The truth
about Slade is that he was a good man at first, faithful in the
discharge of his duties as an agent of the stage company. Needing
at times to use violence lawfully, he then began to use it
unlawfully. He drank and soon went from bad to worse. At length
his outrages became so numerous that the men of the community
took him out and hanged him. His fate taught many others the risk
of going too far in defiance of law and decency.
What has been true regarding the camps of Florence, Bannack, and
Virginia City, had been true in part in earlier camps and was to
be repeated perhaps a trifle less vividly in other camps yet to
come. The Black Hills gold rush, for instance, which came after
the railroad but before the Indians were entirely cleared away,
made a certain wild history of its own. We had our Deadwood stage
line then, and our Deadwood City with all its wild life of
drinking, gambling, and shooting--the place where more than one
notorious bad man lost his life, and some capable officers of the
peace shared their fate. To describe in detail the life of this
stampede and the wild scenes ensuing upon it is perhaps not
needful here.
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