Tales Of The Trail; Short Stories Of Western Life — Judge Lynch's Court At Whooping Hollow Part 1

[Illustration] Whooping Hollow is the uneuphonious name of a mining camp in the very heart of the Taos Range--or rather, _was_, for it has been expunged from the map these twenty-five years, and but few of the present generation in New Mexico are aware that such a place ever existed.

It was almost inaccessible, so awfully abrupt and broken were the bare granite ridges surrounding it, out of which the circumscribed valley in which the town lay seemed to have been literally scooped when the rocks were plastic--Titanic hands holding the scraper, and the lightning the propelling power.

How the place received its strange appellation was a mystery even to the majority of the miners who worked there for nearly five years with picks, shovels, long-toms, sluices, and other appliances for extracting the ore from the refractory rock.

The quantity of the precious metals shipped during that period made the camp famous, and resulted in building up a town of rude shanties and dugouts which at the height of its prosperity numbered over twelve hundred souls.

But you cannot find Whooping Hollow on any modern map, for it played out in less than six years from the date of the discovery of gold there; though several fortunes were mined in that time, and made by traffic the specialty of which was bad whisky.

There was a legend current in the early days of the valley's occupancy, that was honestly believed in, which affirmed that the first party of prospectors, consisting of four or five men, all Tennesseeans, who entered the great cañon in their search, were rewarded well for their pains, finding plenty of water, game, fuel, together with other necessaries in the prosecution of their vocation--a beautiful place for their camp, lots of silver, and gold in paying quantities--were scared out of the gulch (to which they never returned) by an unearthly screeching, seemingly emanating from a human throat.

Its ghostly owner, they declared, visited their camp every night about 11 o'clock, and on the top of a timbered knoll, where they could plainly see it as the moonlight sifted through the scattered piñons and dwarfed cedars, took its stand, setting up its blood-curdling cries, which it continued with short intervals of cessation, until daybreak.

Those men, it was alleged, were a very ignorant and superstitious set, who, after three nights of their weird experience, could bear it no longer, and were absolutely driven away through fright.

Of course they told others of their rich strike, not forgetting to mention the "hant" of the place, as they called it; but these others, old mountaineers, not fearing any disturbance from the moonlight specter, went there, established their camp--to which hundreds soon flocked--calling it Whooping Hollow, in derision of the tale told by the alarmed Tennesseeans; which name it retained during its whole existence, and was known and recognized by that as a postoffice on the mail records in Washington.

In all probability what the men really heard was the mottled or American screech-owl, which makes a plaintive noise, and a peculiar sound during part of its mournful notes, like the chattering of teeth, keeping up its alternating whooping and moaning all night.

It loves to perch on some blasted tree in the moonlight, and the disembodied form seen by the superstitious miners must have been a shattered and denuded piñon, on which the nocturnal bird sat, that, escaping their vision in the daytime, was exaggerated by their frightened eyes at night into the "hant" of the place!

--But this is not a ghost story, and the reader will pardon the digression.

The region in which Whooping Hollow was situated is the roughest, and, to employ a mining phrase, the "lumpiest" portion of the whole Taos range.

It is a deep gulch in the strictest interpretation of the word, formed by two lofty divides, whose crests tower skyward from their bases more than 3,000 feet, which themselves are over 5,000 feet above the Atlantic's level, and the distance across the narrow valley at its widest part scarcely three-quarters of a mile.

The angle of the slope of the two opposing mountains is a little less than 35 degrees, making their sides, as maybe inferred, very precipitous.

The town's era of prosperity was long before the days of railroads in that portion of the continent, and such feats of engineering as have been accomplished since in the way of "hog-backs," loops and tunnels were not dreamed of as among the possibilities of mountain travel.

Nor was there even a wagon-road to Whooping Hollow.

Such a thing would have been regarded equally as difficult and expensive as the wonderful achievement of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé in climbing the Raton Range a dozen years later.

Everything was "packed" into the place on muleback, at a minimum cost of twenty-five cents a pound, whether the simplest necessaries of life or a sawmill, and the zig-zag trail the sure-footed beasts were compelled to travel up and down the fearful slopes of the great divides to get in and out of the rocky streets of the narrow town, made one dizzy to look at.

