Hornswogglers, Fourflushers & Snake-Oil Salesmen (28 page)

“But my rhythm was waylaid, see, by a rogue Indian, Paiute, I believe he was. He come out of nowhere, savaged me without even touching me! No sir, didn't use arrows nor spears, just his very appearance was enough to do it. Do what, you ask? Why, he threw off my rhythm! Lopped my own leg off quick as you can say ‘Granny's got a secret'!”

This time Pegleg didn't laugh, just stared at the young man.

Finally, the young man spoke. “I had been under the impression that you lost it in a fight with Indians, yes, but they were Apache. And you had been shot by them, with a gun, I believe you said.”

“I might have said that, yep. Then again, I might not have. Could be you're misremembering what I said.”

And that is very close to how Thomas L. “Pegleg” Smith finished out his long, adventure-filled life—astride various bar stools in California, spinning outlandish windies and selling maps and shares to the Lost Pegleg Mine to fellow prospectors, or whoever was gullible enough to bite. He ended his days in 1866 in a hospital bed in San Francisco, stretching the truth like taffy to his end.

But his life and stories, real, imagined, or more likely a combination of both, have helped establish his reputation as a teller of tall tales, a master of hoax, and a swindler of the highest order. And it's a sure bet he wouldn't want it any other way.

Most people agree that Pegleg's stories of lost gold are more hoax than hard evidence. But there are a good many who feel certain the old fibber was nonetheless onto something with those little black nuggets he found somewhere in the Borrego Desert of Southern California in the 1840s.

It is curious that, in recent decades, a number of people who swear his stories were true, claim to have found significant and promising quartz deposits rich in gold ore . . . in the general vicinity of where Pegleg vowed his lost mine resided.

Still others claim that the Lost Pegleg Mine continues to remain lost because it never existed in the first place, unless you consider where it came from—Pegleg Smith's own mind.

Nowadays a whole lot of people gather every year on the first Saturday in April at the Pegleg Smith Memorial in Borrego Springs, California, to participate in the Pegleg Smith Liars Contest. Participants compete to see who can spin the tallest, most outrageous story involving lost gold, naturally.

A
man set on filching from another would be hard-pressed to find a more forgiving or ideal setting than the old mine camps of the West. Often established hundreds of miles from civilization, law and order were in short supply (along with most everything else, from flour to liquor to women). These towns—their very appearance often stretched the definition of that word—were nonetheless peopled primarily with men hard at work pulling gold from the ground.

In a thousand mine camps throughout the West, hothouses of possibility all, outlawry thrived. Crimes ranged from the theft of a can of milk to wagon-loads of bullion rerouted into the pockets of masked road agents. One version of this last scenario is famous throughout the West for the unparalleled bold actions taken by both sides. The accused, a group of thieves living a lie among people who trusted them, and the accusers, a citizen-formed Committee of Vigilance like no other. And the cause of it all? A swindler by the name of Henry Plummer who flourished in the midst of it—for a short time, anyway. And he went about his swindling with a cunning not seen in the remote camps.

Plummer was a consumptive young man who headed west in 1852 from his family home in Addison, Maine. In a somewhat spotty career on the frontier, records show he killed four men—all allegedly in self-defense. One has to wonder what Plummer was doing each time to instigate such enmity. Was he an abrasive soul? Not according to the numerous people who signed petitions supporting his claim of self-defense each time it was said he should suffer for his killings.

Plummer had spent time in San Quentin Prison, less than six months of a ten-year sentence, for second-degree murder. He was given an early pass because his weak constitution led the prison physician to determine Plummer, as a “lunger,” a common term for someone suffering from tuberculosis, was “in imminent danger of death.” Plummer also left behind a murder, several shootings, and hasty retreats from various towns he'd visited in his wide-ranging travels to the Nevada, Washington, and Idaho Territories.

Plummer and a friend, Jack Cleveland, made their way to Bannack, Montana, in the middle of the winter of 1863, when the town was still a snow-covered mudhole but offered the promise of rich diggings. The two men had been up by Fort Benton, both courting one Electra Bryan, the sister-in-law of the agent at the Indian Agency. She agreed to marry Plummer. They weren't in Bannack a month when Cleveland, in a jealous rage, provoked a gunfight. Plummer shot Cleveland dead. His claims of self-defense were backed up by the handful of people who witnessed the shooting.

But that wasn't good enough for Plummer, who secretly worried that while Cleveland lay dying he may have mumbled something incriminating to Bannack sheriff Hank Crawford. So Plummer decided to kill Crawford to prevent him from catching Plummer in a nefarious scheme he'd been cooking up, something to which only Cleveland had been privy. This created a tense situation that reached its zenith one day in early spring when Crawford and Plummer exchanged gunfire across the muddy street of Bannack.

This time, though, it was Plummer's turn to feel the sting of another man's bullet. The sheriff managed to shoot Plummer in the arm, but fearing the newcomer's obvious vindictive nature, Crawford skedaddled in the night, leaving behind the town and his post as sheriff.

As the hard winter broke into a muddy spring, miners straggled into town in droves. Among them were known nefarious sorts, outlaws such as Boone Helm, a beast infamous for slicing men apart with little provocation.

