Chapter 4

Saloons flourished and gambling was carried on in all of them, night and day. The coming of this new population resulted in commodities reaching an abnormal altitude. Grain of all kinds sold at four cents a pound and flour at $16 per barrel. Beef was more reasonable, as there was an abundance of that commodity on the range, but the price was far above what it had been two or three years before. Eggs were a forhidden fruit for there were none.

Eggs $1 Dozen

One merchant shipped in some from Utah and sold them at a dollar per dozen; three for twenty-five cents. I bought three for my breakfast one morning and found two of them to be a very ancient origin, so much so that they were not edible. I ate the other but the rich effluvia of the discarded ones did not have the effect of sharpening my appetite for poultry fruit.

The first homicide committed in the new county occurred near mid-winter, 1881, before the coming of the railroad. The man who committed the act, whose name I will withhold was a member of the school board. A new school district had just been created here from territory formerly a part of the Jeffreys district on Mann Creek. A dance was going on in the new school house, but the dancers had failed to call on the trustee and pay the required rental of five dollars, charged for the use of the building. The trustee called on them for the rent, which was not forthcoming, so he proceeded to blow out the lights and order the house cleared. This infuriated the dancers and particularly the fiddler, who expected a fee for his music, and he became very abusive. The men of the party repaired to Jerome Coxs saloon where the trustee was still further abused, although not present. He had a saloon of his own, and knowing that he was no doubt under discussion at the Cox saloon, repaired to that place to gain first hand information as to their grievances.

When he entered he called up the party to join with him in a round of drinks, all accepting the invitation. No sooner had the drinks been swallowed than rough talk began between discomfitted dancers and the trustee, and violent threats made against the latter. About this time the fiddler started towards the object of his wrath in a threatening manner. The trustee pulled his pistol and shot him in the neck, the bullet glancing downward, killing him instantly. The shooter was arrested and, after preliminary examination, was held to answer to the grand jury on a charge of murder.

When the term of district court came on he was indicted for murder in the first degree, but was admitted to bail in the sum of $7,000, which he furnished. More than a year after that he was tried and found not guilty.

The next to go the homicide route was "Rattle Snake Jack" Slade. He was a holy terror, when under the influence of liquor, although quiet enough when sober. One night in October, 1882, he armed himself with a big pistol and proceeded to take possession of Dal Grays saloon. He was terrifying everyone there to such an extent that George Porter, the deputy sheriff was sent for and came with a shotgun and demanded a cessation of hostilities. This only incensed Rattle Snake the more and he was about so take a shot at Porter who was too quick for him and let him have one barrel in the breast, over the heart. This settled him and he fell to the floor and expired immediately. No blame was attached to the deputy for the killing, as all agreed that it was deserved. Jack was buried at a point about where the coal business of the Home Lumber and Coal Co. and the Weiser Grain and Feed Co. are now located. When the P&IN railroad company started grading, the body was plowed up and his bones scattered about, except his skull which was carried off to Iowa by an old doctor who was staying here for a tinie. Thus ended the career of Rattle Snake Jack.

The next killing, as I remember it was that of a woman of the underworld who was found one morning in a pond of water near the Weiser slough.

Being acting coroner I went to the place and made an examination of the body for wounds, but found none, but finger prints about her throat, plainly indicating that some one of the fiends who infested the town at that time had strangled her to death. We could get no clue as to who had committed the foul deed. As there were so many of the beastly characters here at that time, no one knew who to suspicion. The mystery of  the poor creatures death never was solved. We buried her somewhere near where we put old Rattlesnake, but her bones were not exhumed by the plow as were his.

The next killing was that of Buck Basil, by Charlie Deterle, an Austrain barber of the town, who was interested with George Bakel, an old German, in the saloon business two doors from his barber shop.

Hearing that a row was going on at his saloon Charlie went down there and found the barkeeper, an old man by the name of Thompson, down on the sidewalk with Buck Basil on top of him, although he did not seem to be doing any more than holding him down. Old George Bakel was standing by with a hatchet or hammer in his hand, but not endeavoring to use it. The barber grabbed the weapon from George, saying "Give me that and immediately struck Buck a heavy blow about the temple, knocking him unconscious.

Shows No Mercy; Lynch Murderer

He went back to his shop where he found Sam Brassfield waiting for a shave, which he proceeded to finish. During the shaving process Sam said that Buck had a pistol on him. When the barber asked if he had seen it, he replied that he had seen a gun under his coat when he had old Bill Thompson down on the walk. The barber immediately laid down his razor, leaving his customer half shaved, and went to a back room of the shop and got his pistol and went out the front door. It was Christmas Eve, 1883, and although there were no street lights, those of the saloons and stores along the street furnished sufficient light to see a person from one side to the other.

