that which most
astonished me was the Governor's warmth of approval of the Vigilance
Committee, and his animadversions and regrets in regard to some of his
friends, who had taken active part on the Law and Order side. He stood
the centre figure of the crowd close about him, declaiming with his
accustomed fluency and energy. I left the saloon, dismissed the hack,
and walked to my own quarters, ruminating on the common saying that,
"white man is mighty uncertain." Thence on Governor Foote was a red-hot
"Vigilante."

Sunday morning, May 18th, there were, besides the Sheriff and his
deputies, the officers and guards, a force of 106 Law and Order men,
armed with muskets, inside the County Jail, ready to defend it against
the expected attack of the Vigilance troops. Before noon they came from
every part of the city, several thousand strong. A piece of artillery
was trained in front of the jail entrance, with men to handle it. The
armed force in the jail and upon the wall appeared ready for the
encounter. The Commander of the Committee forces demanded from the
Sheriff the surrender of Casey and Cora. It was refused. There was some
parleying. It ended in the withdrawal of the jail guard, and of the Law
and Order forces also, the admission of the Vigilance officers into the
jail, and the surrender to them of Casey and Cora, who were taken to the
rooms of the Committee, and put in the separate cells prepared for them.
The whole affair occurred within the space of an hour. The State and
City and County authorities had succumbed to the Committee without
resistance, and the law was usurped by the new and self-constituted
power. The Courts were virtually overborne and ignored, if not derided;
and the will of the Vigilance Committee became the supreme law in San
Francisco.

In the County Jail at the time was Rod. Backus, a young man of good
family, cousin of Phil. Backus, an auctioneer of considerable prominence
in mercantile and social circles. Rod. Backus had shot dead a man whose
face he had never seen until the moment before he shot him, a dozen
paces distant. It was in Stout's alley. It was a murder, a wanton
murder, without provocation, excuse, extenuation or palliation whatever.
Rod. Backus was a frequent visitor at a house of the demi-monde in the
alley, and one Jennie French was his favorite. As he came to visit her
one evening, at dusk, she was standing in the doorway, at the head of
the iron stairway which led to the ent