IT was long after the time of which we are writing that Conan Doyle led his readers into some of the secrets of detecting crime by the observance of circumstances devoid of significance to the ordinary searcher for clues. It is also true that the legal devices by which the guilty are now-a-days generally enabled to escape punishment had not been brought to their present high state of perfection. In the corral in Salt Lake City where our wagons and stock were temporarily cared for, there were also other outfits having drivers concerning whose character our captain had little knowledge, but the conduct and general appearance of some of them led him to believe that they were not quite incapable of disregarding on occasion the artificial distinction between mine and thine. One morning three mule trains said to be bound for Montana pulled out from the corral, and on the same day it was discovered that several articles were missing from our wagons. This interesting synchronism led our men generally to believe that our property had accompanied one of those trains, which were soon beyond the jurisdiction of Salt Lake officers. A Sherlock Holmes might have discerned some further hint pointing to the authors of the larceny, but we could find none. We decided to rely upon general suspicion as sufficient ground for action and to proceed accordingly. In the Western territories, and especially outside any of the few settlements, according to the unwritten law, horse stealing was treated as a capital offense. Therefore, if As my duties had seldom brought me to the corral, I expected to be a stranger to all the freighters whom I was pursuing, but had seen enough of them on one brief visit to be convinced that among them were a number of tough characters, yet I saw no reason why, as an officer of the law, I should not receive permission to examine the wagons, if the wagon master himself should be innocent. It was sometime after noon when a mule train was observed in the distance, and on reaching it I learned from one of the drivers that the name of the owners was upon the search warrant. The captain of the train, on horseback in the lead, stopped as requested, and the paper Having completed the examination which required little more than an hour, and thanking the captain for his assistance, I announced that the property did not appear to be in the possession of any of his men and that all was satisfactory. By proceeding again more rapidly, another train was reached quite late in the afternoon, and a thorough search was made through the merchandise in each wagon, all of which was accomplished without serious opposition, but none of the missing property was found. It was evident that the third train could not be overtaken and searched that evening, but I pressed on Northward and darkness came on quite early. At the right near by to the East, the Wasatch range of mountains paralleled the old Montana road and the It was nearly nine o'clock when there appeared the welcome light of a candle shining through the little window of a cabin on the west side of the road. To my call from outside the gate, as I rode up, a man soon answered by coming to the door. Having announced the fact I had suspected for several hours, that I was very hungry and that my horse must be in a similar condition, I asked permission to enjoy the hospitalities of his cabin for the night, to which he promptly replied, "Sartain! you go right in, and wife will get you some supper, and I'll take care of your horse," which by that time I had led through the gate. Turning to the woman who stood near him, and who had been an interested observer, he "I just came up from Salt Lake City to-day. I left there this morning. Your wife tells me that your name is Childs," I added, and then gave him my name. "Yes," he replied, "my name is Childs, but I presumed that you were from the States. Is Salt Lake your home?" "No. I have spent three or four months there. My home is in Wisconsin." "I had a brother once who lived in Wisconsin," said Mr. Childs. "Oh, yes. I know him very well." "You know him?" exclaimed my host. "Why do you think you know him? I haven't even told you his name or where he lived." "His name is John Childs," said I, starting in on a second cup of coffee. The man and his wife gazed at each other with expressions of surprise. The fact was that I did well know a prominent farmer, an old and esteemed settler in Wisconsin, whose name was John Childs, and as he was the only man I did know who bore that family name, I took a flyer in jest, and it happened to hit the mark. "Where did the John Childs that you know live?" "Then he is probably not my brother. My brother went to Whitewater." "Oh, that's all right," said I, "but you are mistaken in the supposition that your brother lives in Whitewater. He lives in the town of Lima, but the villages are only six miles apart. The railroad station is known as Child's Station." This statement on my part was not so remarkable as it would appear to be, because I was familiar with the situation. "Do you mean to say