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Show 292 TALES OF THE COLORADO PIONEERS. caped, but the woman was carried to the camp of the assassin. In the darkness of the following night she eluded her captor and found her way to the Fort, where she told her story, when a party under the guidance of the noted mountaineer, Tom Tobin, (who had the reputation of being able to trail grasshoppers through sage brush), was at once dispatched to arrest or kill the criminal. Upon reaching the vicinity, Tom ordered his soldiers to halt, while he proceeded quietly on foot, crawling when occasion required it on his hands and knees through the dense undergrowth. While thus cautiously feeling the way, he discovered the bandit's hiding-place, in a dense part of the forest on the mountain side. The bandit, quick to detect the slightest sound, turned his head in a listening attitude, and while thus poised, the scout's bullet did its work, and the career of the assassin was ended. Tobin leaped upon him with the swiftness of a tiger, severed his head from his body, and galloped into Fort Garland, with the bloody trophy tied to his saddle's pommel. The murderers kept a diary, written in poor Spanish. They were probably " penitentes," who lash themselves during the Lenten season, to secure pardon for sins committed and to be committed, as their diary was largely made up of prayers to the saints and the holy Virgin to help them and protect them in their butcheries of strange and peaceable citizens. Ten years later the Legislature of Colorado ordered a reward of five hundred dollars paid to Mr. Tobin. |