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Show CHAP. IV. A MURDER.-SAFETY OF THE CITY. 225 On Monday, as the sun was sloping toward the east, Mr. Stenhouse called to let me know that the train had already issued from Emigration Kanyon; no time to spare. We set out together " down town" at once. Near the angle of Main Street I was shown the place where a short time before my arrival a curious murder was committed. Two men, named Johnston and Brown, mauvais sujets, who had notoriously been guilty of forgery and horse-stealing, were sauntering home one fine evening, when both fell with a bullet to each, accurately placed under the heart-arm. The bodies were carried to the court-house, which is here the morgue or dead-house, to be exposed, as is the custom, for a time: the citizens, when asked if they suspected who did the deed, invariably replied, with a philosophical sangfroid, that, in the first place, they didn't know, and, secondly, that they didn't care. Of course the Gentiles hinted that life had been taken by " counsel" -that is to say, by the secret orders of Mr. Brigham Young and His Vehm. But, even had such been the case-of course it was the merest suspicion-such a process would not have been very repugnant to that wild huntress, the Themis of t he Rocky Mountains. In a place where, among much that is honest and respectable, there are notable exceptions, this wild, unflinching, and unerring justice, secret and sudden, is the rod of iron which protects the good. During my residence at the Mormon City not a single murder was, to the best of my belief, committed: the three days which I spent at Christian Carson City witnessed three. Moreover, from the Mississippi to Great Salt Lake City, I noticed that the crimes were for the most part of violence, openly and unskillfully committed; the arsenic, strychnine, and other dastardly poisonings of Europe are apparently unknown, although they might be used easily and efficiently with scant chance' of detection. That white emigrants have sometimes wiped off the Indian, as the English settler settled with corrosive sublimate the hapless denizen of the great Southern Continent, is scarcely to be doubted; at the same time, it must be owned that they have rarely tried that form of assassination upon one another. As we issued from the city, we saw the smoke-like column which announced that the emigrants were crossing the bench-land; and people were hurrying from all sides to greet and to get news of friends. Presently the carts came. All the new arrivals were in clean clothes, the men washed and shaved, and the girls, who were singing hymns, habited in Sunday dresses. The company was sunburned, but looked well and thoroughly happy, and few, except the very young and the very old, who suffer most on such journeys, troubled the wains. They marched through clouds of dust over the sandy road leading up the eastern portion of the town, accompanied by crowds, some on foot, others on horseback, and a few in traps and other "locomotive doin's," sulkies, and buckboards. A few youths of rather a rowdyish appearance |