The rude collection of shanties, through courtesy called the town of Whooping Hollow, was built on one side of a little creek which ran at a fearful rate in the bottom of the gulch, whose waters, boiling and foaming, like all mountain streams, rushed over and around the immense bowlders with which its narrow bed was choked; while on the opposite side, immediately facing the principal street, extending for miles both ways, on the hill, the mining claims were located.

The houses were in most instances mere shells, constructed of rough slabs; while a few were of hewn logs, presenting a relatively neat appearance.

The roofs of all, however, were flat, and covered with earth; they rose one above the other like a flight of stairs, so that one could easily step out of his door upon the top of his neighbor's dwelling below, so precipitous was the side of the mountain on which the place was of necessity laid out.

The town consisted of four streets--one devoted entirely to business, the other three to residences only.

There were five stores, whose stock was of that character known throughout the West and in the mountains as "general."

That is, their proprietors almost literally kept everything, from a toothpick to a steam engine, or from a shoestring to a silk dress.

The place boasted also of twelve banks--of deposit only--faro and monte; for the unfortunate individual who once laid his money on the green-cloth tables of these institutions rarely saw any of it again: it was permanently invested!

Of saloons, too, Whooping Hollow had its full complement--I think there were thirty at one time; and their owners were not obliged to contribute anything to the support of the town, for as to municipal expenses, there were none.

Yet the discipline of the place was fair, to say the least: the ratio of violent deaths to the number of inhabitants was not nearly as great as in any of the Eastern cities; and as to thieving or burglary, such crimes were as rare as a church service--which Whooping Hollow never had during the whole period of its existence.

Of course such a unique condition of morality is easily accounted for.

"Judge Lynch's" court was the only tribunal for the trial of offenses against the peace and dignity of the town, and from its decisions there was no appeal.

Besides, society there was so constituted that it could condone a murder if there existed the slightest shadow of extenuating circumstances, but it would never forgive the unlawful appropriation of another's goods, particularly of horses; horse-stealing being the unpardonable sin, as it is generally on the frontier, the prompt remedy for which was "a short shrift and a long rope."

Notwithstanding the fact that perhaps there were hundreds of men in Whooping Hollow to whose ears the shrill whistle of a bullet would sound sweeter than the soft notes of a flute, still their general good-nature, when sober, and principle of "honor among thieves," kept them within bounds.

Occasionally--very naturally, too--there were desperate fights over the gambling-tables in the hells which abounded in Whooping Hollow, and frequently an outrageously obstreperous individual, full of "bug-juice," as the vile whisky dispensed in the saloons was called, would get a hole drilled into him by a No. 44 revolver-ball, or his vitals carved with an eleven-inch bowie.

But arrests were rarely made in quarrels of that character, because extenuating circumstances generally existed.

Often, under the excellent care of the skillful doctor--a former army surgeon, who had established himself there--the belligerents would recover from their fearful encounter, but oftener took up their last "claim" of six-feet-by-two in "The Bone Orchard," as the cemetery on the timbered knoll (where it was alleged the "hant" was originally seen) had been dubbed by the citizens of Whooping Hollow.

The average miner (and the miners' claims radiated from the place in all directions at varying distances, some as far as thirty miles) would come into town once a week at least, generally Sunday, and if he had been fortunate in his diggings would make a break for the first gaming-table in his way.

If he by any chance won he would "make the rounds," which in local parlance meant stopping at every saloon to treat the crowd of thirsty bummers always present on such occasions, and sometimes provoking a quarrel with the first man who got in his way.

But if losing, the rule generally, he went drunk and sulky back to his claim, consoling himself with the hope of better luck next time.

And so the lives of the majority were passed.

Not a few died "with their boots on" in some drunken row with their friends, to whom they had offered a real or fancied insult.

As in all mining-camps at the period of Whooping Hollow's boom, a most heterogeneous crowd composed its residents and transient occupiers.

In its rough but busy streets you met all shades and nationalities.

The tall, plodding Yankee, fresh from the hills of New England, green as a gourd, but with sufficient gall to extricate himself from any little difficulty he might stumble into; the active, restless Texan;

the jauntily dressed commercial traveler, with his samples of bad whisky and worse cigars; the swarthy Mexican, with his broad sombrero, scarlet sash, and irrepressible _cigarito_; that darker specimen of the _genus homo_, the negro; and, last of all, the "heathen Chinee."

