At the railway station we found the famous Curly Bill, a charioteer of great renown who drove his team of six horses at a breakneck pace up hill and down hill, round corners where the slightest mistake would have meant being hurled down a precipice Heaven knows how deep, for the road hugged the face of the rock—on one side the dead wall of the mountain, on the other eternity. He must have had nerves of steel. Curly Bill was a good-natured giant, very full of talk. In his humorous way he spun many yarns about the old days of camp life among the wild devils of whom forty-one years ago there were still a good few to be found. He had much to say about the swift and summary justice of the Vigilance Committees, of which we gathered, though he did not admit it in so many words, that he had been a prominent member. Judge Lynch was the only power capable of maintaining law and order in those stormy days, for the arm of the United States was not long enough to reach the far away camps. Besides, the miners had little respect for the procedure of the courts; there was too much corruption and too much delay. I thought of “The Tombs,” the famous prison in New York, where I had seen eighteen murderers—among them Stokes, who killed Jem Fiske, the partner of Jay Gould—all waiting month after month to be tried, condemned, or bought off. I remembered how Stokes told me that he had been deprived of his daily walk in the prison yard, and when I asked the reason, he answered, “Oh, politics; in New York everything is politics!” He had good cause to say so, for politics saved his neck in the end. I could not but feel that there was much to be said for the Vigilance Committees. There must be some protection for life and property, and I believe that they seldom, perhaps never, acted without just cause. It was a case of a quick trial, a short shrift, and the nearest tree! The members of the Committee as well disguised as the executioners of the Holy Office, and they worked in secret, under oath, but I fancy they were pretty well known, all the same. Three or four years ago I saw the death of Curly Bill recorded with no little regretful praise in the _Times_. He was in his way a celebrity; everybody who knew the country round about Carson liked him and he would be greatly missed. It was a delight to look upon his good, wholesome, honest face, to listen to his straight talk, and watch the strong skill of his coachmanship.