The pioneer press. (Miller, Hand County, S.D.) 1893-190?, 1897-02-18
TO KEEP HIS WORD.

to surrender to Justice.
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, says a Portland (Ore.) cor
respondent of the San Francisco Ex-
aminer. A plain tale. truly, and n
which smacks Of the vulgar common
place, but mark the difference.
This Sutton is a man Of simple mind
and to him it seemed no harm would be
done If he eked out the p~ittance of his
office of postmaster by adding the sums
paid in for purchase Of money orders,
a matter Of some 1855 when all was
counted. He would make 1T good in
his own time and in truth he thought
1t 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. SUIT
ton heard. He realized that he had
done wrong. He was ready to meet
his punishment. Nay he was ready to
By ~ II at LIN pNih u hio NV.
Nothing prevented if he chose to leave
the state. None could find him in this
bitter weather did he prefer to hide in
the Businesses of his W trackless
mountains, but it came home to him
what he had not realized when he took
the money, that he had done wrong
and he alone must bear the bur
Now, this was not a matter of
ing downtown to give yourself u -
the police or the marshal. 1t was not
even a matter of boarding a comfort
able railroad coach to be hauled into
Portland. Oretown is a lonely camp
buried deep in the Oregon wilds, a
round forty miles and more from a
railroad station, with raging rivers to
be crossed between, and no road on
which a horse may travel in this teem-
ing winter season, when the whole
countryside is soaked and sodden like
q full sponge, deep with treacherous,
u~nfathomed 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, be-
cause the matches he carried were
soaked, snatching a hungry bite ty the
way at the little store of food / =
in his pockets, all sodden and sm~ :
with mud-this was the task that Vim
cent Sutton set himself because JUS
tice must be done and he must bear his
part, though his life be forfeit in the
doing. So it came that the simple
minded man of primitive mold sat down
and wrote a letter to Marshal Gray, in
Portland, that he would come himself
to the nearest station on the railroad,
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 1t nearly cost him his life. SUIT
tor 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, triDle
thunderer in sooth, vas booming y y
sullen, hungry roar, turbid with swirl
ing mud, carrying on it's angry breast
sweeping logs and jagged roots, torn
from their sockets by the searching
food. Five times it had to be crosseC
by Sutton on his way, swimming or
wading, or CHANGING his life on a
treacherous log. Once he was nearly
smothered in a bottomless pit of mud
as dangerous as the quiet, remorseless
suck of a quicksand that never gives
up it's 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 strange tale was told
to Judge Bellinger, sitting in Portland,
as the representative Of federal law,
he, being a man, was troubled in mind,
for here was one who had set his life
at the value of a pin fee that the law
might have it's way, and yet justice
must be done and punishment rlc."'
as is set down in the books. NJ
theless there are degrees and Judge
Bellinger resolved that this was a
case where it would not strain the
quality of justice were it softened with
mercy. Therefore he imposed the low
est penalty, which is Imprisonment for
six months and a fine equal to the sum
which Sutton appropriated.
Ratified.
SIow much do thaSa cooloc ,yaiob -,