They entered a saloon. For an hour Clayton was plied with whiskey, taunted and jeered until those who had admired him slunk away in disgust, and those who had feared him laughed in enjoyment of his humiliation. But no amount of whiskey could rouse him that day.

Allison's scarred, impassive face, low, quiet tones, and glittering black eyes held him cowed. The terror of Toyah had found his master, and knew it.

At last, in utter disgust, Allison concluded:

"Mr. Clayton, your invitation brought me twenty miles to meet a gun fighter. I find you such a cur that if ever we meet again I'll lash you into strips with a bull whip."

A month later Mr. Clayton was killed by his own brother-in-law, Grant Tinnin, one of the quiet good men of the country, who never failed to score in any real emergency.

"I wonder how it will all end!" Allison used often to remark while lying idly staring into the camp-fire. "Of course I know I can't keep up this sort o' thing; some one's sure to get me. An' I'd jes' give anything in the world to know how I'm goin to die—by pistol or knife."

It turned out that Fate had decreed other means for his removal.

One day Allison and his brother-in-law John McCullough had a serious quarrel. Allison left the ranch and rode into town to think it over. In his later years killing had become such a mania with him that his best friend could never feel entirely safe against his deadly temper; the least difference might provoke a collision. McCullough was therefore not greatly surprised to get a letter from Allison a few days later, sent out by special messenger, telling him that Allison would reach the ranch late in the afternoon of the next day and would kill him on sight.

Early in the morning of the appointed day Allison left town in a covered hack. He had been drinking heavily and had whiskey with him. About half-way between town and the ranch he overtook George Larramore, a freighter, seated out in the sun on top of his heavy load.

"Hello, George!" called Allison; "mighty hot up there, ain't it?"

"Howd'y, Mr. Allison. I don' mind the heat; I'm used to it," answered Larramore.

"George," called Allison, after driving on a short distance, "'pears to me the good things o' this world ain't equally divided. I don't see why you should sit up there roasting in the sun an' me down here in the shade o' the hack. We'll jes' even things a little right here. You crawl down off that load an' jump into the hack an' I'll get up there an' drive your team."

"Pow'ful good o' you, Mr. Allison, but——"

"Crawl down, I say, George, it's Clay tellin' you!"

And the change was made without further delay.

Five miles farther up the road John McCullough and two friends lay in ambush all that day and far into the night, with ready Winchesters, awaiting Allison. But he never came.

Shortly after taking his seat on top of the high load in the broiling sun, plodding slowly along in the dust and heat, Allison was nodding drowsily, when suddenly a protruding mesquite root gave the wagon a sharp jolt that plunged Clay headlong into the road, where, before he could rise, the great wheels crunched across his neck.



CHAPTER IV

TRIGGERFINGERITIS[1]

On the Plains thirty years ago there were two types of man-killers; and these two types were subdivided into classes.

The first type numbered all who took life in contravention of law. This type was divided into three classes: A, Outlaws to whom blood-letting had become a mania; B, Outlaws who killed in defence of their spoils or liberty; C, Otherwise good men who had slain in the heat of private quarrel, and either "gone on the scout" or "jumped the country" rather than submit to arrest.

The second type included all who slew in support of law and order. This type included six classes: A, United States marshals; B, Sheriffs and their deputies; C, Stage or railway express guards, called "messengers"; D, Private citizens organized as Vigilance Committees—these often none too discriminating, and not infrequently the blind or willing instruments of individual grudge or greed; E, Unorganized bands of ranchmen who took the trail of marauders on life or property and never quit it; F, "Inspectors" (detectives) for Stock Growers' Associations.

Throughout the seventies and well into the eighties, in Wyoming, Dakota, western Kansas and Nebraska, New Mexico, and west Texas, courts were idle most of the time, and lawyers lived from hand to mouth. The then state of local society was so rudimentary that it had not acquired the habit of appeal to the law for settlement of its differences. And while it may sound an anachronism, it is nevertheless the simple truth that while life was far less secure through that period, average personal honesty then ranked higher and depredations against property were fewer than at any time since.

As soon as society had advanced to a point where the victim could be relied on to carry his wrongs to court, judges began working overtime and lawyers fattening. But of the actual pioneers who took their lives in their hands and recklessly staked them in their everyday goings and comings (as, for instance, did all who ventured into the Sioux country north of the Platte between 1875 and 1880) few long stayed—no matter what their occupation—who were slow on the trigger: it was back to Mother Earth or home for them.

Of the supporters of the law in that period Boone May was one of the finest examples any frontier community ever boasted. Early in 1876 he came to Cheyenne with an elder brother and engaged in freighting thence overland to the Black Hills. Quite half the length of the stage road was then infested by hostile Sioux. This meant heavy risks and high pay. The brothers prospered so handsomely that, toward the end of the year, Boone withdrew from freighting, bought a few cattle and horses, and built and occupied a ranch at the stage-road crossing of Lance Creek, midway between the Platte and Deadwood, in the very heart of the Sioux country. Boone was then well under thirty, graceful of figure, dark-haired, wore a slender downy moustache that served only to emphasize his youth, but possessed that reserve and repose of manner most typical of the utterly fearless.

The Sioux made his acquaintance early, to their grief. One night they descended on his ranch and carried off all the stage horses and most of Boone's. Although the "sign" showed there were fifteen or twenty in the party, at daylight Boone took their trail, alone. The third day thereafter he returned to the ranch with all the stolen stock, besides a dozen split-eared Indian ponies, as compensation for his trouble, taken at what cost of strategy or blood Boone never told.

Learning of this exploit from his drivers, Al. Patrick, the superintendent of the stage line, took the next coach to Lance Creek and brought Boone back to Deadwood, enlisted in his corps of "messengers"; he was too good timber to miss.

At that time every coach south-bound from Deadwood to Cheyenne carried thousands in its mail-pouches and express-boxes; and once a week a treasure coach armored with boiler plate, carrying no passengers, and guarded by six or eight "messengers" or "sawed-off shotgun men," conveyed often as high as two hundred thousand dollars of hard-won Black Hills gold bars.

Thus it naturally followed that, throughout 1877 and 1878, it was the exception for a coach to get through from the Chugwater to Jenny's stockade without being held up by bandits at least once.

Any that happened to escape Jack Wadkins in the south were likely to fall prey to Dune Blackburn in the north—the two most desperate bandit-leaders in the country.

In February, 1878, I had occasion to follow some cattle thieves from Fort Laramie to Deadwood. Returning south by coach one bitter evening we pulled into Lance Creek, eight passengers inside, Boone May and myself on the box with 'Gene Barnett the driver; Stocking, another famous messenger, roosted behind us atop of the coach, fondling his sawed-off shotgun.

From Lance Creek southward lay the greatest danger zone. At that point, therefore, Boone and Stocking shifted from the coach to the saddle, and, as 'Gene popped his whip and the coach crunched away through the snow, both dropped back perhaps thirty yards behind us.

An hour later, just as the coach got well within a broad belt of plum bushes that lined the north bank of Old Woman's Fork, out into the middle of the road sprang a lithe figure that threw a snap shot over 'Gene's head and halted us.

Instantly six others surrounded the coach and ordered us down. I already had a foot on the nigh front wheel to descend, when a shot out of the brush to the west, (Boone's, I later learned) dropped the man ahead of the team.

Then followed a quick interchange of shots for perhaps a minute, certainly no more, and then I heard Boone's cool voice:

"Drive on, 'Gene!"

"Move an' I'll kill you!" came in a hoarse bandit's voice from the thicket east of us.

"Drive on, 'Gene, or I'll kill you," came then from Boone, in a tone of such chilling menace that 'Gene threw the bud into the leaders, and away we flew at a pace materially improved by three or four shots the bandits sent singing past our ears and over the team! The next down coach brought to Cheyenne the comforting news that Boone and Stocking had killed four of the bandits and stampeded the other three.

Within six months after Boone was employed, both Dune Blackburn and Jack Wadkins disappeared from the stage road, dropped out of sight as if the earth had opened and swallowed them, as it probably had. Boone had a way of absenting himself for days from his routine duties along the stage road. He slipped off entirely alone after this new quarry precisely as he had followed the Sioux horse-raiders and, while he never admitted it, the belief was general that he had run down and "planted" both. Indeed it is almost a certainty this is true, for beasts of their type never change their stripes, and sure it is that neither were ever seen or heard of after their disappearance from the Deadwood trail.

