37 6 Reminiscences of 



We heard a number of pistol shots during the 

 night proceeding from the tented town, which we 

 had no curiosity to investigate, but found in the 

 morning that one man had been killed and several 

 wounded which accounted for the shots resulting 

 from a misunderstanding between some gentlemen 

 of the town. There was no officer of the law at the 

 settlement, but one Jack Smith claimed to be a 

 sheriff, and exercised his authority that night with 

 several assistants in holding up and going through 

 a car-load of second-class passengers, that had ar- 

 rived in the evening from California and was held 

 over on the track for proceeding north the follow- 

 ing day. 



This fraudulently assumed sheriff, in the middle 

 of the night, with half a dozen drunken assistants, 

 stood up and robbed every one of the passengers 

 on this car, assaulting and knocking down several 

 of the victims who stopped to protest, or were too 

 slow in handing over. -In fact, no official agent of 

 the law existed at the settlement, where every one 

 was dependent upon himself or his friends. 



The conditions at Deming, New Mexico, men- 

 tioned, reminded me of that which existed at Chey- 

 enne in Wyoming Territory in the winter of 1867, 

 during the building of the Union Pacific railroad 

 on its way to Utah to connect with the Central 

 Pacific railroad from California. The " hell on wheels " 

 camped here had signalized itself in a particularly 

 atrocious manner at Julesburgh while on its way 

 accompanying the railroad, and had for some 

 weeks made a rest at ; the then moderate settle- 

 ment of Cheyenne, where its force was largely 



