CHAPTER TWO 

 TIL TAYLOR— SHERIFF 



Many an old-time pioneer of to-day of scarce four- 

 score years, need but close his eyes to vision backward 

 to the time when the star empire rested on Oregon's in- 

 terminable forests, flowering, undulating prairie lands 

 of limitless bunchgrass, and on her fish-filled cascad- 

 ing streams, to trace through her eight decades of ad- 

 venturous, romantic, progressive story. This story was 

 not a tale of a contest with nature only, but with men, 

 of law and order against lawlessness and terror — the 

 ever-old story of the frontiers of civilization. These 

 sturdy, self-respecting pioneers, settlers and mission- 

 aries of Oregon, ahead as they were of territorial gov- 

 ernment, were a suffrcint law unto themselves and it 

 is recorded that the first decade of Oregon history was 

 without law-statute law — and yet not a crime was com- 

 mitted in the American settlement. In 1841, however, 

 the first provisional court west of the Missouri River, 

 a probate court, was organized. 



When that beckoning Circe of man's cupidity — gold 

 — was discovered in California, then in Oregon, the 

 promise of easy wealth flooded the country with out- 

 laws — the gambler, highwayman, horse and cattle thief 

 and all-round bad man, while saloons and gambling 

 joints sprang up like mushrooms in a night. During 



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