Late in the Autumn of the same year, 1878, and also at or near the stage-crossing of Old Woman's Fork, Boone and one companion fought eight bandits led by a man named Tolle, on whose head was a large reward. This was earned by Boone at a hold-up of a U. P. express train near Green River.

This band was, in a way, more lucky, for five of the eight escaped; but of the three otherwise engaged one furnished a head which Boone toted in a gunny sack to Cheyenne and exchanged for five thousand dollars, if my memory rightly serves.

This incident was practically the last of the serious hold-ups on the Cheyenne road. A few pikers followed and "stood up" a coach occasionally, but the strong organized bands were extinct.

Throughout 1879 Boone's activities were transferred to the Sidney-Deadwood road, where for several months before Boone's coming, Curly and Lame Johnny had held sway. Lame Johnny was shortly thereafter captured, and hanged on the lone tree that gave the Big Cottonwood Creek its name. A few months later, Curly was captured by Boone and another, but was never jailed or tried: when nearing Deadwood, he tried to escape from Boone, and failed.

With the Sioux pushed back within the lines of their new reservation in southern Dakota and semi-pacified, and with the Sidney road swept clean of road-agents, life in Boone's old haunts became for him too tame. Thus it happened that, while trapping was then no better within than without the Sioux reservation, the Winter of 1879-80 found Boone and four mates camped on the Cheyenne River below the mouth of Elk Creek, well within the reserve, trapping the main stream and its tributaries. For a month they were undisturbed, and a goodly store of fur was fast accumulating. Then one fine morning, while breakfast was cooking, out from the cover of an adjacent hill and down upon them charged a Sioux war party, one hundred and fifty strong.

Boone's four mates barely had time to take cover below the hard-by river bank—under Boone's orders—before fire opened. Down straight upon them the Sioux charged in solid mass, heels kicking and quirts pounding their split-eared ponies, until, having come within a hundred yards, the mass broke into single file and raced past the camp, each warrior lying along the off side of his pony and firing beneath its neck—the usual but utterly stupid and suicidal Sioux tactics, for accurate fire under such conditions is of course impossible.

Meantime Boone stood quietly by the camp-fire, entirely in the open, coolly potting the enemy as regularly and surely as a master wing-shot thinning a flight of ducks. Three times they so charged and Boone so received them, pouring into them a steady, deadly fire out of his Winchester and two pistols. And when, after the third charge, the war party drew off for good, forty-odd ponies and twenty-odd warriors lay upon the plain, stark evidence of Boone's wonderful nerve and marksmanship. Shortly after the fight one of his mates told me that while he and three others were doing their best, there was no doubt that nearly all the dead fell before Boone's fire.

A type diametrically opposite to that of the debonair Boone May was Captain Jim Smith, one of the best peaceofficers the frontier ever knew. Of Captain Smith's early history nothing was known, except that he had served with great credit as a captain of artillery in the Union Army. He first appeared on the U. P. during construction days in the late sixties. Serving in various capacities as railroad detective, marshal, stock inspector, and the like, for eighteen years Captain Smith wrote more red history with his pistol (barring May's work on the Sioux) than any two men of his time.

The last I knew of him he had enough dead outlaws to his credit—thirty-odd—to start, if not a respectable, at least, a fair-sized graveyard. Captain Jim's mere look was almost enough to still the heart-beat and paralyze the pistol hand of any but the wildest of them all. His great burning black eyes, glowering deadly menace from cavernous sockets of extraordinary depth, were set in a colossal grim face; his straight, thin-lipped mouth never showed teeth; his heavy, tight-curling black moustache and stiff black imperial always had the appearance of holding the under lip closely glued to the upper. In years of intimacy, I never once saw on his lips the faintest hint of a smile. He had tremendous breadth of shoulders and depth of chest; he was big-boned, lean-loined, quick and furtive of movement as a panther. In short, Captain Jim was altogether the most fearsome-looking man I ever saw, the very incarnation of a relentless, inexorable, indomitable, avenging Nemesis.

Like most men lacking humor, Captain Jim was devoid of vices; like all men lacking sentiment, he cultivated no intimacies. Throughout those years loved nothing, animate or inanimate, but his guns—the full length "45" that nestled in its breast scabbard next his heart, and the short "45," sawed off two inches in front of the cylinder, that he always carried in a deep side-pocket of his long sack coat. This was often a much patched pocket, for Jim was a notable economist of time, and usually fired from within the pocket. That he loved those guns I know, for often have I seen him fondle them as tenderly as a mother her first-born.

In 1879 Sidney, Neb., was a hell-hole, filled with the most desperate toughs come to prey upon overland travellers to and from the Black Hills. Of these toughs McCarthy, proprietor of the biggest saloon and gambling-house in town, was the leading spirit and boss. Nightly, men who would not gamble were drugged or slugged or leaded. Town marshals came and went—either feet first or on a keen run.

So long as its property remained unmolested the U. P. management did not mind. But one night the depot was robbed of sixty thousand dollars in gold bullion. Of course, this was the work of the local gang. Then the U. P. got busy. Pete Shelby summoned Captain Jim to Omaha and committed the Sidney situation to his charge. Frequenting haunts where he knew the news would be wired to Sidney, Jim casually mentioned that he was going out there to clean out the town, and purposed killing McCarthy on sight. This he rightly judged would stampede, or throw a chill into, many of the pikers—and simplify his task.

Arrived in Sidney, Jim found McCarthy absent, at North Platte, due to return the next day. Coming to the station the next morning, Jim found the express reported three hours late, and returned to his room in the railway House, fifty yards north of the depot. He doffed his coat, shoulder scabbard, and boots, and lay down, shortly falling into a doze that nearly cost him his life. Most inconsiderately the train made up nearly an hour of its lost time. Jim's awakening was sudden, but not soon enough. Before he had time to rise at the sound of the softly opening door, McCarthy was over him with a pistol at his head.

Jim's left hand nearly touched the gun pocket of his coat, and his right lay in reach of the other gun; but his slightest movement meant instant death.

"Heerd you come to hang my hide up an' skin the town, but you're under a copper and my open play wins, Black Jim! See?" growled McCarthy.

"Well, Mac," coolly answered Jim, "you're a bigger damn fool than I allowed. Never heard of you before makin' a killin' there was nothin' in. What's the matter with you and your gang? I'm after that bullion, and I've got a straight tip: Lame Johnny's the bird that hooked onto it. If you're standing in with him, you better lead me aplenty, for if you don't I'll sure get him."

"Honest? Is that right, Jim? Ain't lyin' none?" queried McCarthy, relieved of the belief that his gang were suspected.

"Sure, she's right, Mac."

"But I heerd you done said you was comin' to do me," persisted McCarthy.

"Think I'm fool enough to light in diggin' my own grave, by sendin' love messages like that to a gun expert like you, Mac?" asked Captain Jim.

Whether it was the subtle flattery or Jim's argument, Mac lowered his gun, and while backing out of the room, remarked: "Nothin' in mixin' it with you, Jim, if you don't want me."

But Mac was no more than out of the room when Jim slid off the bed quick as a cat; softly as a cat, on his noiseless stockinged feet he followed Mac down the hall; crafty as a cat, he crept down the creaking stairs, tread for tread, a scant arm's length behind his prey—why, God alone knows, unless for a savage joy in longer holding another thug's life in his hands. So he hung, like a leech to the blood it loves, across the corridor and to the middle of the trunk room that lay between the hall and the hotel office. There Jim spoke:

"Oh! Mr. McCarthy!"

Mac whirled, drawing his gun, just in time to receive a bullet squarely through the heart.

During the day Jim got two more scalps. The rest of the McCarthy gang got the impression that it was up to them to pull their freight out of Sidney, and acted on it.

In 1882 the smoke of the Lincoln County War still hung in the timber of the Ruidoso and the Bonito, a feud in which nearly three hundred New Mexicans lost their lives. Depredations on the Mescalero Reservation were so frequent that the Indians were near open revolt.

Needing a red-blooded agent, the Indian Bureau sought and got one in Major W. H. H. Llewellyn, since Captain of Rough Riders, Troup H, then a United States marshal with a distinguished record. The then Chief of the Bureau offered the Major two troops of cavalry to preserve order among the Mescaleros and keep marauders off the reservation, and was astounded when Llewellyn declined and said he would prefer to handle the situation with no other aid than that of one man he had in mind.

Captain Jim Smith was the man. And pleased enough was he when told of the turbulence of the country and the certainty of plenty doing in his line.

