Soon after crossing the creek, some one of the party knocked at the door of a cabin. There was no reply, but from within came the sound of a gun rammed through the chinks of the cabin walls. It saved the owner's life, for at that we all scattered. We did not disturb that man. With some candle wicking soaked in coal oil to light and throw inside, so that we could see within while he could not see outside, we would have managed it, but we had none. It was a method much used later.
From the expression "it was a method much used later" we derive a confession that the Browns continued in the horse stealing business.
Upon the number of horses that Brown expected to get as a result of the murder of seven men, depends this interesting problem in his psychology: his estimate of the value of a human life in terms of horses. In the case of the Doyles, he took three lives and got, probably, eight or ten horses; but the whole number of horses taken will never be known unless Salmon Brown, or some one who has his confidence, should decide to reveal it.
"The Shermans," Bondi says, "had amassed considerable property by robbing cattle droves and emigrant trains."[135] They lived at a "crossing" of the Pottawatomie, and were buyers and traders in horses, oxen, and cattle passing over the trail. "Crossings" are usually camping places for emigrants and drovers; and at such locations lame, footsore, or otherwise unserviceable stock, can be, frequently, bought or traded for at a very profitable margin in favor of the trader. Travelers must either sell or abandon their lame stuff, and replace it with serviceable animals, or lie over and wait until such animals get in condition to travel. The trader not being compelled to trade, names the price he will pay, or the terms upon which he will exchange good stuff for bad. When the stock which he buys is recuperated, he sells it for a good profit to other travelers, or to immigrants who locate in his neighborhood. In this way the Shermans, William and Henry, had accumulated wealth in horses and cattle; and since there was then much travel on the trail, they may have had on hand at that time, from twenty-five to forty or fifty horses.[136]
The importance of exchanging the Pottawatomie horses immediately, and getting them out of the country was a high card in Brown's play. If he and his gang had been caught with their murdered neighbors' horses in their possession the next morning, there would not have been any sophistical discussion fifty years after about how the "killings on the Pottawatomie" could be "justified"; or about Brown's "sudden impulses"; or of his altruistic convictions that it was necessary to "_remove_" anybody. The men of that outraged neighborhood, regardless of party affiliation, would have promptly hanged the outlaws. But the robbers were too deep for them. The neighbors lost the trail of the robbers and murderers; also, they lost the trail of the Browns.