“Danger’s over,” announced Johnny the following morning.
“What next?” I asked.
“We’ll go up to town,” said Johnny.
This they proceeded to do, negativing absolutely my desire to accompany them.
“You stay out of this,” said Johnny. “Go and wash gold as usual.”
I was immensely relieved that afternoon when they returned safe and sound. Afterward I heard that they had coolly visited every saloon and gambling place, had stopped in each to chat with the barkeepers and gamblers, had spent the morning seated outside the Bella Union, and had been in no manner molested.
“They’ll be all right as long as they stick together and keep in the open,” Yank assured me. “That gang will sooner assassinate than fight.”
334Although for the moment held in check by the resolute front presented by these three boys, the rough element showed that it considered it had won a great victory, and was now entitled to run the town. Members of the gang selected what goods they needed at any of the stores, making no pretence of payment. They swaggered boldly about the streets at all times, infested the better places such as the Bella Union, elbowed aside insolently any inoffensive citizen who might be in their way, and generally conducted themselves as though they owned the place. Robberies grew more frequent. The freighters were held up in broad daylight; rumours of returning miners being relieved of their dust drifted up from the lower country; mysterious disappearances increased in number. Hardly an attempt was made to conceal the fact that the organized gang that conducted these operations had its headquarters at Italian Bar. Strange men rode up in broad daylight, covered with red dust, to confer with Morton or one of the other resident blackguards. Mysteriously every desperado in the place began to lay fifty-dollar octagonal slugs on the gaming tables, product of some lower country atrocity.
The camp soon had a concrete illustration of the opinion the roughs held of themselves. It was reported quietly among a few of us that several of our number had been “marked” by the desperadoes. Two of these were Joe Thompson, who had acted as counsel for the prosecution in the late trial, and Tom Cleveland, who had presided, and presided well, over the court. Thompson kept one of the stores, while Cleveland was proprietor of the butcher shop. No overt threats were made, but we understood that somehow 335 these men were to be put out of the way. Of course they were at once warned.
The human mind is certainly a queer piece of mechanism. It would seem that the most natural thing to have done, in the circumstances, would have been to dog these men’s footsteps until an opportunity offered to assassinate them quietly. That is just what would have been done had the intended victims been less prominently in the public eye. The murder of court officials, however, was a very different matter from the finding of an unknown miner dead in his camp or along the trail. In the former case there could be no manner of doubt as to the perpetrators of the deed–the animus was too directly to be traced. And it is a matter for curious remark that in all early history, whether of California in the forties, or of Montana in the bloodier sixties, the desperadoes, no matter how strong they felt themselves or how arrogantly they ran the community, nevertheless must have felt a great uncertainty as to the actual power of the decent element. This is evidenced by the fact that they never worked openly. Though the identity of each of them as a robber and cut-throat was a matter of common knowledge, so that any miner could have made out a list of the members of any band, the fact was never formally admitted. And as long as it was not admitted, and as long as actual hard proof was lacking, it seemed to be part of the game that nothing could be done. Moral certainties did not count until some series of outrages resulted in mob action.