But by the time they reached the Mescalero Agency, the feud was ended; the peace of exhaustion after years of open war and ambush had descended upon Lincoln County, and the Mescaleros were glad enough quietly to draw their rations of flour and coffee, and range the Sacramentos and Guadalupes for game. For Jim and the band of Indian police which he quickly organized there was nothing doing.

Inaction soon cloyed Captain Jim. It got on his nerves. Presently he conceived a resentment toward the agent for bringing him down there under false pretences of daring deeds to be done, that never materialized. One day Major Llewellyn imprudently countermanded an order Jim had given his Chief of Police, under conditions which the Captain took as a personal affront. The next thing the Major knew, he was covered by Jim's gun listening to his death sentence.

"Major," began Captain Jim, "right here is where you cash in. Played me for a big fool long enough. Toted me off down here on the guarantee of the best show of fightin' I've heard of since the war—here where there ain't a man in the Territory with nerve enough left to tackle a prairie dog, 's far 's I can see. Lied to me a plenty, didn't you? Anything to say before you quit?"

Since that time Major Llewellyn has become (and is now) a famous pleader at the New Mexican bar, but I know he will agree that the most eloquent plea he has t this day made was that in answer to Captain Jim's arraignment. Luckily it won.

A month later Jim called on me at El Paso. At the time I was President of the West Texas Cattle Growers' Association, organized chiefly to deal with marauding rustlers.

"Howd'y, Ed," Jim began, "I've jumped the Mescalero Reservation, headed north. Nothin' doin' down here now. But, say, Ed, I hear they're crowdin' the rustlers a plenty up in the Indian Territory and the Pan Handle, and she's a cinch they'll be down on you thick in a few months. And, say, Ed, don't forget old Jim; when the rustlers come, send for him. You know he's the cheapest proposition ever—never any lawyers' fees or court costs, nothin' to pay but just Jim's wages."

That was the last time we ever met, and lucky it will probably be for me if we never meet again; for if Jim still lives and there is aught in this story he sees occasion to take exception to, I am sure to be due for a mix-up I can very well get on without.

From 1878 to 1880 Billy Lykins was one of the most efficient inspectors of the Wyoming Stock Growers' Association, a short man of heavy muscular physique and a round, cherubic, pink and white face, in which a pair of steel-blue glittering eyes looked strangely out of place. A second glance, however, showed behind the smiling mouth a set of the jaw that did not belie the fighting eyes. So far as I can now recall, Billy never failed to get what he went after while he remained in our employ.

Probably the toughest customer Billy ever tackled was Doc Middleton. As an outlaw, Doc was the victim of an error of judgment. When he first came among us, hailing from Llano County, Texas, Doc was as fine a puncher and jolly, good-tempered range-mate as any in the Territory. Sober and industrious, he never drank or gambled. But he had his bit of temper, had Doc, and his chunk of good old Llano nerve. Thus, when a group of carousing soldiers, in a Sidney saloon, one night lit in to beat Doc up with their six-shooters for refusing to drink with them, the inevitable happened in a very few seconds; Doc killed three of them, jumped his horse, and split the wind for the Platte.

And therein lay his error.

The killing was perfectly justifiable; surrendered and tried, he would surely have been acquitted. But his breed never surrender, at least, never before their last shell is emptied. Flight having made him an outlaw, the Government offered a heavy reward for him, dead or alive. For a time he was harbored among his friends on the different ranches; indeed was a welcome guest of my Deadman Ranch for several days; but in a few weeks the hue and cry got so hot that he had to jump for the Sand Hills south of the Niobrara.

Ever pursued, he found that honest wage-earning was impossible. Presently he was confronted with want, not of much, indeed of very little, but that want was vital—he wanted cartridges. At this time the Sand Hills were full of deer and antelope; and therefore to him cartridges meant more even than defence of his freedom, they meant food. It was this want that drove him into his first actual crime, the stealing of Sioux ponies, which he ran into the settlements and sold.

The downward path of the criminal is like that of the limpid, clean-faced brook, bred of a bubbling spring nestled in some shady nook of the hills, where the air is sweet and pure, and pollution cometh not. But there it may not stay; on and yet on it rushes, as helpless as heedless, till one day it finds itself plunged into some foul current carrying the off-scourings of half a continent. So on and down plunged Doc; from stealing Indian ponies to lifting ranch horses was no long leap in his new code.

Then our stock Association got busy and Billy Lykins took his trail. Oddly, in a few months the same type of accident in turn saved the life of each. Their first encounter was single-handed. With the better horse, Lykins was pressing Doc so close that Doc raced to the crest of a low conical hill, jumped off his mount, dropped flat on the ground and covered Lykins with a Springfield rifle, meantime yelling to him:

"Duck, you little Dutch fool; I don't want to kill you"; for they knew each other well, and in a way were friends.

But Billy never knew when to stop. Deeper into his pony's flank sank the rowels, and up the hill on Doc he charged, pistol in hand. At thirty yards Doc pulled the trigger, when—wonder of wonders—the faithful old Springfield missed fire. Before Doc could throw in another shell or draw his pistol, Billy was over him and had him covered.

If my memory rightly serves, the Sidney jail held Doc almost a fortnight. A few weeks later Doc had assembled a strong gang about him, rendezvoused on the Piney, a tributary of the lower Niobrara. There he was far east of Lykins's bailiwick, but a good many degrees within Lykins's disposition to quit his trail. Accompanied by Major W. H. H. Llewellyn and an Omaha detective (inappropriately named Hassard), Lykins located Doc's camp, and the three lay near for several days studying their quarry.

One morning Llewellyn and Hassard started up the creek, mounted, on a scout, leaving Lykins and his horse hidden in the brush near the trail. At a sharp bend of the path the two ran plunk into Doc and five of his men. Both being unknown to Doc's gang, and the position and odds forbidding hostilities, they represented themselves as campers hunting lost stock, and turned and rode back down the trail with the outlaws, alert for any play their leader might make.

Recognizing his man, Billy lay with his "45" and "70" Sharps comfortably resting across a log; and when the band were come within twenty yards of him, he drew a careful bead on Doc's head and pulled the trigger. By strange coincidence his Sharps missed fire, precisely as had Doc's Springfield a few weeks before.

Hearing the snap of the rifle hammer, with a curse Doc jerked his gun and whirled his horse toward the brush just as Billy sprang out into the open and threw a pistol shot into Doc that broke his thigh. Swaying in saddle, Doc cursed Hassard for leading him into a trap, and shot him twice before himself pitching to the ground. Hassard stood idly, stunned apparently by a sort of white-hot work he was not used to, and received his death wound without any effort even to draw. Meantime, the firm of Lykins and Llewellyn accounted for two more before Doc's mates got out of range. Thus, like the brook, Doc had drifted down the turbid current of crime till he found himself impounded in the Lincoln penitentiary with the off-scourings of the state.

While it is true that back into such impounding most who once have been there soon return, Doc turned out to be one of the rare exceptions proving the rule; for the last I heard of him, he was the lame but light-hearted and wholly honest proprietor of a respectable Rushville saloon.

When in the early eighties the front camps of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe and the Texas Pacific met at El Paso, then a village called Franklin, within a few weeks the population jumped from a few hundred to nearly three thousand. Speculators, prospectors for business opportunities, mechanics, miners, and tourists poured in—a chance-taking, high-living, free-spending lot that offered such rich pickings for the predatory that it was not long before nearly every fat pigeon had a hungry, merciless vulture hovering near, watching for a chance to fasten its claws and gorge itself.

The low one-story adobes, fronted by broad, arched portals, that then lined the west side of El Paso Street for several blocks, was a long solid row of variety theatres, dance halls, saloons, and gambling-houses, never closed by day or by night. They were packed with a roistering mob that drifted from one joint to another, dancing, gambling, carousing, fighting. Naturally, at first the predatory confined their attentions to the roisterers.

Of course every lay-out was a brace game, from which no player arose with any notable winning except occasionally when the "house" felt it a good bit of advertising to graduate a handsome winner—and then it was usually a "capper," whose gains were in a few minutes passed back into the till.

The faro boxes were full of springs as a watch; faro decks were carefully cut "strippers." An average good dealer would shuffle and arrange as he liked the favorite cards of known high-rollers. These had been neatly split on either edge and a minute bit of bristle pasted in, which no ordinary touch would feel, but which the sand-papered finger tips of an expert dealer would catch and slip through on the shuffle and place where they would do (the house) the most good. The "tin horns" gave out few but false notes; the roulette balls were kicked silly out of the boxes representing heavily played numbers. Not content with the "Kitty's" rake-off, every stud poker table had one or more "cappers" sitting in, to whom the dealers could occasionally throw a stiff pot. The backs of poker decks were so cunningly marked that while the wise ones could read their size and suit across the table, no untaught eye could detect their guile. And wherever a notable roll was once flashed, greedy eyes never left it until it was safe in the till of some game, or its owner "rolled" and relieved of it by force.