Nearly every State had its dozens of representatives in the motley group of individuals who had come to seek their fortunes in this new El Dorado.

It was a grand place to study character; to learn how all the finer attributes of man may be completely crushed out of his nature by years of adversity, and how, under the same circumstances in others, all that is noble and pure predominates, no matter how hellish or pestilential, morally, may have been their surroundings.

The principal store of the town was owned and conducted by Jemuel Knaggs, a man of reputable character, an old plainsman and mountaineer, full of enterprise and grit, the acknowledged "leading citizen" of Whooping Hollow.

In every community, whether the most enlightened or barbarous, there is always to be found some individual who, by his force of character and other inherent attributes, becomes foremost in all that concerns the welfare and prosperity of the people who compose it, and this was the rôle that Jemuel Knaggs played in the rough mining-camp of Whooping Hollow.

He was a veteran miner, too, of California in '49; Fraser river, in British Columbia, in '58; and Pike's Peak in '59. But having amassed several thousand dollars during his erratic wanderings, in 1859 he abandoned the pick and shovel for the more pleasant occupation of keeping a general miners' store, whose necessities none knew better than he.

So he opened up in Whooping Hollow in the days of its incipiency.

He was a man about fifty years old, rather slender than otherwise, but there was something in his air and features which distinguished him from common men.

The expression of his countenance was keen and daring; his forehead was high, and his lips thin and compressed, indicating great determination of will.

One would not have hesitated to confide in his honor or courage, but would have been extremely reluctant to provoke his hostility.

He always wore a dark-blue navy shirt, to the collar of which was attached a curious button.

Around his waist was tightly buckled a broad leather belt, in which a formidable looking bowie-knife was stuck; to be used, as is usual with all frontiersmen, for various purposes indifferently--to kill a man, cut food, pick his teeth, or for whittling when he had nothing else to do.

Matters progressed very smoothly in Whooping Hollow for two or three years, under the watchful care of Knaggs and a few others of like sterling character, who will be hurriedly described as they appear in this sketch.

But at the end of that period a pall suddenly fell on the place.

Men would leave for a visit to some neighboring camp or on a hunting expedition, and never be heard of again.

Sometimes it would be one of the best citizens who would disappear all at once; the number of instances of this character in one year aggregating twenty.

At last the whole town became aroused, and suspicions of foul play in the matter entered their heretofore apparently too lethargic brains.

No one felt safe, and when, to "cap the climax" as it were, Jemuel Knaggs was declared "missing," an investigation was immediately but secretly instituted.

It then developed that with one or two exceptions all of those who had disappeared had left Whooping Hollow for Sandy Bar, the nearest mining-camp, sixty miles distant, and to which there was only one possible trail over the divide.

That the parties had been murdered was now conceded; but upon whom could suspicion rest?

and where on the lonely route were the damnable deeds committed?

These were the questions discussed one evening by half a dozen prominent men of Whooping Hollow, who had secretly met in a room about a week after Jemuel Knaggs failed to return at the appointed time.

He was last seen on the day of his departure from town by some reputable miners, who had met and conversed with him on the trail to Sandy Bar, not more than twelve miles from his home.

He had never arrived at Sandy Bar, however; that fact was ascertained to a certainty through diligent inquiry there.

It was only a small camp of less than three hundred people, and he was as well known there as in Whooping Hollow.

About half-way between Whooping Hollow and Sandy Bar there was a narrow, rocky valley, known as Willow Springs Gulch; abandoned long ago as a mining region, the ore in that vicinity having consisted of a series of small "pockets" only, which were naturally exhausted in less than six months from the date of their discovery, and that was more than two years before operations had begun in Whooping Hollow.

But the place was still famous for its pure water, which gushed out of the indurated wall of a small cañon in a stream as large as a man's arm--clear, cold and sparkling; the best water to be found in the whole sixty miles' ride.

The entrance to the rocky cañon was almost concealed by a dense growth of mountain willows; hence the name.

But the beautiful spring was the only redeeming feature in the otherwise barren and desolate landscape.

Near this lonely spot stood a small adobe cabin, or rather hut, the only habitation anywhere within twenty miles of the dreary place.

