JUDGE J. F. HOYT
Miners’ Judge at trial of Moore and Reeves

The jury were occupied in their deliberations until after midnight. No doubt was entertained, from the first, of the guilt of the prisoners, but the exciting question was whether they could afford to declare it. They all felt that to do so would be to announce their own death sentence. They knew that the friends of the prisoners fully intended to have life for life. They had sworn it. One of the jurymen said that the prisoners ought never to have been tried by a jury, but in a miners’ court, that he should not be governed in his decision by the merits of the case, but that, as he had a family in the States to whom his obligations were greater than to that community, he should have to vote for acquittal. After much conversation of this sort, which only served to intensify the fears of the jurymen, a vote was taken which resulted as follows: not guilty, 11; guilty, 1; myself, the supposed friend of the roughs, being the only one in favor of the death penalty. It was apparent that further deliberation would not change this decision, and the jury compromised by agreeing to a sentence of banishment, and a confiscation of the property of the prisoners for the benefit of those they had wounded.

The court met the ensuing morning, when the verdict, under seal, was handed to the judge. He opened and returned it to the foreman, with a request that he read it aloud. An expression of blank astonishment sat upon the face of every person in the room, which was followed by open demonstrations of general dissatisfaction, by all but the roughs, who, accustomed to outrages and long immunity, hailed it as a fresh concession to their bloody and lawless authority.

Mitchell returned to Bannack after a few days’ absence, which was seemingly regarded as a full expiation of his sentence. A miners’ court met soon after his return, and in view of the fact that his sentence was not enforced, revoked the sentence of Moore and Reeves, who again rejoined their fellow-miscreants. Thus the first scene in the drama, which had been ushered in by such a bloody prologue, terminated in the broadest farce.

The trial of Moore and Reeves was one of the earliest instances in the Territory where the lovers of law and order on one side, and the criminal element on the other, were brought into open, public antagonism. No one knew at that time which of the two was the stronger. The roughs had full confidence in their power to run the affairs of the Territory in their own way, and while the trial was progressing sought, by brandishing their revolvers in the court-room, by much loud-mouthed profanity, and by frequent interruptions and threats of vengeance directed against the judge and jury, to intimidate and terrify all who were concerned in conducting the proceedings, and arrest them in their purpose. The life of Judge Hoyt, the acting magistrate of the occasion, was often threatened; but he not only manifested no fear, but was all the more active and efficient in the discharge of the duties of his difficult position. Being the central figure in the court, his calmness and firmness inspired all the other persons engaged in the prosecution with courage equal to the occasion, while it daunted the roughs and probably prevented bloodshed.

Professor Thomas J. Dimsdale, in his account of this trial, says: “To the delivery of this unfortunate verdict may be attributed the ascendency of the roughs. They thought the people were afraid of them. The pretext of the prisoners that the Indians had killed some whites, friends of theirs, in 1849, while going to California, was accepted by the majority of the jurors as some sort of justification:—but the truth is, they were afraid of their lives, and, it must be confessed, not without apparent reason.”

Mr. Rheem, who defended the prisoners, says: “My conscience has more than once pricked me for interposing between the rogues and the halter, but I never believed till the last hour of their trial that they would escape hanging.”

CHAPTER XVII
CRAWFORD AND PHLEGER

The banishment of Moore and Reeves was regarded by the roughs as an encroachment upon the system they had adopted for the government of the country. Long impunity had fostered in them the belief that the citizens would not dare to question their power to do as they pleased. They held a meeting, and it was quietly agreed among them that every active participant in the late trial should be slain. The victims were selected, the work deliberately planned, and each man allotted his part in its performance. This wholesale scheme of vengeance was to be effected secretly, or by provoking those at whom it was aimed into sudden quarrel, and shooting them in assumed self-defence. Any course more culpable would afford the assassin small chance of escaping the vengeance of the law-abiding citizens.