After the body was cut down, there was found in a pocket the following letter from the mother of Hynson:
“My dear Son,—I write to relieve my great anxiety, for I am in great trouble on your account. Your father had a dream about you. He dreamed that he had a letter from your lawyer, who said that your case was hopeless. God grant that it may prove only a dream! I, your poor, brokenhearted mother, am in suspense on your account. For God’s sake, come home.”
CHAPTER XLVI
JAMES DANIELS
Of the early history of this individual I know but little, and but for circumstances attending his “taking off,” should not trouble my readers with any notice of him. That he was hardened in vice and crime, and, possibly, was one of the worst of all the ruffians whose careers I have passed under review, will hardly admit of a doubt, when the reader is informed that he murdered one man in Tuolumne County, California, and was only prevented by want of agility to complete a race, from killing another. His appearance in Helena, and the commission of the crime for which he lost his life, were almost simultaneous. In a quarrel incident to a game of cards, near Helena, he stabbed and instantly killed a man by the name of Gartley. He was immediately arrested by the Vigilantes, who surrendered him to the civil authorities. On his trial for murder, circumstances were proved, which, in the opinion of the jury, reduced his crime to manslaughter. Judge Munson sentenced him to three years’ imprisonment in the territorial prison. After a few weeks’ confinement, a petition for his pardon, signed by thirty-two respectable citizens of Helena, was also presented to acting Governor Meagher, who, under mistaken sense of his own powers, issued an order for his release. The right to pardon belonged exclusively to the President. Judge Munson went immediately to the capital to show the law to the Executive, convince him of his error, and obtain an order for the re-arrest of Daniels. Meantime, that individual, uttering the most diabolical threats against the witnesses who had testified against him, found his way back to Helena; and before the judge could effect his object with the governor, in fact, on the night succeeding the day of his arrival in Helena, Daniels was arrested by the Vigilantes and hanged.
As I have endeavored to justify, in all cases where I deemed the circumstances warranted it, the action of the Vigilantes in taking life, so, as such circumstances were not apparent in this case, do I deem it a duty to say that they committed an irreparable error in the execution of this man. However much, by his threats and reckless conduct, he may have deserved death, they had no right to inflict it. If he had been wrongfully pardoned, he could easily have been rearrested. He was a single individual in the midst of a populous community, warned by his threats of his designs, which could easily have been thwarted by arresting him, or by setting a careful watch over his actions. No excuse can be offered for the course that was pursued. This, at least, was one case where the Vigilantes exceeded the boundaries of right and justice, and became themselves the violators of law and propriety.
I was at that time a member of the Executive Committee of the Virginia City branch of the Vigilante organization, and that Committee disavowed all responsibility for the execution of Daniels, and expressed its disapproval of that act, which, it was believed, did not have the official sanction of the Executive Committee of Helena, but was regarded as the unauthorized act of certain irresponsible members of the organization at Helena.
And I will here take occasion to say that this was not an isolated instance. Under the pretence of Vigilante justice, after the establishment of courts of justice in Montana, and when many of the respectable citizens of the Territory had virtually abandoned the order, a few vicious men continued occasionally to enforce its summary discipline. Several individuals were hanged who had been detected in stealing horses, several for giving utterance to threats of vengeance, and several on mere suspicion of having committed crime. As soon as this order of things was understood by the people, the Vigilante institution was brought to an end, and the men who had misused its powers were given to understand that any further employment of them would probably cause it to react upon themselves. These abuses had not been frequent, and when discovered were promptly terminated.
CHAPTER XLVII
DAVID OPDYKE
This man, on some accounts the most noted among the roughs of Idaho, was of patrician origin,—the degenerate scion of a family which boasted among its members some of the leading citizens of New York. He was born in the vicinity of Cayuga Lake, New York, about 1830, and could not have been more than thirty-six years of age at the close of his infamous career. He went to California in 1855, where, for want of more congenial occupation, he was employed for two years by the California Stage Company as a stage driver. Thence, in 1858, he sailed to British Columbia, but finding no business there suited to his tastes, returned the same year to California, spending two unprofitable years in Yuba County, and two years succeeding in Virginia City, Nevada. Excited by the intelligence from the northern mines, in 1862 he went to Florence and Warren in Idaho, and the Fall of that year found him in Boise County, where he located and worked a valuable claim on the Ophir. In 1864, with an accredited fortune of fifteen hundred dollars, he removed to Boise City and bought a livery stable in the centre of the town, which is still pointed out to visitors as having been the rendezvous of one of the most reckless and numerous bands of robbers and road agents in the mountains.
Opdyke’s associations were bad, and he was suspected of aiding in the circulation of spurious gold dust, at that time an extensive business with the roughs of the country. His stable soon became the headquarters of all the suspicious characters of Boise, Owyhee, and Alturas counties. From these and other circumstances, the public was prepared to believe that all the thefts and robberies occurring in the country were committed by persons connected with the “Opdyke gang,” but so careful were they to cover their tracks, that no positive evidence could be found against them.