ty, had been
promulgated and were strictly enforced. Lynching, in the sense that we
know it to-day, was almost unknown. There were no disorderly mobs, who,
under the spurs of their own brutal passions, strung up their victims
unheard and without even the semblance of a fair trial. Justice, if
sudden, was usually careful to see that it was justice and not brutality
that rendered the verdict. And yet, many of these early trials had the
outward semblance of lynching-bees in the swift severity of their
punishments. A murderer would be arrested, tried, convicted, and
decently hanged, all before sundown of the same day. The mob spirit was
there, but usually held in check by the sturdy manhood of the American
miners, who had nearly all come from law abiding and law respecting
communities.

This swift severity of Justice was, in a sense, compelled by the
unusual, the almost unprecedented conditions surrounding life in a city
born suddenly in a wilderness. There were few locks and bars and bolts,
or, even, doors, in Sacramento City at that time; and large sums in gold
and great values in goods were often left exposed and almost
unprotected. The thief, under such circumstances, had to be dealt with
severely and promptly; or the property of no one would be safe. There
were no regularly established courts in the city to try criminals, no
written code of laws to dictate methods of procedure, no court officials
to enforce mandates, and no safe jails in which to confine prisoners.
Under such circumstances the people had to form their own courts, make
their own laws, and see that they were enforced; or have no laws; and
the criminal had to be dealt with summarily. The thief was sometimes
whipped, or, even, cropped, that is his ears were cut off, and he was
always driven from the city, and warned not to come back under penalty
of death. The murderer, when proven guilty to the satisfaction of the
people, was always hanged. No prisoners were held. They were proven
guilty and sentence pronounced and executed at once; or they were set
free.

Such was Sacramento City in 1849, the Sacramento City in which Thure and
Bud now found themselves under arrest for the horrible crime of murder,
the most serious crime that can be charged against a human being
anywhere, but rendered especially serious in the present case by the
peculiar surrounding circumstances. In all the city, so far as either
boy knew, they did not have a friend, or even an acquai