Vigilante Days and Ways / The pioneers of the Rockies; the makers and making of Montana and Idaho

by Nathaniel Pitt Langford

Patterson’s friends, some seven or eight in number, well pleased with the result, but fearing for his personal safety, mounted him on a good horse, armed him with revolvers, and started him for a hurried ride to Boise City. Half an hour served to carry intelligence of the encounter to Idaho City. The excitement was intense. Pinkham’s friends were clamorous for the arrest and speedy execution of Patterson; those of the latter avoided a collision by keeping their own counsel, and expressing no public opinion in justification of the conduct of their champion. Terry and James, the instigators of the contest, secreted themselves, and left town by stealth at the first opportunity. Indeed, many of Patterson’s friends believed that Terry intended that the affray should terminate differently. The pistol which he furnished Patterson had been lost, and buried in the snow the entire winter before the encounter, and it was supposed by the owner, who was afraid to fire it lest it should explode, that the loads were rusted. Terry knew of this. He stood in personal fear of Patterson, and bore an old grudge against him. Here was his opportunity. At the second attempt of Patterson to fire, the pistol failed, and the wonder is that it went off at all.

In less than an hour after the tragedy, Robbins, an old friend and former deputy of Pinkham, armed with a double-barrelled shotgun and revolvers, mounted his horse, and left town alone, in swift pursuit of Patterson. He was noted for bravery, and had been the hero of several bloody encounters. At a little wayside inn, seventeen miles from the city, he overtook the fugitive, who had stopped for supper. Patterson came to the door as he rode up.

“I have come to arrest you, Ferd,” said he, at the same time raising his gun so that it covered Patterson.

“All right, Robbins, if that’s your object,” replied Patterson, as he handed Robbins his revolver. In a few moments they started on their return. Before they arrived at town, several of the sheriff’s deputies met them, and claimed the custody of Patterson. Robbins surrendered him, and he was taken to the county jail.

After Patterson’s account of the fight had been circulated, the community became divided in sentiment, the Democrats generally espousing the cause of the prisoner, the Republicans declaring him to be a murderer. There were some exceptions. Judge R——, a life-long Democrat, and a Tennesseean by birth, was very severe in his denunciation of Patterson. He distinguished him as the most marked example of total depravity he had ever known, and related the following incident in confirmation of this opinion:

Several years before this time, Patterson joined in an expedition in Northern California, to pursue a band of Indians who had been stealing horses and committing other depredations upon the property of the settlers. The pursuers captured a bright Indian lad of sixteen. After tying him to a tree, they consulted as to what disposition should be made of him. They were unanimous in the opinion that he should not be freed, but were concerned to know how to take care of him. Some time having elapsed without arriving at any conclusion, Patterson suddenly sprung to his feet, and seizing his rifle, said with an oath that he would take care of him, and shot the poor boy through the heart. “That incident,” said the judge, “determined for me the brutal character of the wretch. His whole life since has been of a piece with it. For years he has been a ‘bummer’ among men of his class. He has lived off his friends. He has had no higher aims than those of an abandoned, dissolute gambler. Pinkham, though a gambler, had other and better tendencies. His schemes for the future looked to an abandonment of his past career, and he was in no sense a ‘bummer.’”

The justice of this criticism was unappreciated by Patterson’s friends. He was provided with comfortable quarters in the jailer’s room, and accorded the freedom of the prison yard. His friends supplied him with whiskey and visited him daily to aid in drinking it. No prisoner of state could have been treated with greater consideration. The gamblers and soiled doves gave him constant assurance of sympathy. Even the poor wretch he had scalped at Portland wrote to ascertain if she could do anything for “poor Ferd.”

Pinkham’s friends, enraged at the course pursued by the officers of justice, began to talk of taking Patterson’s case into their own hands. The example of the Montana Vigilantes excited their emulation. When they finally effected an organization, several of Patterson’s friends gained admission to it by professing friendship for its object. They imparted its designs and progress to others. Patterson was informed of every movement, and counselled his adherents what measures to oppose to the conspiracy against his life. Meantime the Vigilantes appointed a meeting for the purpose of maturing their plans, to be held at a late hour of the evening, in a ravine across Moore’s Creek, a short distance from the city. Patterson having been apprised of it, was anxious to obtain personal knowledge of its designs. So when the hour arrived, representing in his own person one of the deputy sheriffs with the consent of the sheriff, he placed himself at the head of an armed band of six men as desperate as himself, and stole unperceived from the jail-yard to a point within three hundred yards of the rendezvous. Here they separated. Each with a cocked revolver approached at different points, as near the assemblage as safety would permit. Three hundred or more were already on the ground, and others constantly arriving. It was a large gathering for the occasion,—and the occasion was not one to inspire with pleasurable emotions the mind or heart of the wretch who was risking his life to gratify his curiosity. Nevertheless, he crept forward till within seventy yards of the chairman’s stand.

The place of meeting was partially obscured by several clumps of mountain pines, which grew along the sides of the ravine, and enclosed it in their sombre shade. It was bright starlight. When the gathering was complete and had settled into that grim composure which seemed to await an opportunity for a hundred voices to be raised, the chairman called upon a Methodist clergyman present to open their proceedings with prayer. This request, at such a time, must appear strange to the minds of many of my readers. And yet, why should it? It bore testimony to some sincerity and some solemnity in the hearts of the people, even though they had assembled for an unlawful, perhaps some of them for a revengeful, purpose. They felt, doubtless, that the law did not and would not protect them, and if they had known that the person whose doom they were there to decide, at that very moment stood near, armed, a secret observer of their proceedings, with friends within the call of his voice to aid him or obey his orders, they might very properly have concluded that the law exposed them to outrage and murder. Prayer had no mockery in it in such an exigency. Patterson afterwards jocosely remarked that it was the first prayer he had listened to for twenty years. Its various petitions, certainly, could not have fallen pleasantly upon his ears.

Patterson returned unobserved to the jail at a late hour, fully possessed of the designs of the committee. A system of espial was kept up by his friends, by means of which the sheriff and his deputies were enabled to devise a successful counter-plot. At eleven o’clock in the morning of a bright Sabbath, a few men were seen congregating upon the eastern side of Moore’s Creek, below the town, for the supposed purpose of carrying out the decision of the previous evening, which was the execution of Patterson. Patterson and thirty of his friends, armed to the teeth, were in the jail-yard looking through loopholes and knot-holes, anxiously watching them.