To certain of my readers, some explanation for detailing at such length the life of a ruffian and murderer may be necessary. Not so, however, to those familiar with mountain history. They will understand that both Patterson and Pinkham were noted and important members of frontier society, representative men, so to speak, of the classes to which they belonged. Their followers regarded them with a hero-worship which magnified their faults into virtues, and their acts into deeds of more than chivalric daring. Their pursuits, low, criminal, and degrading as they are esteemed in old settled communities, were among the leading occupations of life among the miners. Said one who had been for many years a resident of the Pacific slope, after spending a few weeks in the Atlantic States: “I can’t stand this society. It is too strict. I must return to the land where every gambler is called a gentleman, and where every woman, no matter what her character, is called a lady.” CHAPTER XIII EARLY DISCOVERIES OF GOLD Gold was first discovered in what is now known as Montana by Francois Findlay, better known as Be-net-see, a French half-breed, in 1852. He had been one of the early miners in California, having gone there from his home in the Red River country soon after Marshall’s discovery. At this time, however, he was engaged in trapping for furs and trading with the Indians. While travelling along the border of Gold Creek he was induced by certain indications to search for gold, which he found in the gravelly bed of the stream. Intelligence of this discovery was given to a party of miners who were on their return from California to the States in 1857, and they immediately resolved to visit the creek and spend a winter there in prospecting. James and Granville Stuart and Resin Anderson, since known as prominent citizens of Montana, were of this party, and I insert here as an interesting bit of early history the narrative which Granville Stuart has since furnished of the discovery then made by them: “We accordingly wintered on the Big Hole River just above what is known as the Backbone, in company with Robert Dempsey, Jake Meeks, Robert Hereford, Thomas Adams, John W. Powell, John M. Jacobs, and a few others. In the Spring of 1858 we went over into the Hell Gate valley, and prospected a little on Benetsee’s or Gold Creek. We got gold everywhere, in some instances as high as ten cents to the pan, but, having nothing to eat save what our rifles furnished us, and no tools to work with (Salt Lake City, nearly six hundred miles distant, being the nearest point at which they could be obtained), and as the accursed Blackfeet Indians were continually stealing our horses, we soon quit prospecting in disgust without having found anything very rich, or done anything to enable us to form a reliable estimate of the richness of the mines.