that he is now living?" asked Mr. Childs, as he drew very close to me at the table, while his wife also took a seat and listened intently. "Living? He was living six months ago and weighs fully 200 pounds. I know nearly every man in all that country." Mr. Childs of Utah paused a moment and then said to his wife, "Send over to the boys to come here at once, and we will wait until they arrive, for I wish them to hear all about this matter." Turning to me he added, "I have two brothers who live in the two houses beyond here, and I wish them to hear all that you will say." I then turned the subject to the purpose of my trip North. I told him of the lost property and of the improper conduct of the wolves back in the desert. He then informed me that one of his brothers was the constable for that township. The brothers having arrived, Mr. Childs introduced them and then narrated to them the conversation which had passed between us concerning their brother, John, to which they listened with profound interest. Turning "Your communication doubtless went to the Dead Letter office," said I. "Although John is well known and is perhaps thirty years older than I am, a letter addressed to the wrong post-office might not have reached him if written before he was as well known as he is now. How long is it since you heard concerning him?" "About twenty years. We supposed that even if living he was still unwilling to renew friendly relations with us, and all because of the fact that he did not agree with us in our religious belief." Thus had the Scripture been fulfilled, and families and peoples been divided, all the way down through generations. That evening by the big open fire was an occasion of great interest. The family was told of their brother's prosperity and high social position, and that he was a man of recognized honor. We separated at a late hour, and I retired leaving the brothers still conversing. In the morning, having learned that I would soon return to Wisconsin they asked me to send for the brother on my arrival there and tell him of my meeting with his Mormon brethren and that the information given might be full and definite they showed me their farms, stock and harvested grains. Mr. Childs declined to accept anything for my entertainment. He replied in the single word "Yes," with a rising inflection, as if about to ask, "Why do you wish to know?" but he did not continue. "Well, John, do you know what became of them?" After a little hesitation he told briefly of the belief that prevailed with other members of the family, that they enlisted for the Mexican war, but their friends had failed to obtain any definite trace of their movements and all trace of them was lost in that campaign. "Could you not secure information concerning them through the records of the war department?" I asked. "Nothing definite, except that there was a suspicion at one time that they might have gone up into Utah, but we tried to locate them, and have never heard a word from them, or of them, to this day, and I suppose they were lost in some adventure." It was evident that while John had not yet told all that he knew of his brothers, his belief was that they were not As already stated, one of the Childs brothers was constable. In discussing the matter of my search for stolen property he was emphatic in his advice that the pursuit of the other train would involve a great hazard. It was traveling with light loads, evidently going North to winter on some of those ranges, and before it could be overtaken it would be outside the limits of Utah. If the property was with it, the men would certainly resist the intrusion of an unaccompanied searcher, and an un "All right, fellows," said I, "and possibly you are right. I have seen some of this country and will return South." After breakfast and some pleasant farewell words I started on my return to Salt Lake. Some distance in advance, I noticed a solitary horseman riding in the same direction I was going. As the country was unsettled, the prospect of companionship led me to hasten until he was overtaken. He proved to be a Mormon pioneer, and after some preliminary conversation as we rode along side by side he informed me that his name was James S. Brown. "Are you the James S. Brown who first discovered gold in California, at Sutter's Mill?" I asked. "I was there," he replied. "There were James Marshall, H. W. Bigler, and James Berger who were with me. We had been with the Mormon Battalion sent to the Mexican war, and having been discharged we came up to Captain J. A. Sutter's ranch on the American River." "I have read much of that ranch in John C. Fremont's records," I replied. Continuing he said, "We were out of money and needed horses for our return trip to the Missouri River, therefore we engaged to help Sutter build a saw mill on the stream at the point where the City of Sacramento now stands. Sutter went to California from Missouri, and acquired a principality in size and value, and was the first settler. It was during that work that in January, 1848, we found gold. It had not