LET 'ER BUCK 



justice of many escaped convicts from eastern and 

 southern states, are credited to his office. In fact, a 

 record of the daring captures of this noted typical 

 sheriff would fill a volume with true stories, vying in 

 thrills with those portrayed on the movie screen or 

 read in the pages of Wild West magazines. 



One of the most desperate episodes occurred after 

 bank robbers had blown a safe at Hermiston, forty 

 miles from Pendleton, toward the Columbia River, to 

 which place Taylor immediately and unerringly track- 

 ed them, and captured them single-handed. While 

 holding the struggling prisoner with one hand, he 

 fought a revolver duel with the pal of the prisoner, 

 who first opened fire from a telegraph pole. This was 

 the only time in the memory of those who served under 

 him that the late sheriff ever shot to kill. 



A strange fate caused Taylor's cartridges to jam in 

 his gun, forcing him to quit firing; but he brought 

 back the first prisoner. Tracing the second robber 

 through three states, Taylor finally checked up on him 

 in Montana. The bandit was then brought to the Mult- 

 nomah County jail in Portland, and here occurred an 

 example of Taylor's uncanny ability to visualize a man 

 and unerringly memorize his face, for out of a group 

 of sixty men, Taylor picked him out, identifying him 

 weeks, possibly months, after having seen him only 

 once under distracting circumstances and then from 

 behind a telegraph pole. 



In early July of 1920, about the time the great com- 

 bines were starting to garner the first of Umatilla 

 County's vast golden wealth of wheat, word came into 

 the sheriff's office at Pendleton of a hold-up staged a 

 few miles east of the city by two bandits snowing all 

 the earmarks of desperadoes. Taylor and deputies 



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