VERY DEAD.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XII, Issue IX, 3 March 1894, Page 198

VERY DEAD.

THE STORY OF AN OLD TIME MURDER. Two years ago a group of men had gathered on the shady side of the Merced Courthouse to discuss the current news of the day. It was a homicidal year. The celebrated Ivett murder case had been tried by the newspapers and by a jury. The jurors had disagreed with the reporters and acquitted the accused. The jury in the Hale case had just been sworn in ; hence the ‘ current news ’ was splashed with blood, and the air was full of rumours and suspicions. Several old-timers were in the crowd. It appeared to be a matter of pride to them to call attention to the fact that whisky, hot blood, gambling disputes and hasty words had been, as a rule, the precipitating causes of the active use of the keen-edged bowie and the ready revolver in the early days. * About the first regular COLD BLOODED BUTCHERY 1 can recall,’ remarked a retired official, ‘ was in 1877. Most of you will remember it. Meany was Sheriff then, and I was one of his deputies. We got the news the day after the murder, and I was sent to the front. It was a long ride, away across the San Joaquin Valley, over a wide stretch of plain and up in the low foothills of the Coast Range. The place was a sheep camp, with the usual corral and sheds and the dwelling of the proprietor. He was a Frenchman, and occupied the house with his wife, three children, and a hired girl. In his employ was a countryman named Dutnond, in whom he reposed implicit confidence —for he had left him with a band of sheep not far from home, going himself to look after another band some miles up in the hills. In the Frenchman’s absence word was brought to the house that part of the home band of sheep had strayed, and the hired girl started to head ’em off. It was late in the afternoon before she got back, and found the dwelling a slaughter house. Blood was spattered all over the walls and furniture, and heaped up on a bloody spot on the floor were the bodies of the woman and her three children. ‘ The eldest child, about 10 years of age, was still alive. The girl picked her up and carried her nearly a mile to the next house, where she regained consciousness long enough to tell something about the case. * Dumond, the French herder, was the butcher, and a knife was his weapon. It was surmised that, bad the hired girl been at home, she would have shared the fate of the family. * Officers were dispatched in all directions ; sheriffs and constables in adjoining counties were notified. The Governor -offered a reward, so did the sheriff and the friends of the murdered family. DESCRIPTIONS OF THE MURDERER were placarded and published in the leading newspapers. * Months had elapsed, when one dav a letter was received from a northern county saying an officer was on the track of a Frenchman answering the description of Dumond. Then came a telegram from the writer of the letter addressed to the sheriff. It read thus : “ Meet me in Merced Friday. I have him dead.” * “ That means, of course, ‘dead to rights ; in irons and safely guarded,’ ” said Sheriff Meany. * There was some talk of lynchibg the Frenchman after some torturing, and so the Sheriff notified his deputies and a few constables to be on hand and rush the man into gaol. When the train rolled in the Sheiiff and his posse were on hand. A long, angular man with a blanket coat on his arm, a cowboy hat and the regulation mountaineer walk stepped from the passenger coach. He spotted the Sheriff by intuition. ‘ “ Your name is Meany ‘ “ Yes, and yours !” ‘ “ Long. I am the man who sent you the dispatch.” ‘ “ Did you have any trouble with him on the trip down ’’ ‘ “ Trouble I” responded the man from up north ; “ didn’t I telegraph that I had him dead ’ His carcass was tolerably well riddled with bullets. It had to be done, yon know, but it was embalmed in a sort of a way with salt and charcoal and boxed up. The man who superintended the work said, considering the material and his lack of experience as an undertaker, it was no slouch of a job, and he reckoned he would keep. The box is on the express car, and the marks and scars on the body will be found to correspond with the published description.” ‘ Well, a worse disgusted crowd than the Sheriff and bis deputies you never saw. I was one of ’em. We got the Coroner out, he summoned a jury and the box was opened, and, boys, sure enough, they " had him dead ” and salted down. ’ There was a quiet, unobtrusive man from Atwater in the group. When the narrative was finished, he remarked : * It was the best I could do. It was the first embalming I ever had anything to do with.’ * You don’t mean to say you salted him ?’ queried half adoznn voices. ‘ Yes,’responded the man from Atwater. • The Indians did the preliminary dissecting, and then I mixed up a sort of dope of charcoal and salt and personally attended to the stuffing and packing.’ As the accounts given shortly after the date of the capture were meagre and obscure everybody within earshot waited to bear the * straight business ’ from a man who was there. The man from Atwater told his yarn : The scene of the detection and capture was in Modoc county, at or near the Grangers’ Sawmill, about five miles from Cedarville. Besides lumbermen and mill hands a party of labourers were engaged in cutting a ditch. Among these was a Frenchman. One day at the house where the men got their meals their attention was called to an advertisement offering a reward for the arrest of Dumond. The Frenchman was present. As the crowd was dispersing he borrowed the paper. When he returned it the advertisement had been cut out. Suspicion had already been aroused and this confirmed it. A. K. Long was Justice of the Peace. He issued a warrant and placed it in the hands of Ward Stevens, a constable, who was working with the Frenchman. Stevens was to give a signal, whereupon bis assistants would seize and bind Dumond before he could know what they were after. • WE DON’T NEED ANY ARMS,’ SAID STEVENS. The constable gave no signal, but walking carelessly up to the suspected man informed him that he had a warrant for a Frenchman who answered bis description ; that be

