The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1898-11-14
CFrom the Chicago Chronicle.)


cence. In a fitting review OF him De
Quincey's rhetorical subtlety of satire
alone could rise to the possibilities of
the subject, which would not he Muir
der Considered as a Fine Art" but
Murder Considered as an Enjoyable
Habit"
Mystery was odious to the western
happy bad man. A man-killing in the
atmosphere of mystery was to his
super-refined ethics murder and a
cowardly crime.
The virtue in the deed of mortal
phlebotomy was to his fancy the pro-
claiming of it to the world.
OF course, as womenfolk and society
came along toward the great conti-
mental divide and crossed it the bad
man with the happy habit of putting
worse men out of the way of doing
any more harm to their fellow man re-
coiled from the publicity of his great
ness and fought shy of his renown.
Thus it was with Joe Low, for eX-
ample. Though not written down in
the books, or framed in legal indict-
ments, we all know that Joe had fol-
lowed to the death every member of
a band of Vigilantes who lynched his
innocent brother in Alder guleh, Mon
tana. Disease robbed him of two VIC
TINS and accident of one; the others
ne caught, boots and all.
1t took Joe a great many years and
required of him an incomprehensible
energy to execute this delicate task of
justice When it was finished and he
had exhausted the turbulent temper
1t aroused in him he settled down near
Denver and is there today, as content
as an innkeeper on the Rhine His
deeds are now q myth, and he would
be, perhaps, the last person in the
world to rehearse them, because it
would not be in accordance with the
spirit of the times
Bat Masterson had a similar mission
OF vengeance to perform in this petty
existence of mundane translat ion to
sublImer things. He went about his
duty carefully and with a smile that
never kinked the muscles at the corn
ers of his eyes He never missed his
man, and when the last one of the
crowd had dropped, when he knew he
could so back to his brothers grave
in Kansas and say to the memory that
hovered there, ct have evened up the
score, old boy, and you have no kick
coming, he cleaned his trusty forty
| five oiled and put it away for emer-
gency and resumed the normal exist
ence of man who enjoys sport and
| good fellowship.
Wyatt carp, now living as circum-
!
missionary on a cannibal island, was
just such another, save that his
! destructive happiness in the day of
! border terrors was not confined to
gratifying fraternal revenge.
The genesis of the bad man of the
| happy killing habit is not easily traced.
and by this | don't mean the border
ruffian or drink-crazed cowboy who
Killed for the same reason that certain
human beings with symmetrical Grant
ums commit burglary and other crimes.
The latter never had the chance to cut
many notches in their pistol stocks. for
the unerring law, personifed in the
happy bad man, soon closed their anlbi-
tious careers.
This unique character of American
daring and the acutest sense of fair
play, full of sentiments easily touched
put rarely spoken, incapable of aban-
donIng a friend who had the law
against him. and the bravest to exc
cute the law when common sense die
tated the justice of the decree; this
contrariety of the man-killer and the
clVllizer must have issued from the ira
dltions of the bloody ground" of the
Ohio. where the sternest Struggles Oh
American pioneering occurred: for we
trace him along the line of greatest re.
sistance through Kentucky Missouri.
ana Kansas, to the whisky centers OF
the prairie cattle ranches and the eph.
emeral mountain camps of the mines
Unerr1ngiy he was a home ruler. {
local government man. with no fond.
ness for faraway lawmakers. no conf
dence IN their rectitude or wisdom. anC
4 believer in the general cussednass O.
all human nature not embodied in hi.
particular friends and relatives II
fact, he was usually a big-hearted Sc
cessionist. not averse to settling tn,
question of state sovereignty with an,
conner. and give him a choice of weap
ons.
A conspicuous example of his twp,
was Bill Thompson, brother of tha
other Texas Thompson, named Ben
VINO made considerable of a record a.
a paclfler at Austin before he was as
sasslnated. Bill was laying off" up il
Colorado. after having had to Sill
across the Texas border between
5 suns. when the historic double lynchiny
/ OF Frodsham and Stewart occurred a
Leadville. Obedient to a request NOR
e imperative than polite, several hundre
: thugs footpads, lot-jumpers. burglar
and assassins left Leadville the follow
g ing morning and colonized So mile
T away, at Buena Vista, the new tempo
rary terminal of the South Park rail
q road They were soon joined by thei
? kind in numbers from every quartz
s every other sort of robbery and murde
= in the first degree became the pastim
S of the place.
e But there was a happy bad man i
the town, and it was Bill Thompson
!. He was elected mayor on the quiet b
: a Darkroom oligarchy. After the Tex
e an had punched the anatomy of q fe7
Il OF the worst bad men of Buena Visit
g and satisfied everybody that he reaIl
y enjoyed a good stand-up- and-shoc
fight. the gaiety of the select societ
subsidized, and in a few days he was tn
unchalenged desDot of the town. |
5 the meantime robbery and crime ha
L ceased.
: Colonel Amos c. Babcock was at tn
: time engaged in mining operation
o within few miles drive by buckboar,
{ He was pleased greatly at the nerve
:; the Buena Vista marshal-like Other
: of the law and order species of mar
. kind in the Observation-Disclosures took OF
. casion some months later to exDres
=. his approval of the Thompson despo
+ ism.
Buena Vista vanished when the raj
road was completed to Leadville, ar
= one day Bill Thompson, at that con
mon crisis in his career known as a
empty pocket-book, received a lett
from his brother, Ben, saying that IL
indictment against him was quashe
and he might come home.
Colonel Babcock CHANGED to hear
Thompscn's plight and sent him S
through hotel man at a nearby tow
after the latter had promised not to r
veal the name of the donor IT seen
that, in spite of mis- dilemma, Thompsc
would not accept the money until !
was told the name of his benefacto
Before leaving for Texas he slipped i
to the mining town to size up'' h
unknow2 friend and departed witho1
making himself acquainted, accordir
TO the pledge he made when the col
nel's name was given to him