TIL TAYLOR— SHERIFF 



ny in handling criminals, and his ability to spot men 

 with whom he had come into previous contact, or of 

 whom he had received descriptions, was exceptional. 



One remarkable illustration of this occurred in 1911. 

 Taylor was after a man sixty-five years of age on a local 

 charge, and to identify him had nothing but a photo- 

 graph which he selected from the files of the Walla 

 Walla penitentiary. This picture was of a man 

 twenty years old, and clean shaven, but proved to be 

 the same man arrested forty years later who had a 

 heavy growth of beard and mustache and features con- 

 siderably altered. 



His ability to recognize criminals was attributed to 

 his manner of studying men. He had a system of 

 observation of his own, which was to study carefully 

 the features of the upper face, particularly the nose, 

 eyes and ears. The application of this can be appre- 

 ciated in a country where the mask often consists of 

 a kerchief tied over the bridge of the nose and whiskers 

 were not an uncommon hirsutian adornment. 



Three men who broke jail in Pendleton in 1915 were 

 run down after a twenty mile chase in the mountains 

 and captured single handed by Sheriff Taylor. They 

 were drinking at a spring, when what was their con- 

 sternation to find themselves covered by Taylor's gun 

 before they had time to draw. 



Out of twenty-eight men who broke jail from Uma- 

 tilla County, Sheriff Taylor returned twenty-six to the 

 same cells, while the other two were located elsewhere 

 in the country, one now being in a penitentiary in the 

 East. Over two thousand five hundred arrests, the 

 vast majority of which were followed with convictions, 

 and much work in connection with famous crime 

 mysteries, as well as the apprehension and bringing to 



43 



