The Hanging of Joseph Slade
an excerpt

“For God’s sake, Slade, go home. Go home. Please.” Dan Stark pleaded with Joseph Slade, begged Slade, to just go away. For two days he had begged Slade to go home, for two days they had all begged Slade to go home, all of them, all the members of the Executive Committee of the Vigilantes had told Slade, ordered Slade, pleaded with him, begged him, to go home. That was all Slade had to do. Go home to his ranch, away from Virginia City, home to his wife who would know what to do with him, how to sober him.

Slade was on the third day of a bender. A glorious, raucous toot. And that was the trouble. For Joseph Slade, formerly of the Overland Stage Coach Company, was drunk, and drunk he struck fear into everyone, and they saw how he could live up to every evil thing that was said of him: how he had tied his enemy, Jules Reni, to a fence post and shot him, used him for target practice for several hours before Jules got lucky and died of multiple gunshot wounds, after which Slade cut off his ears and carried them in his vest pocket as watch fobs. Drunk, Slade was out of control, shooting off his pistol, riding his horse into stores, breaking windows, insulting the city fathers.

He had made up an obscene, though very funny, song about the madam Moll Featherlegs and Paris Pfouts, the mayor of Virginia City, and sang it everywhere, even where decent women and children could hear it. And putting Pfouts in the song was a dangerous thing to do, because Pfouts was also president of the Vigilance Committee, and the wrong man to antagonize. Not because he could order Slade’s punishment – the Committee’s bylaws mandated a unanimous vote by the Executive Committee – but because he could convene the Executive and would not be likely to vote against hanging Slade if he saw that enough evidence existed against him. Only Slade had committed no capital crime.

Yet.

So far he had been drunk and disorderly. Very disorderly. Just the previous evening he had ended a stage performance by Alice Sweet, an actress whose fame had stretched across the continent. The whole town had looked forward to her visit for weeks, and for every one of them Dan had endured his wife’s tears that she had nothing to wear to the gala event, nothing at all, that there was no time to order the fabric and make a dress, or order the right dress, that she was a drab and he would be ashamed of her. Of course, Martha was beautiful. Other men admired her, and admired Dan’s taste in women. He had basked in her reflected glory, and enjoyed how the other wives changed their minds about Martha when she entered the makeshift playhouse on Dan’s arm. For her, and for others it was a triumph of an evening.

Until, during only Miss Sweet’s third, slightly coquettish, song, that she accompanied with fluttering fan and eyelashes, Slade had yelled, “Take it off!” As she stood in shock at the loud, demanding, threatening voice, he rose to his feet and shouted, “Show us your legs!” Women screamed, and Slade, enjoying the uproar, bellowed, “Take it all off! Show us your tits.” And laughed as the actress burst into tears.

At which point, Martha hissed at Dan, “So something!” The only thing to do right then, was to escort her home and come back to try to reason with Slade. A futile effort.

Slade scared people off Wallace Street, which was bad for business. One by one, and in two’s and three’s, the business and professional men begged Slade to go home. Nearly all of them were also Vigilantes, and Dan, a lawyer, was not only a Vigilante and one of the Executive Committee, but the official prosecutor of the Vigilantes. He did not want another hanging.

In December and January the Vigilantes had hanged 24 men who had been in the Plummer gang, and for the last six weeks, Alder Gulch had enjoyed peaceful commerce. Dan was helping Judge Alex Davis, a Southerner and Vigilante opponent, establish a “people’s court” to replace the looser and more haphazard miners court. It couldn’t be an official court, because those were 500 miles west, in Lewiston, a mere matter of crossing the spine of the roadless Rocky Mountains on horseback. On some peaks, the snow never melted. Besides, everyone was waiting for Sidney Edgerton, Abraham Lincoln’s appointee as Chief Justice of Idaho Territory, to return from Washington, where he had gone to petition the President and Congress to separate from Idaho and make a new territory: Montana.

Until Montana was a fact, and they had a system of legal government capable of administering the law, the only law in this entire region rested with the Vigilantes. That power had to be used with restraint. Some men might want to seize an opportunity to exercise power and make themselves richer than any man could dream of, but Dan, whose imagination bounded from Slade’s predicament to the dangers of absolute power, and the corruption arising from it, wanted Slade to go home.

Slade wouldn’t go. He swayed on his feet, took a swig from the flask he carried, flung his arms wide, and tipped up his mouth to bellow out his song. “Old man Pfouts had a pecker this loooong….”

Dan nearly stomped his feet, he was so frustrated. “Damn it, Slade, go home!” he yelled. “Go home, for Chrissake!” Turning away, he saw Sheriff Howie walking quickly up the street toward them. The sheriff maneuvered between an empty freight wagon heading downward and a stagecoach coming to a stop outside Dance & Stuart, and strode toward them. “Now you’ve done it, Slade. Here comes the sheriff.”