Its sole occupant was a miner, ostensibly, who pretended to own a claim near Sandy Bar, but it was alleged that no one ever saw him work it; yet he always apparently had sufficient money to supply his wants, ever paying gold for his purchases.

He was a tall, angular, villainous-looking specimen of humanity; rough, illiterate, dialectic in his talk, but possessing the physique of a giant, as courageous as a she-grizzly with cubs, a dead shot with the revolver, and withal believed by every one to be a desperado in the most rigid acceptation of the term.

Viewed superficially--for nobody at Whooping Hollow or Sandy Bar knew anything about his antecedents--he was apparently without one redeeming quality, except that he was kind to his dog, a mangy, spotted, wicked-looking yellow cur, with only one eye, and tailless--fit companion for such a surly-disposed master.

This strangely mysterious being, with whom no one had any more intercourse than was absolutely necessary, and that confined to the limited conversation required when he entered stores to make purchases, lived a supremely isolated sort of an existence, for he was as carefully avoided by every one as were the rattlesnakes that infested the rocky arroyos of the bald bleak hills where his hut was located.

Upon him, then, black suspicion naturally at once fell--so prone is human nature to be guided by visible forms; though there was not an inkling of proof, either circumstantial or direct, upon which to base this man's guilt.

Fortunately, they who were quietly investigating the cause of the disappearance of Jemuel Knaggs were men of excellent judgment; cool, calm and deliberate in their proceedings, but terribly in earnest.

They had received their education in the great "school of the world": they knew that suspicions were not facts; that appearances are too often deceiving; and they were nonplussed because convincing proof was not forthcoming to convict the only man upon whom a shadow of probable guilt could fall.

This strange creature, about whom nobody knew anything, was called, whenever reference to him became necessary (often now, for he was in everyone's thought a murderer), "Willow Gulch Jack," because his real name was not ever known--adopting the Indian's method of nomenclature and associating him with his locality.

It may readily be inferred that it was only his villainous aspect and isolated life that brought this wholesale condemnation upon him, for he had never been guilty of any disreputable act that the people could discover, and now they left no stone unturned to find something against him; but they avoided and suspected him as a sheep-raiser does a strange cur in his neighborhood.

Consequently a system of espionage was inaugurated on his movements, but nothing, as yet, had been discovered to cast a shadow on his every-day life.

He knew that he was suspected and watched; so, for some special reason which had not yet been made clear to the people of Whooping Hollow, he was now almost constantly absent from home, passing his time on the trail between his cabin and the top of the divide above the town, always accompanied by the one-eyed, tailless dog, his constant companion.

His enemies were aware of his perambulations, but could not divine the cause, and the mystery connected with his isolated life seemed to them more impenetrable than ever.

Of course they did not hound his every footstep, because, as they reasoned, that would give him no opportunity to commit himself; they merely adopted such precautionary measures as would prevent his escape from the country, and that would permit them to arrest him at any time they wanted to if he attempted to leave, or whenever they had gathered sufficient proof to convict him, which as yet seemed as remote as ever--flattering themselves all the while that he was unconscious of their intentions.

One day, about two weeks after the investigation of the cause of the disappearance of Jemuel Knaggs had been fairly inaugurated, this Willow Gulch Jack, as I shall have to call him in the absence of the knowledge of his real name, rode quietly into Whooping Hollow, dismounted, tied his mule to a stump in front of Tom Bradford's log cabin, walked up to the door, gave it a heavy kick, and waited until it was opened--his cur, at a word from his master, lying down close to the mule.

Tom Bradford was a veteran miner, one of the best citizens Whooping Hollow possessed, whose opinions on important matters were generally regarded as conclusive--such faith the curiously assorted people of the town placed in his excellent judgment, which fact Jack was fully aware of.

Bradford himself came out on the porch in response to Jack's tremendous knock, but when he saw who his visitor was, a shade of evident displeasure passed over his countenance--for he too, although he knew that not a scintilla of proof had been forthcoming after all these days of investigation, believed in this man's guilt.

Tom Bradford regarded Jack intently for a moment, as if wondering what to say or do, so astonished was he at his presence; but Jack broke the painful silence in a few words: "I say, Tom Bradford," (nobody was "mistered" out there in those days,) "I hev kim ter talk ter ye.

I knows this hyar's onexpected, but I don't keer, an' w'at I hev ter tell I wants ter tell ye whar no one kin har we-uns.

