I'm shot!" from some
person who was apparently coming across the street, and who fell
directly underneath our window. We were in a little room on the second
floor, and its one window was raised far up, which made it possible
for us to hear the slightest sound or movement outside.
The shooting was kept up until after the man was dead, many of the
bullets hitting the side of the hotel. It was simply maddening to have
to stay in that room and be compelled to listen to the moans and death
gurgle of that murdered man, and hear him cry, "Oh, my lassie, my poor
lassie!" as he did over and over again, until he could no longer
speak. It seemed as though every time he tried to say one word, there
was the report of a pistol. After he was really dead we could hear the
fiends running off, and then other people came and carried the body
away.
The shooting altogether did not last longer than five or ten minutes,
and at almost the first shot we could hear calls all over the wretched
little town of "Vigilante! Vigilante!" and knew that the vigilantes
were gathering, but before they could get together the murderous work
had been finished. All the time there had been perfect silence
throughout the hotel. The proprietor told us that he got up, but that
it would have been certain death if he or anyone else had opened a
door.
Hal was on the floor in a corner of our room, and began to growl after
the very first scream, and I was terrified all the time for fear he
would go to the open window and attract the attention of those
murderers below, who would undoubtedly have commenced firing at the
window and perhaps have killed all of us. But the moans of the dying
man frightened the dog awfully, and he crawled under the bed, where he
stayed during the rest of the horrible night. The cause of all the
trouble seems to have been that a colored man undertook to carry in
his wagon three or four men from Dodge City to Fort Dodge, a distance
of five miles, but when he got out on the road a short distance he
came to the conclusion, from their talk, that they were going to the
post for evil purposes, and telling them that he would take them no
farther, he turned his team around to come back home. On the way back
the men must have threatened him, for when he got in town he drove to
the house of some colored people who live on a corner across from the
hotel and implored them to let him in, but they were afraid and
refused to open the door, for by that time the men were shooting at
him.
The poor man ran across the street, leaving a trail of blood that
streamed from his wounds, and was brutally killed under our window.
Early the next morning, when we crossed the street to go to the cars,
the darky's mule was lying on the ground, dead, near the corner of the
hotel, and stuck on one long ear was the murdered man's hat. Soon
after we reached Granada a telegram was received giving an account of
the affair, and saying also that in less than one half hour after the
train had passed through, Dodge City was surrounded by troops of
United States cavalry from Fort Dodge, that the entire town was
searched for the murderers, but that not even a trace of one had been
discovered.
When I got inside a car the morning after that awful, awful night, it
was with a feeling that I was leaving behind me all such things and
that by evening I would be back once more at our old army home and
away from hostile Indians, and hostile desperadoes too. But when I saw
that servant girl with the pale, emaciated face and flushed cheeks, so
ill she could barely sit up, my heart went down like lead and Indians
seemed small trials in comparison to what I saw ahead of me.
Well, she will go in a few days, and then I can give the house some
attention. The new furniture and china are all here, but nothing has
been done in the way of getting settled. The whole coming back has
been cruelly disappointing, and I am so tired and nervous I am afraid
of my own shadow. So after a while I think I will go East for a few
weeks, which I know you will be glad to hear.
FORT LYON, COLORADO TERRITORY,
August, 1873.
WE have just come in from a drive to the Purgatoire with Colonel
Knight behind his handsome horses. It makes me sad, always, to go over
that familiar road and to scenes that are so closely associated with
my learning to ride and shoot when we were here before. The small tree
that was my target is dead but still standing, and on it are several
little pieces of the white paper bull's eyes that Faye and Lieutenant
Baldwin tacked on it for me.
We often see poor Tom. The post trader bought him after Lieutenant
Baldwin's death, so the dear horse would always have good care and not
be made to bring and carry for a cruel master. He wanders about as he
chooses and is fat, but the coat that was once so silky and glossy is
now dull and faded, and the horse looks spiritless and dejected.
