HOIV Kootenay Emerged from its Wild State. 229 



Wildhorse these gentry expected to have a " high old time," for the 

 nearest jail, police officer, or magistrate was more than a month's 

 journey off, and the outlawed gamblers, murderers, and out-of-a-job 

 desperadoes flocked to Kootenay in numbers that boded ill for the 

 camp. But they had counted without Judge O'Reilly, who, 

 accompanied by a single constable, hurried up from the coast to 

 Wildhorse as fast as horses and canoes would take him, reaching 

 the remote gulch with the first rush of the dangerous element. 

 Assembling as many of the miners as chose to attend in front of 

 the single-roomed log cabin which he had turned into a temporary 

 courthouse, while a larger one was being built as fast as liberally 

 expended gold would fell and square logs, Judge O'Reilly made a 

 famous speech which is still remembered throughout the mining 

 <jamps on the Slope. Standing near the pole from which floated the 

 Union Jack as the only symbol of authority to be seen, he said : 

 " Boys, I am here to keep order and to administer the law. Those 

 who don't want law and order can ' git/ but those who stay with 

 the camp, remember on what side of the line the camp is ; for, 

 boys, if there is shooting in Kootenay there will be hanging in 

 Kootenay." * 



There was but one murder in old Wildhorse, that of Jack 

 Lawson, the constable. An old grave at the trail side, near 

 Bonner's Ferry, which I have passed scores of times, and near 

 which, oddly enough, a similar end as Lawson's nearly overtook 

 me, marks the spot where, after a three weeks' hunt, justice, in 

 the shape of rifles in the hands of deputy sheriffs, ended the 

 career of the defiant murderer. 



The Wildhorse boom was, as I have said, but a short-lived 

 one, and in 1882, when I struck the country, the latter had long 

 reverted to conditions almost as primeval as before the rush. 

 Only eleven white settlers lived in the vast East Kootenay 



*Two old miners, Clark and Doyle, who were present on the occasion, gave 

 me this version of Judge O'Reilly's speech. It varies but triflingly from 

 Bancroft's version. When I asked Sir. O'Reilly for the real version, he told me 

 he had long forgotten the exact words he had used. 



