“I will take the body to town,” said he, “and see if it cannot be identified.”
“We’ll have nothing to do with it,” said Long John. “Dead bodies are common enough in this country. They, kill people every day in Virginia City, and nobody speaks of it, nobody cares. Why should we trouble ourselves who this man is, after he’s dead?”
Shocked at this brutality, Palmer returned to the corpse, which he contrived to place in his wagon, and drove on to Nevada. The body was exposed for half a day in the wagon, and was visited by hundreds of people from Nevada, Virginia City, and the other towns in the gulch.
In reply to the question, “How did you find it?” Palmer answered,
“It was providential. The Almighty pointed the way, or it would never have been found. I had my gun in my hand, and was looking carefully about for game, when a grouse rose suddenly at my approach. I had little thought of killing it when I fired, as the shot was a chance one. The bird flew some distance before it fell, but seeing that I had wounded it, I ran as rapidly as I could, and went directly to it, and found it on the breast of the murdered man. The body was lying in a clump of heavy sage brush, completely concealed,—away from the road, where no one would ever have gone except by chance,—and but for the fact that it was frozen hard, would long before this time have been devoured by the coyotes.”
The body of Tiebalt bore the marks of a small lariat about the throat, which had been used to drag him, while still living, to the place of concealment. The hands were filled with fragments of sage brush, torn off in the agony of that terrible process; and the bullet wound over the left eye showed how the murder had been accomplished.
These appalling witnesses to the cruelty and fiendishness of the perpetrator of this bloody deed roused the indignation of the people to a fearful pitch. They went to work to avenge the crime with an alacrity sharpened by the consciousness of that long and criminal neglect on their part, but for which it might have been averted. They felt themselves to be, in some degree, participants in the diabolical tragedy. In the presence of that dead body the reaction commenced, which knew no abatement until the country was entirely freed of its bloodthirsty persecutors. That same evening, twenty-five citizens of Nevada subscribed an obligation of mutual support and protection, mounted their horses, and, under the leadership of a competent man, at ten o’clock started in pursuit of the murderer. Obtaining an accession of one good man on their route, and avoiding Dempsey’s by a hill trail, they rode six miles beyond it to a cabin, and with the aid of its proprietor found their way to the point of destination. At an early hour in the morning, they crossed Wisconsin Creek, breaking through the frozen surface, and emerging from it with clothing perfectly rigid from frost and wet. A mile beyond this they were ordered to alight and stand by their horses until daybreak. An hour or more passed, when they remounted and rode quietly on, until in sight of Long John’s wakiup. A dog was heard to bark; and in anticipation of the alarm it might occasion, they dashed forward at full speed, surrounding the wakiup, each man halting with his gun bearing upon it. Jumping from his horse, the leader discovered eight or ten men wrapped in their blankets, sleeping in front of the entrance. Raising his voice, he exclaimed,
“The first man that rises will get a quart of buckshot in him before he can say ‘Jack Robinson.’”
It was too dark to distinguish the sleepers. With half of his company at his back, the leader strode on to the entrance. Peering into the darkness, he asked,
“Is Long John here?”