born of prejudice and ignorance, and a constitutional faith in the superior prowess of the Southern people, and with mercurial passions inflamed by the contest that was still raging, this ruffian was nearly a maniac in his adherence to the cause of Secession. He could talk or think of little else than the great inferiority of the Northern to the Southern soldiers, and was continually boasting of his own superior physical power. He would often taunt the soldiers of the garrison near Walla Walla. In ingenuity of vaunting expression, he far excelled Captain Bobadil himself;—but like that hero of dramatic fiction he was destined to experience a reverse more humiliating, if possible, than that of his great prototype. With shotgun in hand and revolver in his belt, it was his frequent boast that he could take a negro along with him, carrying two baskets loaded with pistols, and put to flight the bravest regiment of the Federal army.
No person who has witnessed a theatrical performance in a mining camp can forget the general din and noise with which the audience fill up the intervals between the acts. Whistling, singing, hooting, yelling, and a general shuffling of feet and moving about are so invariable as to form, in fact, a feature of the performance. So long as they are unaccompanied by quarrelsome demonstrations, and do not become too boisterous, efforts are seldom made to suppress them. The boys are permitted to have a good time in their own way, and the lookers-on, accustomed to the scene, are often compensated for any annoyance that may be occasioned, by strokes of border humor more enjoyable than the play itself.
Cherokee Bob, eager for an opportunity when he could wreak his demoniac wrath upon some of the Federal soldiers, with the aid and complicity of Deputy Sheriff Porter, who like himself was a Secessionist, contrived the following plan as favorable to his purpose; it was agreed between them, that on a certain evening Bob and his friends should attend the theatre, fully armed. Porter, under pretext of quelling disturbances between the acts, should by his insulting language and manner provoke an affray with the soldiers present, in the progress of which he would command Bob and those with him to assist, and thus under the seeming protection of law, save them from the consequences of any acts of vengeance they desired to commit. On the evening appointed, six or seven soldiers were seated side by side in the pit, a single one occupying a seat in the gallery behind them. Porter was near them, and Bob and his associates in a position convenient to him. When the curtain fell upon the first act, the usual noises commenced, the soldiers joining in making them. Porter sprang from his seat, and striding in front of them, vociferated,
“Dry up there, you brass-mounted hirelings, or I’ll snatch you bald-headed.”
This insulting language produced the desired effect. Smarting under the implied reproach it conveyed, one of the soldiers sharply inquired,