The new Northwest. [volume] (Portland, Or.) 1871-1887, 1877-05-25
CHAPTER XIII.

ChAHIEh AA1l1.
The Territory of Idaho had recently
been judicially districted, and Circuit
Court was now to hold its opening ses-
sion In Idaho Flat.
Several young lawyers who had strug-
gled long with legal technicalities in
their, at last, successful endeavor to be
admitted to the bar In the States, and
who had struggled longer with less sue
cessful effort to obtain clients in their
native haunts, had recently come to
dispute possession with Mr.. Brief, while
older lawyers, broken-down politicians,
ex-judges badly out of date, government
tai employees, and not a few men of
more than ordinary ability, as brains
go, but badly deficient in purse and
public appreciation, fiOcked hither and
thither in the Territory to prey upon
the cupidity and credulity Of those who
might have needed justice, but they
seldom got it when appealing to the
law.
"Be composed" said lawyer once to
a client on trial for grand larceny. mo
doubt you will be treated justly"
"Faith, sir, and justice is the very
thing Pm afraid Of" returned the Hi
bernian, who, had he been a native
American, would have felt little fear on
that score.
Several of the new Territorial officials
brought their families to Idaho Flat,
and society began to assume some of
the phases of older civilization, though
there was yet one sad drawback to NOR
ality among the majority Of men, and
that was nothing less than the scarcity
of good women.
Nature always seeks an equilibrium.
When humanity interferes with the
equalization of masculine and feminine
forces by removing the restraining in
fuence of one sex from the other in any
Of the departments of life, from the do
mestic to the educational, social or re-
ligious to the legal and governmental,
the channels of life become vitiated,
and nature, in the only effort left her to
restore the equilibrium thus disturbed,
will send bad women where the good
are not plenty, and the feet of her whose
"steps take hold on hell" will too often
lead the unwary into pitfalls of his own
creating, to hold him captive ever after
at her will.
Idaho Flat became the rendezvous OF
abandoned women who were bent upon
spoils. Money was plenty, for gold
abounded in the river beds, and gold and
silver was in the gorges and OH the very
mountain tops.
Mrs. Rutherford, wholly unaccus.
toned to the vice and immortality thai
flourished before her eyes, was thor.
oughly Mortified with what transpireG
daily. Women whom older and more
settled society would have sent to jai
for lewdness, faunted their silks anC
jewels before her face and seated them
selves at table to be fed like queens.
'I wouldn't stand it, Edna ~ she ex
claimed in indignation, as these peepl,
multiplied in their midst.
'I make the bread and clothing ant
shelter for all of US by feeding the mel
who support them, mother. They ar
just as good as any man who visit
them.n
"But will order the very next baC
woman out Of doors who comes here t,
get her dinner. I'll have no such bag
gage around"
"Then 1 will order every man ava,
who is seen in their company, mother
Did you notice the costly diamond rim
that one Of them sperted this morning
That was presented her by a govern
ment official who pays me a round pric
for board-his board and hers. Tha
man is feasted and feted in the bes
Washington society every winter. H
has a big salary with perquisites, an
leaves his poor dupe of a wife at som
obscure country village every summel
while he comes home to his cOnstitu
ents, to lobby for re-appointment an
run with fast women, who are as goo
as himself, bad as they are. You tur
the woman out and I will dismiss th
man, and then, if this thing is carrie
out, we'll see where our bread and bu
ter comes FROM"
But mother and daughter were spare
the necessity Of putting their design
into execution.
It was autumn now, and the Circu
Court was in session, giving many
lawyer an opportunity to turn an hor
est hundred or two by attending to IL
disputed claims, real and imaginary,
opposing miners, who, now that chanc
for going to law abounded, were n
slow in taking legal steps to Overreat
or underreach their neighbors in al
ray that was legally possible.
Edna was busy to her very eyes in Il