By this time Buck had recovered from the shock of the blow on the head and had got up and seemed to he staggering aimlessly around in she street. The barber recognized him and deliberately walked up close and shot him through the heart. When he had done his dastardly work, he immediately retired to the shop, put up his gun, took up his razor and finished shaving his customer. By this time the sheriff and deputy arrived, put him under arrest and took him to jail.

On the day following Christmas, a coroner's inquest was held, the jury returning a verdict to the effect that Basil came to his death by reason of a gun shot wound in inflicted by Deterle  with intent of murder. The inquest over  the preliminary examination of the murderer began. In those days when there were no stenographers to be had, a preliminary examination was rather an extended and tedious process, as all the evidence had to be written with a pen, read over and signed by the witnesses.

On New Years Eve, just a week following the murder, a mob visited the jail where the prisoner was confined, called out the jailor, who with his family lived overhead, and demanded the delivery to them of the prisoner. The jailor obligingly opened the outer door, went to the cell where he was confined and opened it. Some of the mob attempted to shoot the man and a shot was fired without effect. The prisoner was seized by the mob when he was struck over the eye by some weapon that might have been a hatchet, as a hole was cut in the forehead which extended down and into the eye, no doubt rendering the victim unconscious. A rope was placed around his neck, the other end of which was hitched around the horn of a saddle on a horse one of the mob had ridden to the scene and the mob started for the location of the gallows, one of the party standing on the victims body as it was dragged through the sagebrush. Of course he was as dead as Julius Caesar long before they reached the place where they intended to hang him. The gallows was a butchers windlass, standing in a corral where beeves were slaughtered.

There the dead body was hung and the mob dispersed for their several homes, there being about 20 of them. On learning of the hanging, I employed a man with a team and wagon and went to the place where the body was hanging to bring it in. The night had been bitterly cold so that the body was frozen as stiff and rigid as a log, and the choking of the rope around the neck caused the tongue to protrude. A couple of inches of snow was piled on it. I took him by the feet as the rope was unwound. We lowered him into the wagon, took him to the court house, and laid him on the same floor on which I had placed his victim just a week before.

He certainly presented a gruesome picture as he hung there in the chill air of that New Year morning, with the clothes nearly torn from him and his back terribly lacerated by the dragging through the sagebrush for over a quarter of a mile.

A coroners jury was impaneled for an inquest but not a word of evidence could be obtained that would implicate anyone as a participant in the affair. I have given so much of the detail of this hanging that a reader might conclude that I was a member of the mob, but I was not and never suspected that such an affair was to be pulled off. I got my information as to what took place, many years afterwards from two of the men who took part in the deadly affair. The following spring when the district court convened  the judge called the attention of the grand jury to the act of the mob. He instructed them that every participant was as guilty of murder as was their victim, and that they should diligently inquire into the happenings of that night and if they could procure legal evidence to return indictments against them. The judge was no doubt talking to one or more of the mobsters when he was giving his charge to the grand jury. However, no indictment was returned and no further efforts were made he prosecute the participants.

Not long after the hanging of the barber a gang of toughs and rowdies. whose headquarters were in the saloons of the town, surrounded the home of Sol Jeffries, which was in the old store I have mentioned, and abused the ole man, calling him a strangler and using other vile epithets to the terror of all the family.. They went on his front porch and fired pistols through the roof covering it and made themselves as odious as was possible. The family did not rest well that night and they feared the mob would return when they got some more whiskey, but they did not come back.

These gangsters thought the old man Jeffries was one, if not the leader of the mob that hung the barber. But in this they were mistaken, for the old fellow knew nothing about the hanging until it was over. The news of this outrage against the home of Jeffries spread all over the country, and a few nights afterwards a party of about twenty horsemen, armed with Winchesters, shotguns and pistols came into the town, some of them from as far away a Salubria valley, and rode up and down the streets and in front of the saloons peering in so that their presence might be known. No one appeared to oppose them. If they had, there would have been some dead toughs in town that night. The coming of these night riders had a salutory effect, for never again was such an outrage as that committed on the Jeffreys family repeated in the town.

One may wonder why these peaceable people, who were so imposed upon by these lawless characters did not flee to more quiet and lawful surroundings.

They felt that they were here first and were entitled to their rights to live in peace, besides that they knew that there was a latent force behind them, back the country who would come to their assistance when called upon, as was witnessed by the hanging of the murderous barber and the coming of the night riders. No doubt many of those who waste their time persuing this vermillion tale of slaughter are sickened by its harrowing recitals, so I will not worry them further by a recital of details.

There were four more killings in Weiser, two at Meadows, two at Council, one at Mineral and one at Midvale, without any convictions, save in two cases in one of which the killer escaped from the penitentiary and was never recaptured, and in the other the judgment of conviction was reversed by the supreme court.