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Show 36 WESTERN WILDS. sneakin' along the brush road from Nauvoo t'other day, then?' says he. 1 No/ sez I, and was goin' on to explain, when he yells out, ' You're a d d lying Mormon, an' I've a mind to shoot the guts out o' you,' ' an the captain stopped him. I noticed the captain didn't touch the whisky, an' that hoped me a good deal. " They took me an' five others to a big house, an' kept us all day an' night, an' then I heard what it was all about. An' no wonder the peo-ple was excited. It skeered me jist to hear it. It was at the only house I'd stopped at on the way where the folks was easy an' civil like. They was a Dutchman named Miller and his son- in- law Liecy lived there; an' they was jist from some old civil country place in Penn-sylvany, or some'rs back there, where nobody's afraid or locks their doors at night ; an' these men had come on the Tract to buy land. It Avas talked round that the old man had five thousand dollars in a trunk, an' a job was put up by some fellers in Nauvoo. They spied ' round a day or two, an' one night three men busted in the door an' fell to shootin' an' cuttin' every thing they come to. The whole house was dashed with blood. The old man fit like a tiger. He was a Dunkard preacher, an' as stout as an ox, an' I mind well it was told ' round for a fact that he nearly killed one o' the men jist with his naked fists; an' when they run a long butcher- knife into his breast, he was so big it didn't go half way through, an' he whipped ' em off an' fell dead in the yard ! What with the old man's fightig', and the women screamin', an' the dogs a barkin', the fellers was skeered oif an' never got a cent o' the money. Then a neighbor galloped to Montrose, a town nigh there, an' raised the yell, an' in a little while the Hawkeyes, as they called theirselves, was out, an' that day they sarched every corner in the county. It was { he roughest time for strangers you ever read of. If you ever seed a lot o' cattle bellerin' ' round where one had been shot, you've an idee. " They was some that even proposed to hang all of us to be sure an catch the right one; an' what made it worse we was as much skeered of each other as we was of the Hawkeyes. But they was one man named Bird in our lot who cheered us up a good deal ; an' pretty soon they got on the right trail, an' it led straight to Nauvoo ; but the Mor-mons wouldn't give the fellers up. Then the sheriff took a whole boat load of men to Nauvoo, an' they had a big meetin', an' threatened war, but finally he got the men he had writs for, an' got ' em in jail; but the sheriif had his doubts, an' set up a game on ' em. They was two brothers named Hodges, an' he took four men of about their build, an' set ' em altogether, an' had Liecy, who lived some dajs, |
