“You stick to that, Percy, and you’ll be all right. There are about seventy-five of the worst desperadoes ever known on the west side of the mountains, in the country, in a band, and I know who they are.” Bunton, after this robbery, used occasionally to accost Percy in a playful manner, with such language as, “Throw up your hands”; or, “We were fools to be robbed, weren’t we?” Percy, knowing that Bunton was one of the gang, soon tired of this; and one day at a race-course, when thus saluted, remarked, with unmistakable displeasure, “That’s played out.” The words were scarcely uttered, when Bunton raised his pistol and fired at him. The ball grazed Percy’s ear. Jason Luce, a driver of Mr. Oliver’s express, stepped up and said to Bunton, “If you want to fight, why don’t you take a man of your own size, instead of a smaller one?” Later in the day, while intoxicated, Luce called Bunton a coward, in the presence of his brother, Sam Bunton. The latter whipped him severely on the spot. Three days later, Luce carried the express to Salt Lake City, Sam Bunton following four or five days thereafter. Luce met him at the Salt Lake House. “We had,” said he, addressing him, “a little difficulty in Bannack, and now we’ll settle it.” “It’s already settled,” said Bunton. “You’re a liar,” replied Luce, and drawing his knife cut Bunton’s throat, killing him on the spot. Luce was arrested, tried, and found guilty of murder. By the Territorial statute of Utah, he was authorized to choose the mode of his execution, from the three forms of hanging, shooting, or beheading. His choice was to be shot, and he was executed in that manner. Bill Bunton and Sam Bunton were natives of Ohio. Their parents moved to Andrew County, Missouri, in 1839, and thence to Oregon in 1842, when they were respectively sixteen and fourteen years old. The father was a rough, drinking, quarrelsome man, clever, but uneducated. CHAPTER XXV LEROY SOUTHMAYD Early in the afternoon of a cold day late in November, 1863, Leroy Southmayd, Captain Moore, and a discharged driver known as “Billy,” took passage in Oliver’s coach at Virginia City, for Bannack. A ruffian equally well known by the cognomens of “Old Tex” and “Jim Crow” stood near, watching the departing vehicle. As Moore’s eyes alighted upon him, he said to Southmayd, “I am sorry to see that rascal watching us; he belongs to the gang. It bodes us no good.” “Oh,” replied Southmayd, laughing, “I think there’s no danger. Robbery has ‘played out.’ These fellows are beginning to understand that the people will hold them accountable for their villainies.”