Knowing how much the size of a horse is seemingly increased when in motion, Beachy saddled the sorrel, and told his hostler to lead him to the end of the street, mount, and run him at his best speed back to the stable. As he dashed down to the spot where Beachy and the man were standing, the latter involuntarily raised his hands and exclaimed,
“My God! that is the identical animal.”
“You are sure?” said Beachy.
“I would swear to it,” was the instant reply.
“And now,” thought Beachy, “I have a white man on my side. The evidence is sufficient for me. To-morrow I start for the murderers.”
Armed with requisitions upon the governors of all the Pacific States and Territories, the next morning Beachy, accompanied by the indomitable Tom Farrell, made preparations for his departure. When all was ready, his wife, who had felt more keenly than he had the ridicule, sneers, indifference, and malignity with which his efforts had been regarded, with tearful eyes approached him, and, taking him by the hand, in a tone softened by the grief of parting, said to him,
“Hill, you must either return with those villains, or look up a new wife.”
“The look which emphasized these words,” says Beachy, “the expression, the calm, sweet face which said stronger than words that failure would kill her, filled me with new life. They were worth more than all the taunts I had received, and I bade her adieu with the determination to succeed.”
While Mr. Beachy was speaking thus fondly of his wife, whose death had occurred but a few months before he narrated to me these incidents, the tears rolled down his cheeks,—and he added in a voice broken with emotion, “I then felt that the time had come when I needed something more than human help, and I went out to the barn and got down upon my knees and prayed to the Old Father,—and that’s something I haven’t been much in the habit of doing in this hard country,—and I prayed for half an hour; and I prayed hard; and I promised that if He’d only help me this time in catching these villains, I’d never ask another favor of Him as long as I lived, and I never have.”
Three changes were made in the transmission of the mail over the route between Lewiston and Walla Walla. The log dwellings and stables at the several stations were the only evidences of settlement for the entire distance. Beachy was the proprietor of the stage line. His station-keepers had been in the habit of transporting way travellers over parts of the road, for pay, at times when the horses were unemployed. This practice had been strictly forbidden by Beachy. But when he and Tom Farrell drove up to the first station, such was his anxiety to overtake the fugitives, that he did not stop to reprimand the unfaithful employee who had just harnessed the stage horses to a light wagon, with the intention of turning a dishonest penny. He took the wagon himself, and without delay drove to the next station, arriving there in time to hitch a pair of horses just harnessed by the hostler for his own use, to his wagon, and hurry on to another station. Here, as he and Tom alighted, a light buggy with a powerful horse came alongside. The driver was an old acquaintance. He was going to Walla Walla in haste for a physician. Beachy offered to do his errand if he would allow him to proceed in his buggy. The gentleman assented. The horse’s flanks were white with foam when, at dark, Beachy and Tom Farrell rode into Walla Walla.