For months orgy ran riot and the predatory band grew bolder and cruder in their methods. Killings were frequent. Few nights passed without more or less street hold-ups—usually more. Respectable citizens took the middle of the street, literally gun in hand, when forced to be out of nights. The Mayor and City Council were powerless. City marshals and deputies they hired in bunches, but all to no purpose. Each fresh lot of appointees were short-lived, literally or officially—mostly literally. Finally, a vigilance committee was formed, made up of good citizens not a few of whom were gun experts with their own bit of red record. But nothing came of it. The predatories openly flouted and defied them.

On one notable night when the committee were assembled in front of the old Grand Central Hotel, a mob of two hundred toughs lined up before the thirty-odd of the committee and dared them to open the ball; and it was a miracle the little Plaza was not then and there turned into a slaughter pen bloody as the Alamo. It really looked as if nothing short of martial law and a strong body of troops could pacify the town.

But one night, into the chamber of the City Council stalked a man, the man of the hour, unheralded and unknown. He gave the name of Bill Stoudenmayer. About all that was ever learned of him was that he hailed from Fort Davis. His type was that of a course, brutal, Germanic gladiator, devoid of strategy; a bluff, stubborn, give-and-take fighter, who drove bull-headed at whatever opposed him. But El Paso soon learned that he could handle his guns with as deadly dexterity as did his forebears their nets and tridents.

Asked his business with the Council, he said he had heard they had failed to find a marshal who could hold the town down, and allowed he'd like to try the job if the Council would make it worth his while. Questioned as to his views, he explained that he was there to make some good money for himself and save the city more; if they would pay him five hundred dollars a month for two months, they could discharge all their deputies and he would go it alone and agree to clear the town of toughs or draw no pay. The Mayor and Council were paralyzed in a double sense: by the wild audacity of this proposal, and by their memory of recent threats of the thug-leaders that they would massacre the Council to a man if any further attempts were made to circumscribe their activities. Some were openly for declining the offer, but in the end a majority gained heart of Stoudenmayer's own hardihood sufficiently to hire him.

The rest of the night Stoudenmayer employed in quietly familiarizing himself with the personnel of the enemy. He lost no time. At daylight the next morning, several notices, manually written in a rude hand and each bearing the signature of the rude hand that wrote it, were found conspicuously posted between Oregon Street and the Plaza. The signature was, "Bill Stoudenmayer, City Marshal."

The notice was brief but pointed:

"Any of the hold-ups named below I find in town after three o'clock to-day, I'm going to kill on sight."

Then followed seventy names. The list was carefully chosen: all "pikers" and "four-flushers" were omitted; none but the elite of the gun-twirling, black-jack swinging toughs was included. Hardly a single man was named in the list lacking a more or less gory record.

By the toughs Stoudenmayer was taken as a jest, by respectable citizens as a lunatic. Heavy odds were offered that he would not last till noon, with few takers. And yet throughout the morning Stoudenmayer quietly walked the streets, unaccompanied save by his two guns and his conspicuously displayed marshal's star.

Nothing happened until about two o'clock, when two men sprang out from ambush behind the big cottonwood tree that then stood on the northeast corner of El Paso and San Antonio Streets, one armed with a shotgun and the other with a pistol, and started to "throw down" on Stoudenmayer, who was approaching from the other side of the street. But before either got his artillery into action, the Marshal jerked his two pistols and killed both, then quietly continued his stroll, over their prostrate bodies, and past them, up the street. It was such an obviously workmanlike job that it threw a chill into the hardiest of the sixty-eight survivors,—so much of a chill that, though Stoudenmayer paraded streets and threaded saloon and dance-hall throngs all the rest of the afternoon, seeking his prey, not a single man of them could he find; all stayed close in their dens.

But that the thug-leaders were not idle Stoudenmayer was not long learning. In the last moments of twilight, just before the pall of night fell upon the town, the Marshal was standing on the east side of El Paso Street, midway between Oregon and San Antonio Streets, no cover within reach of him. Suddenly, without the slightest warning, a heavy fusillade opened on him from the opposite side of the street, a fusillade so heavy it would have decimated a company of infantry. At least a hundred men fired at him at the word, and it was a miracle he did not go down at the first volley. But he was not even scathed. Drawing his pistols, Stoudenmayer marched upon the enemy, slowly but steadily, advancing straight, it seemed, into the jaws of death, but firing with such wonderful rapidity and accuracy that seven of his foes were killed and two wounded in almost as many seconds, although all kept close as possible behind the shelter of the portal columns. And every second he was so engaged, at least a hundred guns, aimed by cruel trained eyes, that scarce ever before had missed whatever they sought to draw a bead on, were pouring out upon him a hell of lead that must have sounded to him like a flight of bees.

But stand his iron nerve and fatal snap-shooting the thugs could not. Before he was half way across the street, the hostile fire had ceased, and his would-be assassins were flying for the nearest and best cover they could find. Out of the town they slipped that night, singly and in squads, boarding freight trains north and east, stages west and south, stealing teams and saddle stock, some even hitting the trails afoot, in stark terror of the man. The next morning El Paso found herself evacuated of more than two hundred men who, while they had been for a time her most conspicuous citizens, were such as she was glad enough to spare. In twenty-four hours Bill Stoudenmayer had made his word good and fairly earned his wages; indeed he had accomplished single-handed what the most hopeful El Pasoites had despaired of seeing done with less authority and force than two or three troops of regular cavalry.

Then El Paso settled down to the humdrum but profitable task of laying the foundations for the great metropolis of the Farther Southwest. Since then, an occasional sporadic case of triggerfingeritis has developed in El Paso, usually in an acute form; but never once since the night Stoudenmayer turned the El Paso Street Portals into a shambles has it threatened as an epidemic.

Unluckily, Bill Stoudenmayer did not last long to enjoy the glory of his deed. He was a marked man, merely from motives of revenge harbored by friends of the departed (dead or live), but as a man with a reputation so big as to hang up a rare prize in laurels for any with the strategy and hardihood to down him. It was therefore matter of no general surprise when, a few weeks after his resignation as City Marshal, he fell the victim of a private quarrel.

A few years later, Hal Gosling was the U. S. Marshall for the Western District of Texas. Early in Gosling's regime, Johnny Manning became one of his most efficient and trusted deputies. The pair were wide opposites: Gosling, a big, bluff, kindly, rollicking dare-devil afraid of nothing, but a sort that would rather chaff than fight; Manning a quiet, reserved, slender, handsome little man, not so very much bigger than a full-grown "45," who actually sought no quarrels but would rather fight than eat. Each in his own may [Transcriber's note: way?], the pair made themselves a holy terror to such of the desperadoes as ventured any liberties with Uncle Sam's belongings.

One of their notable captures was a brace of road-agents who had appropriated the Concho stage road and about everything of value that travelled it. The two were tried in the Federal Court at Austin and sentenced to hard labor at Huntsville. Gosling and Manning started to escort them to their new field of activity. Handcuffed but not otherwise shackled, the two prisoners were given a seat together near the middle of a day coach. By permission of the Marshal, the wife of one and the sister of the other sat immediately behind them—dear old Hal Gosling never could resist any appeal to his sympathies. The seat directly across the aisle from the two prisoners was occupied by Gosling and Manning. With the car well filled with passengers and their men ironed, the Marshal and his Deputy were off their guard. When out of Austin barely an hour, the train at full speed, the two women slipped pistols into the hands of the two convicted bandits, unseen by the officers. But others saw the act, and a stir of alarm among those near by caused Gosling to whirl in his seat next the aisle, reaching for the pistol in his breast scabbard. But he was too late. Before he was half risen to his feet or his gun out, the prisoners fired and killed him.

Then ensued a terrible duel, begun at little more than arm's length, between Manning and the two prisoners, who presently began backing toward the rear door. Quickly the car filled with smoke, and in it pandemonium reigned, women screaming, men cursing, all who had not dropped in a faint ducking beneath the car seats and trying their best to burrow in the floor. When at length the two prisoners reached the platform and sprang from the moving train, Johnny Manning, shot full of holes as a sieve, lay unconscious across Hal Gosling's body; and the sister of one of the bandits hung limp across the back of the seat the prisoners had occupied, dead of a wild shot.