been seen there before. As a fact we brought the first news of the discovery East, which resulted in the rush of 1849." Continuing his story from time to time after occasional digressions he told of the return of their party over the Sierras Eastward, of their troubles with the Indians and of other hardships. Although in Mr. Brown's interesting volume on the Life of a Pioneer, written in later years, he makes no mention of the circumstances, yet he told me that when his little party had arrived at the north end of Great Salt Lake in the autumn of 1848, and had determined that it would be much safer to spend the winter in that valley than to cross the mountains so late in the season, they were led by friendly Indians to understand that good forage for their horses could be found at the southern end of the Lake; whereupon, as he told me, the party traveled the same course that we were then following, along the western base of the Wasatch Mountains. At a point several miles north of the present site of Salt Lake City they unexpectedly met two of their Mormon friends, whom they had neither seen nor heard from since leaving the Missouri River two years before. They were informed for the first time that Brigham Young and many Mormons had crossed the plains and the mountains in the preceding year, and had erected a stockade and settled at the south end of the lake. One member of Mr. Brown's party was astounded to learn that his mother, having crossed with one of the trains, was at that moment but 12 miles away and that she had driven a yoke of oxen the greater part of that long, tedious Near the close of the day Brown and I reached the ranch of Peregrine Sessions, a pioneer Mormon and a man conspicuous in Mormon history, from whom the place was known as Sessions' settlement. As we rode up to the door, Mr. Brown said to me: "It was right here that we met our Mormon brothers who informed us concerning the new Salt Lake settlement." It was arranged that we should spend the night with Mr. Sessions, who during the evening gave a brief account of the perils and privations to which they were subjected on their journey and some incidents connected with the early days in Utah. During our evening's interview Mr. Brown described his first arrival at Salt Lake settlement, where he and his party found their friends living in brush sheds and dugouts, a few only having log cabins, their general condition being most discouraging. Such was the beginning of Salt Lake City. We may now recall the fact that the settlement of Salt Lake City by the Mormons in 1847, and the discovery of gold in California in 1848, were the prime factors in the awakening of the Far West. Salt Lake Valley was an alkali desert declared to be absolutely hopeless by the early trappers and explorers. Its reclamation and cultivation by those religious exiles made it the only supply point for provisions on the long road to the newly discovered Sacramento gold fields, and saved many from starvation, to the profit of all concerned. Mr. Sessions arrived in Salt Lake Valley in the middle of September, 1847, having conducted a company of fifty It is true that the graphic yet ingenuously told story related by one of the discoverers of gold in California, one who carried to the States the first intelligence of that discovery, gave added interest to the visit that I soon made to those gold diggings, the fame of which had incited the first tide of transcontinental migration composed of hardy and reckless adventurers willing to undergo the trials and perils incident to such an expedition. These, with the Argonauts who sailed around by the Isthmus or Cape Horn, were the ones who first roused the latent energies of our Pacific coast territory. SUTTER'S FORT BEFORE RESTORATION, SACRAMENTO. CALIF. SITUATED NEAR THE PLACE WHERE GOLD WAS FIRST DISCOVERED IN CALIFORNIA There were a very few, however, who were attracted not by gold but by admiration for the sublime and beautiful in nature, especially through companionship with the noble trees and towering cliffs of the Sierras; and these men aided in revealing to the world the previously unwritten history of these formations. Among them were John Muir, the shepherd, naturalist, and author, and Galen Clark, the pioneer and discoverer of the Mariposa Grove. I appreciated Galen Clark's homage for nature when, after spending a night at his cabin, built in 1857, he personally led me among those monarchs of the forest, stating the heights of various trees, and for my satisfaction assisted in measuring the trunks of many; one of them was 101 feet in circumference. He referred to them in affectionate terms, expressing the hope that they might be spared from the lumberman's axe. It was still later when I first visited Muir's haunts in the Yosemite; George Anderson, a Scotch ship-carpenter, But to return to the hospitable home in Utah. After spending the night with Mr. Sessions and his varied household, Mr. Brown and I on the following morning proceeded on our way to the City. Experienced detectives have spent years in their ef |