In the purchases which he made of the ranchemen he sometimes detected their dishonest tricks, and generally punished them on the spot. On one occasion, while bargaining for a stack of hay, he discovered that it was filled with bushes. He told the rancheman that he intended to confine him to the stack with chains, and burn him, and commenced making preparations, seemingly for that purpose. The man begged for his life, and, with much apparent reluctance, Slade finally told him if he would leave the country and never return to it he would give him his life. Glad of the compromise the fellow departed the next morning. This was all that Slade desired. Stories like these grate harshly upon the ears of people who have always lived in civilized communities. Without considering the influences by which he is surrounded, this class pronounce such a man a ruffian. An author who writes of him finds it no task to blacken his memory, by telling half the truth. People who have once heard of him are prepared to believe any report which connects his name with crime. Wrong as this is on general principles, it has been especially severe in the case of Slade. Misrepresentation and abuse have given to him the proportions, passions, and actions of a demon. His name has become a synonym for all that is infamous and cruel in human character. And yet not one of all the great number of men he controlled, or of those associated with him as employees of the Overland Stage company, men personally cognizant of his career, believe that he committed a single act not justified by the circumstances provoking it. He could not be true to his employers and escape censure, any more than he could have discharged the duties expected of him without frequent and dangerous collision with the rough elements of the society in which he moved. That he lived through it all was a miracle. A man of weaker resolution, and less fertility of resource, would have been killed before the close of his first year’s service. Equally strange is it, that one whose daily business required a continual exercise of power in so many and varied forms, at one moment among his own employees, at the next among the half-civilized borderers by whom he was surrounded, and perhaps at the same time sending out men in pursuit of horse-thieves, should have escaped with so few desperate and bloody encounters. The uniform testimony of those who knew him is, that he was rigidly honest and faithful. He exacted these qualities from those in his employ. Among gentlemen he was a gentleman always. He had no bad habits at that time. Men who were brought in daily contact with him, during his period of service, say that they never saw him affected by liquor. He was generous, warmly attached to his friends, and happy in his family. He was of a lively, cheerful temperament, full of anecdote and wit, a pleasant companion, whose personal magnetism attached his friends to him with hooks of steel.