Hev yer sich a place whar we-uns kin converse ondisturbed?"

Bradford eyed Jack closely for a few seconds--not that he had any fear of the man, villainous as he looked, and giant that he was--then told him to follow as he led the way through the cabin door.

They passed out of one room into another at the rear (there were only two apartments in the building), where he pushed a dilapidated rush-bottomed chair toward Jack, himself taking another, and, throwing his feet upon a rickety table, the only other article of furniture in the rude log den, he pulled his pipe out of his pocket, filled it, lighted it, and handed another to Jack with the tobacco from a box nailed against the wall within easy reach.

He gave a few vigorous pulls at his own, emitting a cloud of smoke that almost enveloped him, then, fixing his eyes on his unwelcome visitor, said: "Now then, I'm ready to hear what you have got to communicate."

"Tom Bradford," began Jack upon this invitation, "I knows thet I hev been 'spected of these hyar murders w'at hev tuk place; an' I knows thet I hev been hounded an' watched, which you-uns hed no idee I knowed; but ye knows, Tom Bradford, thar haint er shadder kin be proved agin me."

"I am aware of that," said Bradford, hurriedly; "and although you are and have been the only man in the mines suspected, we folks here are determined that no innocent person shall suffer upon mere suspicion and under the excitement of the moment; we are also determined that no guilty party--or parties, if there should be more than one person implicated--shall escape the swift, summary punishment the hellish acts deserve.

We have no organized courts here, but organize them as we need them ourselves.

No mere technicality will save a rascal either, as it does sometimes in what are called civilized communities."

"Tom Bradford," continued Jack, "you nor no one else hez ever seen me a-loafin' roun' saloons, nor gamblin'-hells; an' no one hain't never seen me drunk nuther--hev they?

I knows my looks is agin me; but looks hain't nothin', nor no judge ter go by.

I hain't no harnsome man--never sot any claim ter sich.

I oncet tuk ther prize fer grinnin' through a hoss-collar, at er county fair way back in old Kaintuk, w'en I war young."

At this admission a change that was evidently intended for a smile suddenly crept over Jack's face as he opened his ponderous jaws; but the effect made his cavernous mouth, which literally stretched from ear to ear, look as if it had been made by a broadax at a blow.

"Waal," he continued, as the paroxysm caused by the remembrance of his youth passed off, "I hev been doin' some _de_tective work myself; an' w'at I hev diskivered is w'at hez brung me hyar ter talk ter ye 'bout.

It war all a accident, though; an' ef it hedn't 'a' been fer thet thar ornery dorg o' mine, I wouldn't er foun' out nothin'.

You-uns'll all be surprised ez I wuz, w'en ye kim ter larn who ther murd'rer for sartin is.

In ther fust place, I knowed them folkses ez war missin' never got pas' my cabin"---- Bradford looked Jack suddenly in the eye, as if to catch the true meaning of his last assertion; but Jack, seeing that he was misunderstood, became a little heated, and in a most emphatic manner said: "Never reached thar, Tom Bradford, ez I wants ye ter onderstand!

Now I wants yer ter tell me," he continued, getting more excited, "how many cabins--whar folkses lives, I means; 'course thar's lots o' 'bandoned ones--'twixt Whoopin' Holler an' mine?"

"Well," replied Bradford, in response to Jack's interrogatory, "there are but two--Cal.

Jones's and Ike Podgett's. Why?"

"Don't yer see, Tom Bradford, ef them ez is missin' never got ter my cabin, they never got by one o' them t'others?"

"What do you mean?"

asked Bradford, looking up excitedly into Jack's face.

"I means jes' w'at I says," replied Jack, gazing as earnestly now into Bradford's. "Ef er man leaves Whoopin' Holler fer Sandy Bar, he kain't git offen ther trail, kin he?

Thar hain't but one trail, is thar?

An' ef he don't kim back, an' don't go ahead, he mus' 'a' stopped somewhar 'twixt ther two places, mus'n't he?

An' ef he haint heerd of fer a long while, he mus' hev stopped fer good, eh?

Now do yer understan', Tom Bradford?"

and Jack emphasized his remarks by bringing down his huge fist like a sledgehammer on top of the rickety old table right in front of Bradford.