But Johnny had well avenged Hal's death and his own injuries; one of the prisoners was found dead within a few yards of the track, and the other was captured, mortally wounded, a half-mile away.

After many uncertain weeks, when Manning's system had successfully recovered from the overdose of lead administered by the departed, he quietly resumed his star and belt, and no one ever discovered that the incident had made him in the least gun-shy.

Whenever the history of the Territory of New Mexico comes to be written, the name of Colonel Albert J. Fountain deserves and should have first place in it. Throughout the formative epoch of her evolution from semi-savagery to civilization, an epoch spanning the years from 1866 to 1896, Colonel Fountain was far and away her most distinguished and most useful citizen. As soldier, scholar, dramatist, lawyer, prosecutor, Indian fighter, and desperado-hunter, his was the most picturesque personality I have ever known. Gentle and kind-hearted as a woman, a lover of his books and his ease, he nevertheless was always as quick to take up arms and undergo any hazard and hardship in pursuit of murderous rustlers as he was in 1861 to join the California Column (First California Volunteers) on its march across the burning deserts of Arizona to meet and defeat Sibley at Val Verde. A face fuller of the humanities and charities of life than his would be hard to find; but, roused, the laughing eyes shone cold as a wintry sky. He despised wrong, and hated the criminal, and spent his whole life trying to right the one and suppress or exterminate the other. In this work, and of it, ultimately, he lost his life.

In the early eighties, while the New Mexican courts were well-nigh idle, crime was rampant, especially in Lincoln, Dona Ana, and Grant Counties. To the east of the Rio Grande the Lincoln County War was at its height, while to the west the Jack Kinney gang took whatever they wanted at the muzzle of their guns; and they wanted about everything in sight. County peace officers were powerless.

At this stage Fountain was appointed by the Governor "Colonel of State Militia," and given a free hand to pacify the country. As an organized military body, the militia existed only in name. And so Fountain left it. Serious and effective as was his work, no man loved a grand-stand play more than he. He liked to go it alone, to be the only thing in the spot light. Thus most of his work as a desperado-hunter was done single-handed.

On only one occasion that I can recall did he ever have with him on his raids more than one or two men, always Mexicans, temporarily deputized. That was when he met and cleaned out the Kinney gang over on the Miembres, and did it with half the number of the men he was after. Among those who escaped was Kinney's lieutenant. A few weeks later Colonel Fountain learned that this man was in hiding at Concordia, a placita two miles below El Paso. He was one of the most desperate Mexican outlaws the border has ever known, a man who had boasted he would never be taken alive, and that he would kill Fountain before he was himself taken dead, a human tiger, whom the bravest peace officer might be pardoned for wanting a great deal of help to take. Yet Fountain merely took his armory's best and undertook it alone: and by mid-afternoon of the very next day after the information reached him he had his man safely manacled at the El Paso depot of the Santa Fe Railway.

While waiting for the train, Colonel George Baylor, the famous Captain of Texas Rangers, chided Fountain for not wearing a cord to fasten his pistol to his belt, as then did all the Rangers, to prevent its loss from the scabbard in a running fight; and he finished by detaching his own cord, and looping one end to Fountain's belt and the other to his pistol. Then Fountain bade his old friend good-bye and boarded the train with his prisoner, taking a seat near the centre of the rear car.

When well north of Canutillo and near the site of old Fillmore, Fountain rose and passed forward to speak to a friend who was sitting a few seats in front of him, a safe enough proceeding, apparently, with his prisoner handcuffed and the train doing thirty-five miles an hour. But scarcely had he reached his friend's side, when a noise behind him caused him turn—just in time to see his Mexican running for rear door. Instantly Fountain sprang after him, before he got to the door the man had leaped from platform. Without the slightest hesitation, Fountain jumped after him, hitting the ground only a few seconds behind him but thirty or forty yards away, rolling like a tumbleweed along the ground. By the time Fountain had regained his feet, his prisoner was running at top speed for the mesquite thickets lining the river, in whose shadows he must soon disappear, for it was already dusk. Reaching for his pistol and finding it gone—lost evidently in the tumble—and fearing to lose his prisoner entirely if he stopped to hunt for it, Fountain hit the best pace he could in pursuit. But almost at the first jump something gave him a thump on the shin that nearly broke it, and, looking down, there, dangling on Colonel Baylor's pistol-cord, he saw his gun.

Always a cunning strategist, Fountain dropped to the ground, sky-lined his man on the crest of a little hillock he had to cross, and took a careful two-handed aim which enabled Rio Grande ranchers thereafter to sleep easier of nights.

And now, just as I am finishing this story, the wires bring the sad news that dear old Pat Garrett, the dean and almost the last survivor of the famous man-hunted of west Texas and New Mexico, has gone the way of his kind—"died with his boots on." I cannot help believing that he was the victim of a foul shot, for in his personal relations I never knew him to court a quarrel or fail to get an adversary. Many a night we have camped, eaten, and slept together. Barring Colonel Fountain, Pat Garrett had stronger intellectuality and broader sympathies than any of his kind I ever met. He could no more do enough for a friend than he could do enough to an outlaw. In his private affairs so easy-going that he began and ended a ne'er-do-well, in his official duties as a peace officer he was so exacting and painstaking that he ne'er did ill. His many intrepid deeds are too well known to need recounting here.

All his life an atheist, he was as stubbornly contentious for his unbelief as any Scotch Covenanter for his best-loved tenets.

Now, laid for his last rest in the little burying-ground of Las Cruces, a tiny, white-paled square of sandy, hummocky bench land where the pink of fragile nopal petals brightens the graves in Spring and the mesquite showers them with its golden pods in Summer; where the sweet scent of the juajilla loads the air, and the sun ever shines down out of a bright and cloudless sky; where a diminutive forest of crosses of wood and stone symbolize the faith he in life refused to accept—now, perhaps, Pat Garrett has learned how widely he was wrong.

Peace to his ashes, and repose to his dauntless spirit!



[1] Triggerfingeritis is an acute irritation of the sensory nerves of the index finger of habitual gun-packers; usually fatal—to some one.



CHAPTER V

A JUGGLER WITH DEATH

This is the story of a man, a virile, strong, resourceful man, all of whose history from his youth to his untimely death thrills one at the reading and points lessons worth learning.

The most careful study and the most just comparison would doubtless concede to Washington Harrison Donaldson the high rank—high, indeed, in a double sense—of having been the greatest aeronaut the world has ever known.

While a few men have done some great deeds in aeronautics which he did not accomplish, nevertheless Donaldson did more things never even undertaken by any other aeronaut that any man who has ever lived. Indeed, much of his work would be deemed by mankind at large downright absurd, hair-brained, foolhardy, and reckless to the point of actual madness; and yet no man ever possessed a saner mind than Donaldson; no man was ever more fond of family, friends, and life in general, or normally more reluctant to undertake what he regarded as a needlessly hazardous task. His boldest and most seemingly reckless feats were to him no more than the every-day work of a man of a strong mind, of a stout heart, and of a perfectly trained body, who had so completely mastered every detail of his profession as gymnast, acrobat, and aeronaut, that he had come to have absolute faith in himself, downright abiding certainty that within his sphere of work not only must he succeed, but that, in the very nature of things it was quite impossible for him to fail.

Donaldson's story may well serve as an inspiration, as does that of every man who, with a cool head and high courage, takes his life in his hands for adventure into the world's untrodden fields. While he was regarded by average onlookers as little better than a "Merry Andrew," a public shocker, doing feats before the multitude to still the heart and freeze the blood, those whose fortune it was to know him intimately realized him to be a man of the most serious purpose, with a great faith in the future of aerial navigation. He seemed to be possessed by the conviction that it was one day to become wholly practicable and generally useful; for he was keen to do all he could to popularize and advance it, and to demonstrate its large measure of safety where practised under reasonable conditions.

To many still living his memory is dear—to all indeed who ever knew him well, and it is to his memory and to the surviving friends who held him dear I dedicate this little story.

Washington Harrison Donaldson was the son of David Donaldson, an artist of no mean ability of Philadelphia, where the boy was born October 10, 1840. The mother, of straight descent from a line of patriots active during the Revolution, gave the boy the name of Washington; the father, an ardent worker for General Harrison's candidacy for the presidency in the "Tippecanoe-and-Tyler-too" campaign, added the name of Harrison. It is not conceivable that this christening with two names so closely linked with notable deeds of high emprise in the early history of this country, had its influence upon the boy.

