The reader will notice that Mr. Holter spoke of having “a little unpleasantness with the road agents.” The story of that occurrence is now fresh in my memory. It was this way:
Mr. Holter was on a return trip from Virginia City, Dec. 11, 1863, when he came very near being killed by highwaymen, who were then terrorizing the country with their violence. George Ives, the leader of a gang of desperadoes, and some of his companions, had met Holter on the way near the mouth of Big Hole, and had evidently been keeping track of him, thinking that he might sell some goods which he had in Virginia City, and that on his return he would have some money. Mr. Holter had marketed some articles in Virginia City, but, as it happened, he did not draw the money for them. This time he was returning with the two yoke of oxen without the wagon, and at the point of the road where the trail over the hill strikes the gulch, just below Nevada City, Ives and his companion, Erwin, passed him, and, as they went by, one spoke to the other, addressing him as George. They went on ahead and took the lower road by Laurin’s place, but Holter with his oxen took the upper road. When near the crossing of Brown’s gulch, Ives and Erwin, finding that Holter had taken the upper road, galloped their horses and met him. They began business at once; Ives drew and leveled his revolver on Holter, standing about four feet from him, and ordered him to pass over his money. Holter said that he did not have any, but Ives said that he knew better, and made him turn all his pockets inside out. Holter passed over his empty purse; Ives examined it and then threw it away; and he gave him his pocketbook, in which there were some papers and a small amount of postal currency. Ives was angry at not getting money, as he evidently expected. He ordered Holter to leave the road and follow their trail. Holter remarked that as they had the drop on him he supposed he would have to obey. Just then he turned and spoke to his cattle, turning instantly again only to see Ives deliberately aiming at his head, and Ives discharged his pistol just as Holter threw back his head. The bullet entered Holter’s hat just above the band and grazed his scalp, cutting the hair as smoothly as with a razor and taking the skin off part of his brow. For a moment Mr. Holter was stunned, and would have fallen had it not been for the fact that he was near the oxen and threw his arm over the neck of one of them and staggered against the animal. On recovering his senses, his first impulse was to pick up a new ax and a handle that had dropped from under his arm. Ives at this instant, seeing that his first shot had not killed, raised his gun and deliberately aimed again at Holter’s heart, but the gun snapped. Seeing a possibility of escaping, Holter jumped in front of the cattle and got on the other side of them before Ives could fire again. The off oxen suddenly started up and crowded the others onto the mounted desperadoes, diverting their attention and making them move back. During this commotion, Holter at once thought of some beaver dams in the creek a few yards away and broke for them. The road agents, seeing some men with a team coming up the road, went off in another direction as unconcerned as if nothing had happened. Holter then made his way to a cabin on the lower road, where “One-Eyed Reilly” and his associates lived. Here he tried to borrow a rifle or get them to go back with him, but they refused him any assistance whatever. From their answers and conduct, Mr. Holter became satisfied that they were confederates or silent partners with the road agents. As it was then growing dark, Holter went back to where he had left the oxen. After having unyoked them, he recovered his hat and went up the gulch and stayed over night with Stuart, Malcolm Morrow and Charles Olsen, who were then mining there. It turned out that the reason Ives’ pistol only snapped the time he tried to shoot Holter the second time was that at Lauren’s Ives, being already pretty full and being refused any more liquor, he had amused himself by shooting at the decanters and had but one shot left.
After getting back to camp, thinking and talking to his partner about the matter, Mr. Holter made up his mind deliberately that it was his duty above all things to arm himself and hunt up Ives and kill him or perish in the attempt. His partner did all he could to persuade him to give up the idea, but at last said that he would go with him. After outfitting themselves, they both started out to hunt Ives, when at the very first place they stopped they were told that Ives had been hanged. The news made Holter feel very badly, not because Ives was hanged, but because he was not present to assist with the job.
The first quartz mill Mr. Holter said that he saw in the territory was on the Monitor lode in Bevin’s gulch, and not far from his sawmill. The stamps were made of wood with iron bands around the bottom to keep them from splitting, and spikes were driven thickly into the wooden stamp to receive the blow when striking the ore.