By May Plummer had ingratiated himself enough into the lives of the townsfolk that he was elected sheriff of Bannack. It's rumored that his physical appearance was pleasing to not a few ladies of the small town. A description of this mine-camp Romeo can be found in the clerk's admittance book at San Quentin, when he was booked there years before: “Henry Plummer: Maine; murder of second degree; age, 27; occupation, clerk; 5 foot, 8½ inches; light complexion; gray eyes; light brown hair.”

Once installed as sheriff, Plummer began appointing deputies, including some of the aforementioned hard cases. These known vultures descended on gold-rich towns, picked free what they wanted before moving on, leaving a trail of crimes and killings in their stead. Among them were men named Ray, Stinson, and Gallagher. Curiously, Plummer also hired one J. W. Dillingham, a straight-shooter whose past was not pocked with illicit incident.

Alas, poor honest Dillingham was soon shot by three men—Deputy Stinson plus two others with the names Forbes and Lyons. The three were detained and brought before a miner's court—an impromptu court of law in which the townsfolk ruled the case. Forbes pleaded his own case and, as a man with a gift for verbal persuasion, he was set free. The other two, Lyons and Stinson, were due to be hanged. But some in the crowd cried foul and arguments ensued. Soon enough the two men were also released and ordered out of town.

In August of 1863, Plummer, already sheriff of Bannack, was appointed deputy US marshal for the territory of Idaho east of the mountains. And all the while he and his growing gang of road agents had been preying on traveling miners, wagons, and stagecoaches hauling gold and other valuables. They had secret meetings at which they were admitted only after uttering their shocking password: “I am innocent.” Ha! They also wore kerchiefs knotted in a certain way so they might tell one another apart in the daylight hours.

As winter rolled in, it was customary for miners who had spent the long, backbreaking hours of spring, summer, and fall to head southward, back to what was called the “States,” where for many, families and homes awaited them. And of course, they took their hard-earned gold with them. These lone travelers were of particular interest to the road agents.

Knowing the increased dangers of traveling with gold on their persons, many of these miners chose to tell no one their plans and often struck out alone at night with nothing but the moon's stark glow to guide them. And they were never heard from again—they would end up murdered, their pokes taken, their bodies dumped.

Such disappearances happened with increasing frequency over the next few months, but they raised only a low level of concern among the townsfolk. Then on December 17, saloonkeeper William Palmer brought the frozen corpse of a young German errand boy, Nicholas Tbalt, into town in the back of his buckboard. The youth's body sported a puckered and frozen bullet hole over his left eye, and rope burns were visible around his neck. His hands, frozen into claws, were grimed with leaves and soil, showing he'd been dragged, strangling before he died, scratching at the earth in desperation.

The sight of the well-liked young man laid out dead lit a fire under the townsfolk. Two dozen posse men hotfooted with Palmer to the spot where he'd found Nicholas Tbalt's body. They rode to a nearby shack, the same house at which Palmer had asked for help in loading the young man's body into his wagon. At the time the occupants had declined to help. Now, however, the men in the shack, on facing so many angry men, backpedaled. One accused another, George Ives, one of Plummer's deputies, of the crime.

Ives was brought to Bannack and, with the help of trained lawyer Wilbur Fisk Sanders, who had come to town months before, a proper trial was held. A twenty-four-man jury listened to back-and-forth rhetoric for three days before convicting Ives of the murder. He was hanged on December 21, 1863. After the trial Sanders and a handful of other men took matters a step further in an effort to end the disappearances, thefts, and murders that had descended on the little towns of Alder Gulch, Bannack, and Virginia City.

Within days members of this Vigilance Committee, calling themselves the Montana Vigilantes, set out to track down those men in the cabin who'd been with Ives when he was taken into custody. They felt sure those rascals still had useful information. On the trail they met a man named Red Yeager, who claimed the men they were looking for could be found at Deer Lodge. The vigilantes traveled on and realized once they got there that they'd been had by Red. They backtracked and caught up with Yeager. His stories didn't add up, so they applied vigilante tactics on him.

He cracked under whatever pressure they put on him and made a list of all the members of the Gang of Innocents—including himself. And topping his list was Sheriff Henry Plummer.

Where was Plummer this entire time? He was acting as sheriff, riding with his deputies to find the road agents who'd been terrorizing the good people of his towns. But his lame efforts drew to a close on the cold morning of January 10, 1864, when a hard knocking sound echoed through Plummer's little house.

“Why, yes, the sheriff's here. He's resting on the sofa in the front room.”

Sheriff Henry Plummer listened to a man's low voice respond, then step inside. His sister-in-law shut the door and said, “Right this way. . . .”

Plummer sat up, stretching and sighing. He was sheriff, after all. Someone probably needed something from him. That was the only drawback to this job—people were so damned needy. He looked up and saw members of the Vigilance Committee gathered outside, some stepping in. They stared down at him, hard looks on their faces.

“Well, gents, what brings you here? I'm afraid you caught me snoozing. Had a long night last night, making sure the road agents keep their distance—”

“Your talk is wasted on us, Plummer.” The men continued to stare at him, then the one in the lead slowly shook his head. “It's over. It's all out in the open now.”

Plummer stood quickly, swallowed, and told his sister-in-law to leave them be. Then the man in the lead said, “Let's go.” He nudged Plummer toward the door. “And don't try anything foolish. I've a revolver here and plenty of men outside.”