, and like
taunting a helpless victim; but here the warrant for all the Slade sort
of stories seems to end, and there is no evidence of his mutilating his
victim, as was often described.

Slade went back to the officers of Fort Laramie, and they said he had
done right and did not detain him. Nor did any of Jules' friends ever
molest him. He returned to his work on the Overland. After this he grew
more turbulent, and was guilty of high-handed outrages and of a general
disposition to run things wherever he went. The officers at Fort Halleck
arrested him and refused to turn him over to the stage line unless the
latter agreed to discharge him. This was done, and now Slade, out of
work, began to be bad at heart. He took to drink and drifting, and so at
last turned up at the Beaverhead diggings in 1863, not much different
from many others of the bad folk to be found there.

Quiet enough when sober, Slade was a maniac in drink, and this latter
became his habitual condition. Now and again he sobered up, and he
always was a business man and animated by an ambition to get on in the
world. He worked here and there in different capacities, and at last
settled on a ranch a dozen miles or so from Virginia City, where he
lived with his wife, a robust, fine-looking woman of great courage and
very considerable beauty, of whom he was passionately fond; although she
lived almost alone in the remote cabin in the mountains, while Slade
pursued his avocations, such as they were, in the settlements along
Alder Gulch.

Slade now began to grow ugly and hard, and to exult in terrorizing the
hard men of those hard towns. He would strike a man in the face while
drinking with him, would rob his friends while playing cards, would ride
into the saloons and break up the furniture, and destroy property with
seeming exultation at his own maliciousness. He was often arrested,
warned, and fined; and sometimes he defied such officers as went after
him and refused to be arrested. His whole conduct made him a menace to
the peace of this little community, which was now endeavoring to become
more decent, and he fell under the fatal scrutiny of the Vigilantes, who
concluded that the best thing to do was to hang Slade. He had never
killed anyone as yet, although he had abused many; but it was sure that
he would kill some one if allowed to run on; and, moreover, it was
humiliating to have one man trying to run the town and doing as he
pleased. Slade was to lea