Читать книгу Hunted Down; or, Five Days in the Fog - Granice Harry - Страница 1

PREFACE

I write this narrative while confined in the Modesto jail awaiting my trial for the shooting of the defamer of my mother's name on the 7th of December, 1874. It will be seen by reading the following statement, that I gave myself up to the sheriff to be held to await the decision of the law. I will here explain why it was necessary for me to be taken to the Modesto jail. There was no safe jail at Merced, and it had been the custom for several months to take Merced prisoners to Modesto, a town in the adjoining county, and a distance of about forty miles. The cars passed through Merced about noon on the day of the shooting, five hours after the affair happened, and direct to Modesto. Why did not the sheriff improve this opportunity of taking me to a place of safety? Failing in that, a good span of horses could have conveyed us to Modesto during the afternoon. He knew the jail was not safe, and instead of doing what every sensible man would conceive to be a sheriff's duty, he chose rather to send me out handcuffed, with two men, on a public highway, to a lone wayside inn, seven miles from Merced, and ten from Snellings. It seems from my brother's and several other gentlemen's statement, that every horse was engaged at the livery stable in Merced before eight o'clock on that night.

There is another question which will naturally arise in the thinking mind: Where did the sheriff go, and what was he doing that night while the mob was getting ready? The mystery may be solved some day.

I wish to show in this simple statement that I did not flee coward-like from justice, but that I was making my escape from a drunken infuriated mob, after being duly liberated by the deputy sheriff. I understand that the mob, or a portion of the mob that night returned and destroyed my step-father's printing office, although the sheriff was in town.

H. H. GRANICE.