Like all crooks, Carrick was a coward at heart, and, instead of settling in the usual way of this part of the country—as man to man—he took Scott into court. With no money in back of him, Scott won his case, his extreme honesty and simplicity impressing the judge. For instance, I remember there was a question as to whether he was an American citizen or no, and he answered:
“Wal, Jedge, the first thing I remember is livin’ in a town about a half a mile over the border into Canada, but my mother allus said I was born in a little red house that we could see across the line, an’ I took her word for it.”
I had left Scott and Peter Klink and had gone back to Sissons, when one morning a man we called “the Texan” came racing down the town’s one street on horseback, yelling:
Scott had been beloved of all, and everyone was aroused. It was quite awhile before we could get the story out of the Texan, but it finally came to this. He had come across a wagon standing all alone on the road, filled with the groceries Scott had bought in Yreka. It was turned around, with the horses facing downhill, the whole weight of the wagon bearing upon them. They were nosing toward home and evidently had been there all night, as they were covered with snow. Looking about, the Texan had seen a trail into the bushes and, going in a half mile or more, he found Scott’s body. There was a rope around the neck and he had been dragged into the woods.
The memory came to me of one night when I was camping with Scott. The conversation had turned on death.
“How would you like to die?” I asked him.
“Shot in the back and never know who done it,” was his quick answer.
Death meant nothing to these men. It was all in the day’s happenings, but to me, at this very moment of writing, visualization of Scott’s body, as it lay on the rough pine bed in a back room in Sisson’s Hotel, is as clear as it was in 1877. The rope had been taken from his neck and had left an impress, above which rose his purple head, looking like an eggplant, with the shock of red hair, the pale blue eyes wide open, and the rows of perfect teeth showing, his mouth drawn into a snarl. His body was green-white, the blood having all gone to the head, and under the left arm, where the bullet had gone in, was a little blue spot. But under the right arm, where the bullet had come out, was a ghastly hole through which protruded torn pieces of flesh. I did not know that men died that way.