The Wolf Point herald. (Wolf Point, Mont.) 1913-1940, 1920-04-08
STEAMER lUEllA CARRIED RICHEST CARGO
EVER TAKEN DOWN THE MISSOURI RIVER

of the Union armies, shaking a thirst
for adventure which the battlefield
had only stimulated, and gladly CIV
ing the hand of fellowship to their
former foes.
Vigilantes of Fort Benton
Here mingled miners from Califor-
MIA, farmers from the Atlantic sea-
board, fur traders and trappers from
the vanishing northwestern wilder
ness, clergymen, hardened despera-
does and heroes of law and order;
every type and condition of man the
country could produce, gathered to-
gether by one common aim and i'm
pulse, the pursuit of wealth.
From the naked hills whose sum-
mits o%vertopped the settlement, saw
age and val loving Indians looked
down sullenly upon the invading
whites, seeing in every freight wagon
that left the levee for the distant
mines another contribution to the
forces which were slowly dispossess-
ing them of their native prairies;
hearing in every whistle-blast from
the crawling steamboats, the hoarse
challenge of civilization to barbar-
ism. A short distance along the
river bank from the new town loom
ed the massive but crumbling walls
of old Fort Benton, which for a
score of years had stood guard over
the whites who had come to trade
with the Indians. Its days of use
fulness and it's glory as an outpost
of the wilderness had already passed,
for near it now stood a settlement of
white men strong enough in numbers
to defy the Indians.
Over in the far gold camps the
Vigilance committee, stern enforcer
of the laws of the frontier, had fin
ished its work of cleaning up their
immediate country of road agents
and other desperadoes, but as yet the
feeble arm of the new territorial gov
eminent had not yet gained strength
to reach from Virginia City to Fort
Benton, and here the Vigilance com
mittee still ruled supreme.
The men of the Fort Benton Vigi-
lantes, of whom practically nothing
has been written and little is remem-
bered today, did not meet in formal
c%onclave to pass upon the fate of
criminals. A few low words spoken
in passing as members met each
other on their daily business; a vote
taken in the same manner, and per-
haps the rising sun of the next morn
ing would see a still form hanging
by the neck before one of the trading
houses. Or it might be that some
sinister-looking individual would
have disappeared from his familiar
haunts, eve to return=fled in the
night from some grim warning he
did not dare to question or resist.
Stern and Uncompromising
The law of the Fort Benton Vigi-
lance committee was as stern and I'M
compromising as that of it's neighbor-
ing body of the gold camps, but it
was seldom unjust, for even the ex-
tremity of it's punishments found ex-
cuse in the chaotic conditions that
obtained.
In Fort Benton so great had be-
come the terror inspired by it's con-
slant menace of swift vengeance up
on evil doors that Captain Marsh saw
men ride in from the mines, fling
down their saddles, with sacks of
gold dust tied to the cantles, upon
the floor of L. G. Baker & Company's
and go off on a weeks spree,
TO find when they sobered up and re-
for their property that it had
not been touched.
While the Luella was unloading,