The next year Holter and his partner started lumber yards at Virginia City and Nevada City in Alder gulch, and the same summer Holter, with two other men by the name of Cornelius and Olson, built some water works in Virginia City. This was rather a hard undertaking, for everything had to be invented anew from the ordinary way of building water works. The piping and hydrants had to be made of logs, and there was no way to procure a manufacturer’s auger with which to bore the logs. As high as $150 apiece was paid for three augers made by a blacksmith for the purpose. Mr. Evensen, his partner in the sawmill, had gone back to Denver to get more machinery and a planing mill. He purchased a freight outfit, consisting of oxen and wagons, and secured a second-hand planing mill, but was unable to get any machinery, so he loaded up with provisions and started back. On his return he was snowed in on Snake river, where he lost most of his outfit. What remained of the goods was brought on pack animals into Virginia City in the spring of 1865 at 10 cents per pound freight. But good prices were obtained for these remnants, however. Ten-penny nails were sold at Virginia City for $150 per keg, in gold dust. These were again retailed at $2 per pound. Some flour had arrived in Virginia City, and the price had dropped from $150 per sack of ninety pounds to $60. Holter reshipped what flour he had to Helena, where it was disposed of at $100 per sack.
That winter he bought a second-hand portable steam engine and boiler, and had managed to make a sawmill and move it onto Ten Mile creek, about eight miles west of Helena. To this was added the planing mill his partner had bought in Denver, Colo., and which was the first one of the kind in Montana. Soon afterwards the firm opened a lumber yard in Helena, at a point which is now the corner of Main and Wall streets. While the price of lumber at Virginia City had been $125 per thousand for common and $140 per thousand for sluice or flume lumber, the price at Helena was only $100 per thousand for common lumber. In the latter part of June, 1865, Mr. Holter bought out Mr. Evensen and took in his brother Martin as a partner, and the firm became known as A. M. Holter & Bro., and the demand for lumber was increasing very fast.
In the autumn of 1866 Mr. Holter went East by the Overland stage. The price for transportation to Omaha was then $350 in gold dust, or $700 in currency. While nearly a month on the road to Chicago, he said that after deducting stop-overs it took him but seventeen days and nights actual travel. It was the quickest trip on record up to that date.
While East he purchased a new steam sawmill; also machinery for a door and sash factory, and appliances for a distillery and an assortment of general merchandise, which he shipped by the way of St. Louis and Fort Benton, but as some of these purchases did not reach St. Louis in time to go on the first boat it was nearly two years before they reached Fort Benton. Freight from St. Louis to Fort Benton was then 12 cents per pound, and from Benton to Helena 10 cents per pound.
Holter had spent most of the winter in Chicago, and, when ready to return, was married to Miss Loberg on the 6th of April, 1867. Their wedding trip, as Mr. Holter tells it, was an enjoyable one, the bride journeying to Montana by way of St. Louis and the Missouri river route to Fort Benton, then by stage to Helena, while the groom came by the way of Salina, Kan., then by the Overland stage over the Smoky Hill route, by the way of Denver and Salt Lake, with sixteen other passengers. Each passenger was furnished by the stage company with a rifle and ammunition, for the Indians east of Denver were then on the warpath. Fortunately, the Indians did not make an attack, but great inconveniences were met by the burning of stage stations and the killing and stealing of the stock by the Indians. Mr. Holter said that at one place all hands lay three days and nights in a haystack, for there was no stock to draw the coach, and at one time the same mules had to be driven three drives, aggregating seventy-five miles, on account of the burning of the stations and the killing of the stock. He said that one of the stations was on fire and the roof falling in as they passed it, but he finally reached Helena after “staging it” twenty-five days and nights.
He said that at Salt Lake City he was informed that the steamer Gallatin, on which his wife was a passenger, had been captured by the Indians, and, at different points along the Missouri river, she, in turn, was told that all the overland stages on the road to Montana had been captured by the Indians. This unpleasant news caused considerable uneasiness on both sides at the time. But this remarkable wedding trip ended by Mr. and Mrs. Holter’s having a happy meeting in Helena.