The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1897-03-04
TO KEEP HIS WORD.
An Oregon Embezzler Risked His Life to
Surrender to Justice.

7
you need not send an officer for me-
I will come when am wanted"
Vincent Sutton, postmaster at Ore
town, TillamoOk county, was wanted
for embezzlement by the United States
authorities. A plain tale, truly, and
only one which smacks of the vulgar
commonplace, but mark the difference
? This Sutton is a man of simple mind,
and to him it seemed no harm would be
done if he eled out the pittance of his
office of postmaster by adding the sums
paid in for purchase of money orders,
a matter of some $3.50 when all was
counted. He would make it good in his
own time, and in truth he thought it no
wrong. But the United States does not
DO business that way, and in due time
there came an Indictment found by the
Oregon grand jury. Sutton heard. He
lirealized that he had done wrong. He
was ready to meet mis- punishment. Nay,
he was ready to go to meet it at the peril
jof his life. Nothing prevented if he
lchose to leave the state. None could
Iifnd him in the Businesses of his own
IEtrackless mountains, but it came home
ITO him what he had not realized when
Phe took the money, that he had done
wrong, and he alone must bear the
burden.
Now, this was not n matter of walking
downtown to give yourself up to the
police or the marshal. 1t was not even
matter of boarding a comfortable
railroad coach, to be hauled into Port
land. Oretown is lonely camp buried
deep in the Oregon wilds, round 40
miles and more from railroad station,
with raging rivers to be crossed be-
tween, and no road on which horse
may travel in this teeming winter sea-
son, when the whole countryside is
soaked and sodden like full sponge,
deep with treacherous, unfathOmed
seas of holding mud. Forty-three miles
on foot, swimming and swirling, wild
unbridled rivers, staggering along
through clinging mud, unable to lie
down and sleep in his drenched clothes
lest he perish of the cold, deprived of
fire and light, because the matches he
carried were soaked; snatched hungry
bite by the way at the little store of food
he had in his pockets, all sodden and
smeared with mud--this was the task
that Vincent Sutton set himself because
justice must be done, and he must bear
his part, though his life be forfeited in
the doing.
So it came that the supplemented
man of primitive mold sat down and
wrote a letter to Marshal Gray, in Port
land, that he would come himself to
the nearest railway station on the rail
road, Sheridan, and there surrender to
an officer of the law-no need to send a
man to bring him in from his distant
home. Let the officer come to Sheridan
by a certain day, and he would be there.
He kept his word, albeit more than once
it nearly cost him his life.
Sutton has a wife. He kissed her
good-by and stuffed his pockets with
the food which she, poor woman, had
put up for him with loving care, enough
to last him two days, it might be, on the
way to Sheridan. The Three rivers,
triple thunderer in sOoth, was booming
with sullen, hungry roar, turbid with
swirling mud, carrying on its angry
breast sweeping logs and jagged roots,
torn from their sockets by the search
ing flood. Five times it had to be
crossed by Sutton on his way, swim
ming or wading. or CHANGING his life on
a treacherous log. Once he was nearly
smothered in bottomless pit of mud
as dangerous as the quiet, remorseless
suck of a quicksand that never gives up
its dead. 1t was bitter cold, and he
must keep afoot or perish But there
is iron in this mans blood. He had
pledged his word, and he got there.
Now, when this simple tale was told
to Judge Bellingcr, sitting in Portland
as the representative of the federal law,
he, being n man, was troubled in mind,
for here was one VINO had set his life at
the value of pin fee, that the law
might have its way, and yet justice
must be done and punishment meted
as is set down in the books. Neverthe-
less there are degrees, and Judge Bellin-
ger resolved that this was a case where
it would not strain the quality of JUS
tice were it Softened with mercy.
Therefore he imposed the lowest pen
| atty, which is imprisonment for six
months and fine equal to the sum
which Sutton appropriateness Fran
cisco Examiner.