As a mere youth he showed the most adventurous spirit and ardent ambition to excel his mates, to do deeds of skill and dexterity that others could not do. When still a child he was running up an unsupported eight-foot ladder, and balancing himself upon the topmost round in a way to startle the cleverest professional athletes. A little later, getting hold of any old rope, stretching it in any old way as a "slack-rope," he was busy perfecting himself as a slack-rope walker. Naturally, school held him only a very few years, for his type of mind obviously was not that of a student.

While still in early youth, he got his father's consent to work in the parental studio, and persevered long enough to acquire some ability in sketching. Later he employed this art in illustrating some of his aerial voyages. During these studio days he studied legerdemain and ventriloquism, and became one of the most expert sleight-of-hand wizards and ventriloquial entertainers of his time.

Donaldson's first appearance before the public was at the old Long's Varieties on South Third Street in Philadelphia. His feats as a rope-walker have probably never been surpassed. In 1862 a rope twelve hundred feet long was stretched across the Schuylkill River at Philadelphia at a height of twelve hundred feet above the water. After passing back and forth repeatedly over this rope, he finished his exhibition by leaping from a rope into the river from a height of approximately ninety feet. Two years later he successfully walked a rope eighteen hundred feet long and two hundred feet high, stretched across the Genesee Falls at Rochester, N. Y. Five years later he was riding a velocipede on a tight-wire from stage to gallery of a Philadelphia theatre, the first to do this performance.

Thus his years were spent between 1857 and 1871; and great as were the dangers and severe the tasks incident to this period of his career, to him it was not work but the play he loved. While the work in itself was not one to emulate—for there are perhaps few less useful tasks than those that made up his occupation—nevertheless, he was training himself for his career; and the absolute mastery over it which he accomplished, the boldness with which he did it, the readiness, certainty, and complete success with which he carried out everything he undertook make a lesson worth studying.

Donaldson's career as an aeronaut was brief. His first ascent was made August 30, 1871; his last, July 15, 1875. The story of the first is characteristic of the man. In his lexicon there was no such word as "fail." His balloon was small, holding only eight thousand cubic feet of gas. The gas was of poor quality, and when ready to rise he found it impossible even to make a start until all ballast had been thrown from the basket; and when at length the start was made, it was only to alight in a few minutes on the roof of a neighboring house. Bent upon winning and doing at all hazards what he had undertaken, Donaldson quickly cast overboard all loose objects in the basket—ropes, anchors, provisions, even down to his boots and coat. Thus relieved of weight, he was able to make a voyage of about eighteen miles.

There are two essentials to safe ballooning: first, the easy working of the cord which controls the safety valve at the top of the netting, by which descent may be effected when the balloon is going too high; and surplus ballast, which may be thrown out to lighten the balloon when approaching the ground, to avoid striking the earth at dangerously rapid speed. Hence it followed that, his car having been stripped of every bit of weight to obtain the ascent, Donaldson's descent was so violent that he was not a little bruised before he got his balloon safety [Transcriber's note: safely?] anchored again upon the earth.

The difficulties and risks of this first trip, arising from the poor appliances he had, were enough to discourage, if not deter, a heart less bold than his, but to him a new difficulty only meant the letting out of another reef in his resolution to conquer it. Thus it was that immediately upon his return from this, his first trip, he not only announced that he would make another ascent the ensuing week, but that he would undertake something never previously undertaken in aerial navigation, namely, that he would dispense with the basket or car swung beneath the concentrating ring of every normal balloon, and in its place would have nothing but a simple trapeze bar suspended beneath the ring, upon which in mid-air, at high altitude, he proposed to perform all feats done by then most highly trained gymnasts in trapeze performances.

His experience on this first trip, to quote his own phraseology, was "so glorious that I decided to abandon the tight-rope forever."

The second ascent was made in a light breeze. When approximately a mile in height, to quote a chronicler:

"Suddenly the aeronaut threw himself backward and fell, catching with his feet on the bar, thus sending a thrill through the crowd; but with another spring he was upstanding on the bar, and then followed one feat after another—hanging by one hand, one foot, by the back of his head, etc., until the blood ceased to curdle in the veins of the awe-stricken crowd, and they gave vent to their feelings in cheer after cheer. His glittering dress sparkled in the sun long after his outline was lost to the naked eye."

Intending no long journey, Donaldson climbed from the trapeze into the concentrating ring, where he seized the cord operating the safety valve and sought to open the valve. But the valve stuck and did not open readily, thus when Donaldson gave a more violent tug at the cord in his effort to open the valve, a great rent was torn in the top of the gas bag, through which the gas poured, causing the balloon to fall with appalling rapidity. Long afterwards Donaldson said that this was the first time in his life that he had ever felt actually afraid. Luckily he dropped into the top of a large tree, which broke his fall sufficiently to enable him to land without any serious injury.

Donaldson's sincerity and downright joy in his work, and the poetic temperament, which in him was always struggling for utterance, are pointed out by a chronicler in the words added by him to the description Donaldson gave of his trip after his return to Norfolk in 1872:

"The people of Norfolk cannot form the remotest conception of the grand appearance of Norfolk from a balloon. The city looks almost surrounded by water, and the various tributaries to the Elizabeth River appear magnificently beautiful, looking like streams of silver. Floating over a field of foliage, the trees appear all blended together like blades of grass."

The chronicler adds:

"Donaldson seemed to be perfectly enraptured by his subject, as was evinced by the beaming expression of his countenance while relating his experience. The motion of the balloon he describes as delightful, particularly in ascent, as it appears to be perfectly motionless, and any object within view beneath looks as if it were receding from you."

As a token of appreciation of this particular exploit, a handsome gold medal was given to Donaldson by the citizens of Norfolk.

A later ascent from Norfolk resulted in one of the most perilous experiences ever endured by any aeronaut, and indeed developed conditions from which none could possibly have hoped to escape with life except a perfectly trained and fearless aeronaut. His experience on this trip he told as follows:

"After cutting the basket loose, the balloon shot up very rapidly. I pulled the valve cord and the gas escaped too freely. I was then almost at the water's edge, and going at the rate of one mile a minute. Quick work must be done, or a watery grave. I had either to cut a hole in the balloon or go to sea, and as there were no boats in sight, I chose the lesser evil. Seizing three of the cords, I swung out of the ring, into the netting, the balloon careening on her side. I climbed half way up the netting, opened my knife with my teeth, and cut a hole about two feet long. The instant I cut the hole the gas rushed out so fast that could scarcely get back to the ring. After reaching the ring I lashed myself fast to it with a rope. While I was climbing up the rigging to cut the hole in the side of the balloon, my cap fell off, and so fast did I descend that before I got half way down I caught up with and passed the cap. Continuing to descend, I struck the ground in a large corn field, and was dragged nearly a thousand feet, the wind blowing a perfect gale. Crashing against a rail fence, I was rendered insensible. When I came to, I found myself hanging to one side of a tree, and the balloon to the other side, ripped to shreds. This was the last tree. I could have thrown a stone into the ocean from where I landed. On this trip I travelled ten miles in seven minutes.

"Many want to know if the wind blows hard up there. They do not stop to think that I am carried by the wind, and whether I am in a dead calm or sailing at the rate of one hundred miles an hour, I am perfectly still; and when I went the ten miles in seven minutes I did not feel the slightest breeze; and when I cannot see the earth it is impossible to tell whether I am going or hanging still."

Just as Donaldson was a bit of an artist and left many sketches illustrating his experiences, so also he was a bit of a poet and left many pieces describing in lofty thought, but crude versification, the sentiments inspired by his ascents. The following is one of them:

"There's pleasure in a lively trip when sailing through the air, The word is given, 'Let her go!' To land I know not where. The view is grand, 'tis like a dream, when many miles from home. My castle in the air, I love above the clouds to roam."

In prose Donaldson was very much more at home than in verse; indeed many of his descriptions equal in clearness and beauty anything ever written of the impressions that come to fliers in cloudland. Take, for example, the following:

"It's a pleasure to be up here, as I sit and look at the grand cloud pictures, the most splendid effects of light, unknown to all that cling to the surface of the earth. The ever-shifting scenes, the bright, dazzling colors, the soft roseate and purple hues, the sudden light and fiery sun . . . and on I go as if carried by spiritual wings, far above the diminutive objects of a liliputian world. We rise in the midst of splendor, where light and silence combine to make one wish he never need return."

