I was browsing through some of the late Dr. John Roberts” notes when I came across this fictional tale of frontier justice in the Chilcotin. The name of the author was not listed, and there was no local person named Leslie Moore but it is a good story, so I thought I would share it with you.
It is titled “A Gruesome Tale of Justice.”
It was back in the late 1800s in the Cariboo. The mail came up once a week from the CPR railway station at Ashcroft.
All the mail for the Chilcotin was left at the Soda Creek Post Office on the east side of the Fraser River. This was before the old Sheep Creek bridge was built in 1904.
To get across the river at Soda Creek there was an old dugout canoe. A large cottonwood tree on the west bank had been struck by lightning and killed.
It dried out, fell down, and with the aid of a rusty old adze, the locals built a canoe for public use. Appropriately, it was know as the Cariboo-Chilcotin Grand Trunk Lightning Ferry Service.
Fred Becher owned the hotel and stopping house south of Riske Creek. Each week, he or one of his hire men would ride a saddle horse to the Soda Creek area, tie it up to the tree on the west side, paddle the dugout canoe to the east bank of the river, and collect all the mail for the Chilcotin.
So, once a week, all Fred’s neighbours, about a dozen ranchers and cowboys, would gather at the Becher House to await the arrival of their mail.
The Becher House had some guest rooms, a large bar room, a dozen or so old chairs, and a few tables.
An open bottle of Pinchbeck’s white wheat whiskey, often referred to as “Pinchbeck’s Ruin,” stood on the bar.
Patrons served themselves each a snort, and left the standard price of two bits.
Becher also owned one of the first Edison record players in the area. It was mechanical, with a spring wind up and a cylinder which slowly rotated. He also had a stock of pre-recorded cylinders – Caruso, Nellie Melba singing opera, Minstrel shows, and a comedian playing a banjo.
It was also possible to wrap tinfoil around the cylinder and record people speaking.
The big horn acted both as a microphone and an amplifier. The sounds in the room caused a metal diaphragm to oscillate, and the attached needle created a groove on the foil wrapped on the cylinder.
The recording produced was of questionable quality, but one could make out voices and sounds.
Card games were often played at the tables. The stakes were not high, since ready cash was scarce and the players were not card sharps.
They were merely filling in their time with a friendly game and a pleasant conversation while they awaited the mail.
On the day of the incident, a local lad named Leslie Moore sat at a table playing cards. He was in his twenties, and was one of the Moore Family from Alkalie Lake.
Also at this table sat a Yankee carpet- bagger, a newly arrived stranger to the area, who spoke with a slow southern drawl. During the game at this table, a heated argument broke out, and, as just happened to be recorded on the foil-wrapped Edison cylinder, there was a yell, a shot, a scream, a moan, the curses and a scuffle.
The carpetbagger had drawn a Colt pistol from behind his waistcoat and had fired one shot right into the heart of the hapless Leslie Moore.
Moore’s dozen or so friends and acquaintances grabbed the Yankee, took him outside, sat him on a barebacked horse under the bough of a tall cottonwood standing alone on a small nearby hill.
With a lasso from one of their saddles, they fashioned a hempen necktie, tossed the loose end over and around the tree branch, and gave the horse a good slap on its rump.
The American stranger was left slowly swinging in the wind.
The next day, Judge Begbie happened to arrive at the Becher place on his regular assigned circuit.
Upon hearing the details of the incident, he opined that the entire proceedings were not really lawful. What the group had done was rather spontaneous, and he was a bit peeved.
Some say his displeasure came from the fact that he had missed out on the opportunity for a good trial and a subsequent hanging
However, being the legal beagle that he was, he solved the dilemma by appointing Becher as a Justice of the Peace. Becher in turn immediately swore in all of the neighbours who had been present as jurymen.
A set of trial proceedings was written up, complete with a guilty judgement, which Begbie signed.
He assured everyone that by the time the paperwork passed through the hands of his boss in Victoria, Governor James Douglas, then travelled by ship around Cape Horn and arrived in England, then made its way to the desks of the Secretary for the Colonies, the House of Lords, and finally, Queen Victoria, nobody would notice the date discrepancy.
It was, after all, before the days of time zones, Greenwich mean time, and accurate time keeping, and the various parties, if they read the documents at all, wouldn’t know what day the incident occurred and probably couldn’t care less. But the paperwork was important, and so it was completed.
The bodies of both deceased men were committed to the earth on the hill under the big cottonwood tree along with the cursed Edison Cylinder machine which had recorded the whole nefarious affair.
To this day, particularly late on Saturday nights, it is said that residents from around Riske Creek can be seen by the light of the full moon, empty bottles of Pinchbeck’s Ruin in their hands, with their ears pressed firmly to the ground, listening as the Edison plays back the argument the yell, the shot, the scream, the curses, and the scuffle in a ghostly déjà vu.
Although the Yankee’s grave was never marked, a subscription was collected from all the Chilcotin folk for young Leslie Moore. A good stonemason was located in the Lower Mainland, and he carved a suitable headstone for Moore’s final resting place. It is engraved as follows:
“Here lie the remains of
LESLIE MOORE
Died of a single shot from a .44
No Les
No Moore”