“Neil?” Slade peered around, spotted Howie threading through the foot traffic of people brave enough to be out and about with Slade on a bender. “Shit, Neil and me’s pals. You just watch. Neil won’t arrest me. I ain’t done nothing wrong.”

“Damn it, Slade, you’re drunk and disorderly, you’re making a public nuisance, you’ve vandalized a couple of stores. It’s just pure dumb luck you haven’t hurt someone yet. Or worse.”

Slade ignored Dan to smile at Sheriff Howie. “How do, Neil. Fine day, ain’t it?”
Sheriff Howie did not smile. He stared slightly upward into Slade’s merry eyes and showed Slade a piece of paper with Judge Davis’s signature plain on it. “Joseph Slade, I arrest you on charges of public endangerment, vandalism, public drunkenness, and disorderly conduct. I order you to accompany me forthwith to appear before the Judge Davis of the People’s Court.”

Slade’s smile vanished, and muscles bulged in his jaws. “The trouble with you-all is you have no sense of humor. You hear me?” When Howie merely stood in front of him, Slade roared, “No fucking sense of humor! Well, fuck you! Fuck you all!”

Howie said, “Let’s go, Slade.”

With Howie on one side and Dan on the other, Slade had no choice but to walk along with them. By the time they reached the foot of Wallace, where a thousand gold-seekers hacked at the creekbed in search of gold, Slade had quieted. He even saw a little humor in his situation. “Alex is a good man. A Democrat like me. He’ll see me right. I like Alex.”

Dan and Neil Howie exchanged glances. Davis had signed the warrant. Everything was proper. It only remained for the Judge to send Slade home until he sobered up enough to reappear and pay a fine and court costs relating to these charges, and to arrange to make restitution. He’d be lucky if Pfouts did not sue him for defamation of character, besides. Dan breathed a sigh of relief. It was almost over.

Judge Davis held court in the main barroom of the Nugget saloon. Its civic-minded proprietor closed up three mornings a week so the court could meet in session under a solid roof. Dan wished someone in town had a good stout storeroom that could serve as a jail. With a lock on the door. Then they could put Slade there to sober up.

Slade stood quietly while they waited for two other cases to be decided, but Dan heard his breath rasp in and out of his throat as if in a low growl. When it was their turn, Judge Davis gaveled for order and called for Slade to come forward. Howie took Slade’s elbow, but Slade shook him off with a curse, and Dan had a sudden foreboding.

“Joseph Slade,” Judge Davis began, “you are charged with public drunkenness, public endangerment, vandalism, and disorderly conduct. How do you plead?”

“What do you mean, how do I plead? You got no right to haul me here! This ain’t a proper court! It’s not proper at all. You got no standing to do this!”

Of course, Dan thought, he was right. The only legally constituted court was in Lewiston, and that was the crux of the problem. If they were to ensure public safety on this side of the mountains, they had to make their own justice. Judge Davis’s court had to be supported or the region would be right back in the dangerous, murderous days prior to the Vigilante actions. Back to early December 1863. All the risk, moral and physical, would go for naught. They would have hanged 24 men for nothing. They would have risked and possibly lost their very souls, for nothing.

It must not be.

Sheriff Howie handed the warrant to Judge Davis, who held it up to show to Slade. “This warrant is properly executed,” said Davis. He spoke in a reasonable tone, but his voice was firm, and his eyes were steady on Slade, who chuffed like a steam engine eager to leave the station.

Watch out. Even as the warning formed in Dan’s mind, Slade yanked the warrant out of Davis’s hand, tore it in small pieces and flung the shreds onto the floor where he ground them under his boot.

“You can’t do this! You ain’t a proper court! You got no jurisdiction, and if you think I’m going to let you tell me what I can and can’t do, and fine me for having a few drinks, you got another think coming, damn it!”

There is was. A clear challenge to the authority of the Court. Stunned, Dan watched Slade stalk to the door and out onto the street. The door slammed behind him.

Its echoes tolled in his ears like the bell of doom. He felt Howie’s and Davis’s eyes on him, Howie another Vigilante, Davis the Vigilantes’ opponent, and he knew they were of one mind as to what would happen next if nothing were done to stop Slade.

They could not let Slade’s challenge to the Court go unanswered. There must be law here, the region must be ruled by the law. There was too much gold in people’s hands, under the creek bed, to trust to the decency of men enslaved by it, who would do anything to acquire it, who saw the chance of becoming richer than Croesus if only other men were not in possession of what they wanted. The gold.

All that stood between the anarchy of lawlessness and the peaceful, honest acquisition of wealth was this fragile court.

“We must stop him.” Judge Davis brought the gavel down onto the table that served as a judg’s bench and announced, “This court’s adjourned.”