Donaldson was a many-sided man—among other things, in no small measure a philosopher, as when he commented as follows:

"I have noticed on different occasions a class of people who were only half alive and who find fault with my exercise, which to them looks frightful. They [Transcriber's note: Their?] nervous system is not properly balanced. They have too much nerves for their system, which is caused by want of a little moderate exercise up where the air is pure, instead of which they spend hours in a place which they call their office. They sit themselves in a dark corner, hidden from the sun's rays, and in one position remain for hours, inhaling the poisonous air with the room full of carbonic acid gas, which is as poisonous to man as arsenic is to rats; and in addition to this, will fill their lungs with tobacco smoke, and to steady their nerves require a stimulation of perhaps eight or ten brandies a day. If I were as helpless as this class of people, then my life would be swinging by a thread, and I would wind up with a broken neck."

About as sound philosophy and scientific hygiene as could well be found.

And yet another side to his character: the kindly nature, the gentleness and generous thought for others, reluctance to cause needless injury or pain, which is always the characteristic of any man of real courage. This beautiful side of his nature he once hinted at as follows:

"I cannot look at a person cutting a chicken's head off, and as for shooting a poor, innocent bird for sport, I think it is a great wrong and should not be allowed. Did you ever think what a barbarous set we were—worse than Indians or Fiji Islanders! There is nothing living but what we torture and kill. As for fear . . . my candid opinion is that the only time one is out of danger is when sailing through the air in a balloon."

Early in 1873, after having made twenty-five or thirty ascents, and well-nigh exhausted people's capacity for sensations and excitements afforded by ballooning over terra firma, Donaldson began making plans for a balloon of a capacity and equipment adequate, in his judgment, to enable him to make a successful crossing of the Atlantic to England or the Continent. So soon as his plans became publicly known, Professor John Wise, who as early as 1843 had done his best to raise the funds necessary for a transatlantic journey by balloon, joined forces with Donaldson, and together they made application to the authorities of the city of Boston for an adequate appropriation. This was voted by one Board but vetoed by another. Thereupon, The Daily Graphic took up their proposition, and undertook the financing of the expedition under a formal contract executed June 27, 1873. As a consequence of this contract, Donaldson proceeded to build the largest balloon ever constructed, of a gas capacity of 600,000 cubic feet, and a lifting power of 14,000 pounds. The total weight of the balloon, including its car, lifeboat, and equipment, was 7,100 pounds, thus leaving approximately 6,000 pounds surplus lifting capacity for ballast, passengers, etc.

Of course, a liberal supply of provisions was to be carried, with tools, guns, and fishing tackle, to be available for meeting any emergency arising from a landing in a wild, unsettled region. Moreover, a carefully selected set of scientific instruments was embraced in the equipment for making observations and records of changing conditions en route.

The inflation of this aerial monster began in Brooklyn at the Capitoline Grounds September 10, 1873. A high wind prevailed, and after the bag had received 100,000 cubic feet of gas, she became so nearly uncontrollable, notwithstanding 300 men and 100 sacks of ballast, each sack weighing 200 pounds, were holding her down, that Donaldson and his associates decided to empty her.

On the twelfth of September inflation was again undertaken, although a high wind again prevailed. When something more than half full, the bag burst, and the aeronauts concluded that she was of a size impossible to handle. The bag and rigging were thereupon taken in hand, and she was reduced one-half; that is, to a capacity of 300,000 cubic feet of gas.

The remodelling was finished early in October, and inflation of this new balloon was begun at 1 p.m. on Sunday, October 6, and by 10.30 p.m. of that day the inflation was completed, the life-boat was attached, and she was firmly secured for the night.

At nine the next morning the crew took their places in the boat. Donaldson as aeronaut; Alfred Ford as correspondent for the Graphic; George Ashton Lunt, an experienced seaman, as navigator. Ascent was made, without incident, the balloon drifting first to the north, and then to the southward toward Long Island Sound.

Unhappily this voyage was brief, and very nearly tragical in its finish. About noon the balloon entered the field of a storm of wind and rain of extraordinary violence, and before long the cordage, etc., was so heavily loaded with moisture, that although practically all available ballast was disposed of, the balloon descended in spite of them. The speed of the balloon was so great that Donaldson did not dare hazard a dash against some house, or into some forest or other obstacle, but selected a piece of open ground, and advised his companions to hang by their hands over the side of the boat and drop at the word. The word at length given by Donaldson, both he and Ford dropped—a distance of about thirty feet, happily without serious injury other than a severe shaking up. Lunt, curious about the distance and the effect of such a fall, as well as unfamiliar with the action of a balloon when relieved of weight, hung watching the descent of his companions—only to realise quickly that he was shooting up into the air like a rocket. Then he clambered back into the boat. However, it was not long before, again weighted and beaten down by the continuing rain, the balloon descended upon a forest, where Lunt swung himself into a tree-top, whence he dropped through its branches to the earth, practically unhurt.

Thus ended the transatlantic voyage of the Graphic balloon, a voyage that constitutes the only serious failure I can recall of anything in the line of his profession as an aeronaut that Donaldson ever undertook to do. This failure is not to be counted to his discredit, for precisely as a good soldier does not surrender until his last round of ammunition is spent, so Donaldson did not give in until his last pound of ballast was exhausted.

In all respects the most brilliant aerial voyage ever made by Donaldson was his sixty-first ascension, on July 24, 1874, a voyage which continued for twenty-six hours. This was the longest balloon voyage in point of hours ever made up to that time, and indeed it remained a world's record for endurance up in the air until 1900, and the endurance record in the United States, until the recent St. Louis Cup Race.

The ascent was made from Barnum's "Great Roman Hippodrome," which for some years occupied the site of what is now Madison Square Garden, in a balloon built by Mr. Barnum to attempt to break the record for time and distance of all previous balloon voyages. An account of this thrilling trip is given in the following chapter of this book.

The history of the ascent Donaldson made from Toronto, Canada, on June 23, 1875, is in itself a sufficient refutation of the charges made less than a month later, that on his last trip he sacrificed his passenger, Grimwood, to save his own life. On his Toronto trip he was accompanied by Charles Pirie, of the Globe; Mr. Charles, of the Leader; and Mr. Devine, of the Advertiser. On this occasion Donaldson accepted the three passengers under the strongest protest, after having told them plainly that the balloon was leaky, the wind blowing out upon the lake, and that the ascent must necessarily be a peculiarly dangerous one. Nevertheless, they decided to take the hazard. Later they regretted their temerity. Husbanding his ballast as best he could, nevertheless, the loss of gas through leakage was such that by midnight, when well over the centre of Lake Ontario, the balloon descended into a rough, tempestuous sea, and was saved from immediate destruction only by the cutting away of both the anchor and the drag rope. This gave them a temporary lease of life, but at one o'clock the car again struck the waters and dragged at a frightful speed through the lake, compelling the passengers to stand on the edge of the basket and cling to the ropes, the cold so intense they were well-nigh benumbed. At length they were rescued by a passing boat, but this was not until after three o'clock in the morning.

Of Donaldson's conduct in these hours of terrible tremity, a passenger wrote:

"But for his judicious use of the ballast, his complete control of the balloon as far as it could be controlled, his steady nerve, kindness, and coolness in the hour of danger, the occupants would never have reached land. . . . The party took no provisions with them excepting two small pieces of bread two inches square, which Mr. Devine happened to have in his pocket. At eleven at night, the Professor, having had nothing but a noon lunch, was handed up the bread. . . . About three o'clock in the morning, when the basket was wholly immersed in the water, and the inmates clinging almost lifelessly to the ropes, the Professor climbed down to them, and they were surprised to see in his hand the two small pieces of bread they had given him the night before. He had hoarded it up all night, and instead of eating it he said with cheery voice, 'Well, boys, all is up. Divide this among you. It may give you strength enough to swim.' There was not a man among them that would touch it until the Professor first partook of it. It was only a small morsel for each. . . . He said that he had but one life-preserver on board, and suggested we should draw lots for the man who should leave and lighten the balloon."

While this discussion was on, the boat approached that saved them.

This simple story of Donaldson's true courage, cheerfulness, self-denial, readiness to sacrifice himself for others, is no less than an epic of the noblest heroism that stands an irrefutable answer to the charge later made that Donaldson sacrificed Grimwood.

Three weeks later—to be precise, on the fifteenth of July—Donaldson and his beloved airship, the P. T. Barnum, made their last ascent, from Chicago. The balloon was already old—more than a year old—the canvas weakened and in many places rent and patched, the cordage frail. In short, the balloon was in poor condition to stand any extraordinary stress of weather.