would like to make a closer examination as to certain marks and scars on his body, etc. Stevens never finished bis little speech. The suspected man established his identity by jumping back a few feet drawing a revolver and informing Stevens how he proposed to fill them full of lead. Then backing away and keeping them covered with his weapon, he retreated to the nearest cabin where there was a double-barrelled shotgun and a needle-gun. Dumond fired the shotgun in the air and taking the needle gun and a supply of ammunition, started leisurely over the mountain. Then Justice Long took up the case. He gathered about a hundred Indians, under the leadership of Indian Dick —perhaps the keenest and most reliable trailer on the Pacificcoast —and,summoning an armed posse of expei lenced mountaineers, went on the war path, Dick and his scouts in here is no rougher country on the face of the earth than the corner of Modoc, where Dumond was in hiding. Dark gorges, precipitous canyons, massive boulders, and every variety of natural ambuscade can be found there, but INDIAN DICK TRACKED THE FUGITIVE over naked rocks, in zigzag directions and by devious ways. He bad reached an immense shelving rock at the foot of a precipitous cliff and overhanging a dark cavernous space beneath. D.ck signalled his skirmishers and Long s posse to stop. Then, crouching, he appeared to be in a listening attitude. Approaching nearer in a half stooping position he peeped cautiously into the mouth of the cavern. There was a flash, a sharp report, and a puff of smoke for a moment half obscured the form of the trailer. A ball from the needle gun barely grazed his scalp. As the man from Atwater remarked : ‘lt tore out about a double handful of hair.’ Long signalled get out of the way. Dick vanished. A FEW VOLLEYS FROM THE WINCHESTERS of the posse were poured into the cave. A smothered report from the inside followed and then all was still. After a few minutes and a hail from the pursuers. Long Indian Dick and several of the posse ventured under the rock. Lights were procured and revealed the lifeless body of Dumond. Several balls had struck him, but the last one was a centre shot. It was through the heart and from his own pistol which was freshly discharged and lying beside him. • He was very dead,’ remarked the man from Atwater. •You say the body got here in condition for identification ?’ he queried, addressing the exDeputy Sheriff. • Yes,’ responded that official, ‘and the Coroner held an inquest.’ • And the verdict’’ • Oh, the verdict was all regular and legal. The jury decided that the deceased was Dumond ; that he was guilty of the murder of the woman and children : that he made a desperate attempt to escape and committed suicide with malice aforethought to avoid death from natural causes.’ James H. Lawrence.