But the trouble was not ended here. The lawless neighbor had gone, but not lawlessness. The old story that lawlessness begets lawlessness was again proven. McDaniel and others concluded that as Wren was gone, they could prey upon his land holdings, which for twenty-five years in Pierce County was no more than squatter's rights, in consequence of that intolerable claim of the Puget Sound Agricultural Company, mentioned elsewhere. At this, most of the community rebelled and warned McDaniel, but to no purpose, until finally he was shot down on the streets of Steilacoom, or rather a vacant lot in a public place, and lay for hours in his death struggles uncared for, and his pal murdered in the wagon that was carrying him to a scaffold. The two had been waylaid, but had escaped, only to meet their fate in a more public manner. Burge narrowly escaped a like fate at the hands of the mob, because of his near neighborship with McDaniel and of his participation with him in the first instance that had led up to the final catastrophe. But Burge was an honorable man, though rough in manner, yet just in his dealings, while McDaniel was a gambler and a blackleg of the very worst imaginable type. The Indian war had brought to the front many vicious characters, and the actions of some officials in high places had encouraged lawlessness, so, as a community, the nearby country round and about Steilacoom was scourged almost beyond belief.
And yet there were genuine pioneer settlements in not very far off regions of this storm center of lawlessness, where the law was as cheerfully obeyed as in any old and well settled community, where crime was scarcely known, and where family ties were held as sacred as any place on earth, and where finally the influence spread over the whole land and the whole community leavened.
By these incidents related it will be seen that pioneers were neither all saints nor all sinners, but like the older communities had their trials other than the supposed discomforts incident to pioneer life.
The reader may not have noticed that Burge in his letter mentions that there are still trees (he means logs), yet to be seen with the three notches cut in them, where the immigrant road had been cut. I had forgotten the third notch, but it all comes back to me now that he has mentioned it. These logs that we bridged up to and cut the notches in for the wheels in most cases had to have the third notch in the center to save the coupling pole or reach from catching on the log, especially where the bridging did not extend out far from the log to be crossed. Oftentimes the wagon would be unloaded, the wagon box taken off, the wagon uncoupled and taken over the obstruction or down or up it, as the case might be, to be loaded again beyond.