His companion on this trip was Mr. Newton S. Grimwood, of The Chicago Evening Journal. Donaldson had expected to be able to take two men; and Mr. Maitland, of the Post & Mail, was present with the other two in the basket immediately before the hour of starting. At the last moment Donaldson concluded that it was unwise to take more than one, and required lots to be drawn. Maitland tossed a coin, called "Heads," and won; but Mr. Thomas, the press agent, insisted that the usual method of drawing written slips from a hat be followed, and on this second lot-casting Maitland lost his place in the car, but won his life.

The ascent was made about 5 p.m., the prevailing wind carrying them out over Lake Michigan. About 7 p.m., a tug-boat sighted the balloon, then about thirty miles off shore, trailing its basket along the surface of the lake. The tug changed her course to intercept the balloon, but before it was reached, probably through the cutting away of the drag rope and anchor, the balloon bounded into the air, and soon disappeared, and never again was aught of Donaldson or the balloon Barnum seen by human eye. A little later a storm of extraordinary fury broke over the lake—a violent electric storm accompanied by heavy rain.

Weeks passed with no news of the voyagers or their ship. A month later the body of Grimwood was found on the shores of Lake Michigan and fully identified.

The precise story of that terrible night will never be written, but knowing the man and his trade, sequence of incident is as plain to me as if told by one of the voyagers. Evidently the balloon sprung a leak early. The last ballast must have been spent before the tug saw her trailing in the lake. Then anchor and drag ropes were sacrificed. This would inevitably give the balloon travelling power for a considerable time,—time of course depending on the measure of the leak of gas,—but ultimately she must again have descended upon the raging waters of the lake, where Grimwood, of untrained strength, soon became exhausted while trying to hold himself secure in the ring, and fell out into the lake. Thus again relieved of weight, the balloon received a new lease of life, and travelled on probably, to a fatal final descent in some untrodden corner of the northern forest, where no one ever has chanced to stumble across the wreck. For had the balloon made its final descent into the lake, it would have been only after the basket was utterly empty, all the loose cordage cut away, and a type of wreck left that would float for weeks or months and would almost certainly have been found. Indeed, for months afterwards the writer and many others of Donaldson's friends held high hopes of hearing of him returned in safety from some remote distance in the wilds. But this was not to be.

One more incident and I have done.

Six or seven years ago I read in the columns of the Sun an article copied from a Chicago paper, evidently written by some close friend of the unfortunate Grimwood, making a bitter attack upon Donaldson for having sacrificed his passenger's life to save his own. The story moved me so much that I wrote an open letter to the Sun over my own signature, in which I sought to refute the charge by recounting the story of Donaldson's noble conduct, and his constant readiness for self-sacrifice in other situations quite as dire.

A few days later, sitting in my office, I was frozen with astonishment when a written card was handed in to me bearing the name "Washington H. Donaldson"! As soon as I could recover myself, the bearer of the card was asked in. He was a man within a year or two of my friend's age at the time of his death, Wash Donaldson's very self in face and figure! He had the same bright, piercing eye, that looked straight into mine; the same lean, square jaws and resolute mouth; the same waving hair, the same low, cool, steady voice—such a resemblance as to dull my senses, and make me wonder and grope to understand how my friend could thus come back to me, still young after so many years.

It was Donaldson's son, a babe in arms at the time his father sailed away to his death!

In a few simple words he told me that he and his family lived in a small village. With infinite grief they had read the article charging his father with unmanly conduct—a grief that was the greater because they possessed no means to refute the charge. Brokenly, with tears of gratitude, he told of their joy in reading my statements in his father's defence, and how he had been impelled to come and try in person to express to me the gratitude he felt he could not write.

Poor though this man may be in this world's goods, in the record of his father's character and deeds he owns a legacy fit to give him place among the Peers of Real Manhood.

Through some mischance I have lost the address of Donaldson's son. Should he happen to read these lines I hope he will communicate with me.



CHAPTER VI

AN AERIAL BIVOUAC

In the history of contests since man first began striving against his fellows, seldom has a record performance stood so long unbroken as that of the good airship Barnum, made thirty-three years ago. Of her captain and crew of five men, six all told, the writer remains the sole survivor, the only one who may live to see that record broken in this country.

The Barnum rose at 4 p.m. July 26, 1874, from New York and made her last landing nine miles north of Saratoga at 6.07 p.m. of the twenty-seventh, thus finishing a voyage of a total elapsed time of twenty-six hours and seven minutes. In the interim she made four landings, the first of no more than ten minutes; the second, twenty; the third, ten; the fourth, thirty-five; and these descents cost an expenditure of gas and ballast which shortened her endurance capacity by at least two or three hours.

Tracing on a map her actual route traversed, gives a total distance of something over four hundred miles, which gave her the record of second place in the history of long-distance ballooning in this country, a record which she still holds.

So far as my knowledge of the art goes, and I have tried to read all of its history, the Barnum's voyage of twenty-six hours, seven minutes was then and remained the world's endurance record until 1900; and it still remains, in point of hours up, the longest balloon voyage ever made in the United States.

The longest voyage in point of distance ever made in this country was that of John Wise and La Mountain, in the fifties, from St. Louis, Mo., to Jefferson County, N. Y., a distance credited under the old custom of a little less than twelve hundred miles, while the actual distance under the new rules is between eight hundred and nine hundred miles, the time being nineteen hours. This voyage also remained, I believe, the world's record for distance until 1900, and still remains the American record—and lucky, indeed, will be the aeronaut who beats it.

P. T. Barnum's "Great Roman Hippodrome," now for many years Madison Square Garden, was never more densely crowded than on the afternoon of July 26, 1874. Early in the Spring of that year Mr. Barnum had announced the building of a balloon larger than any theretofore made in this country. His purpose in building it was to attempt to break all previous records for time and distance, and he invited each of five daily city papers of that time to send representatives on the voyage. So when the day set for the ascent arrived, not only was the old Hippodrome packed to the doors, but adjacent streets and squares were solid black with people, as on a fete day like the Dewey Parade.

Happily the day was one of brilliant sunshine and clear sky, with scarcely a cloud above the horizon.

The captain of the Barnum was Washington. H. Donaldson, by far the most brilliant and daring professional aeronaut of his day, and a clever athlete and gymnast. For several weeks prior to the ascent of the Barnum, Donaldson had been making daily short ascents of an hour or two from the Hippodrome in a small balloon—as a feature of the performance. Sometimes he ascended in a basket, at other times with naught but a trapeze swinging beneath the concentrating ring of his balloon himself in tights perched easily upon the bar of the trapeze. And when at a height to suit his fancy—of a thousand feet or more—many a time have I seen him do every difficult feat of trapeze work ever done above the security of a net.

Such was Donaldson, a man utterly fearless, but reckless only when alone, of a steadfast, cool courage and resource when responsible for the safety of others that made him the man out of a million best worth trusting in any emergency where a bold heart and ready wit may avert disaster.

Donaldson's days were never dull.

The day preceding our ascent his balloon was released with insufficient lifting power. As soon as he rose above neighboring roofs, a very high southeast wind caught him, and, before he had time to throw out ballast, drove his basket against the flagstaff on the Gilsey House with such violence that the staff was broken, and the basket momentarily upset, dumping two ballast bags to the Broadway sidewalk where they narrowly missed several pedestrians.

That he himself was not dashed to death was a miracle. But to him this was no more than a bit unusual incident of the day's work.

The reporters assigned as mates on this skylark in the Barnum were Alfred Ford, of the Graphic; Edmund Lyons, of the Sun; Samuel MacKeever, of the Herald; W. W. Austin, of the World (every one of these good fellows now dead, alas!) and myself, representing the Tribune.

Lyons, MacKeever, and myself were novices in ballooning, but the two others had scored their bit of aeronautic experience. Austin had made an ascent a year or two before at San Francisco, was swept out over the bay before he could make a landing, and, through some mishap, dropped into the water midway of the bay and well out toward Golden Gate, where he was rescued by a passing boat. Ford had made several balloon voyages, the most notable in 1873, in the great Graphic balloon.

After the voyage of the Barnum was first announced and it became known that the Tribune would have a pass, everybody on the staff wanted to go. For weeks it was the talk of the office. Even grave graybeards of the editorial rooms were paying court for the preference to Mr. W. F. G. Shanks, that prince of an earlier generation of city editors, who of course controlled the assignment of the pass. But when at length the pass came, the enthusiasm and anxiety for the distinction waned, and it became plain that the piece of paper "Good for One Aerial Trip," etc., must go begging.