Bidding the judge good-night, he wended his way home, and, on entering his house, held the conversation with his wife with which this chapter opens.
Mr. Beachy’s convictions gave him no rest. Without a shadow of evidence to sustain him, or a clew to guide him, he went to work to ferret out the crime. His friends laughed at and discouraged him. The roughs of Lewiston threatened him. A few charitably attributed his conduct to mental derangement. The face of every person he met wore a quizzical expression, which seemed to imply both pity and ridicule. Often, when thwarted, he half resolved to abandon the pursuit, but a voice within whispered him on with assurance of success, and he could not, if he would, recede. Three days were spent in a fruitless search for the animals which he knew must have borne the men to town. At the close of the third day a party arrived from Bannack. The first inquiry he addressed to them after the usual salutation was,
“Hasn’t he arrived?” was the surprised rejoinder. “He left four days before us, intending to come through as quickly as possible.”
“He is dead,” said he, “and I know the murderers.”
“Tut, tut, Hill, you’re too fast. He has probably gone around by Salt Lake. He’ll be in all safe in a few days.”
Beachy resumed his search for the animals. In a few days a man came in from some point above Lewiston, and reported having seen, on his ride down the river, a party of four men encamped in a solitary nook on the opposite bank. The thought flashed through Beachy’s brain that they were the murderers, who, thwarted in their effort to leave the country at Walla Walla, had returned by a circuitous route, in search of a point more favorable.
In Tom Farrell, a harum-scarum dare-devil of the town, Beachy found one man who shared his suspicions. He consented to go with him and aid him in arresting these men. It was freezing weather, and the trail was rough and mountainous. Both men were well armed and of undoubted courage. Urging their horses to their utmost speed, they rode on till past the hour of noon, when Tom descried a thin column of smoke ascending from the camp of the supposed freebooters. Securing their horses in a thicket, they crept to a point where, concealed by the willows, they could observe all parts of the camp. Alas for their hopes! The suspected robbers developed into a hunting party of honest miners, who were enjoying a little holiday sport in the mountains. Worn down with fatigue and anxiety, they returned to Lewiston, to encounter afresh the gibes and sneers of the people at the failure of this sorry expedition.