\ ——

A typical miner’s stopping place during the sixties

Helm indulged himself with gamb-
ling, women and liquor for the next
two or three months. That is, until
his money was gone. It was probably
someone's else’s money anyway.

He Turns to Horse Stealing

Now that he was broke, Helm
turned his hand to horse stealing and
he joined the Johnson-Harrison gang.
In those days, like the Pony Express,
the Overland mail had it’s stopping
points strung across the country at
regular intervals, through desert and
sage brush, and mountain passes. At

Lillooet Cartage Co. Ltd.

GENERAL TRANSPORTATION
Lillooet Garage _Lillooet-Lytton Stages
IMPERIAL OIL AGENTS

LILLOOET B.C.

CLUB CAFE

Steaks - Lunches - Sea Foods
Soda Fountain
PETE SIM, Owner
LILLOOET

J. S. DUNCAN LTD.
BUILDERS’ SUPPLIES

Plywoods - Rocfing - Insulation - Cement
Builders’ Hardware - Plumbing Supplies

Phone 29R2
LILLCOET B.C.

BRETT’S (Lillooet) LTD.

GENERAL MOTORS
Sales and Service

GENERAL HARDWARE

*
Phone 8 LILLOOET, B.C.

Page Twenty-two

each post there was a corral holding
spare horses. It was an easy thing to
catch the company’s men off guard
and steal the horses, and two or three
bands were run off in this fashion,
driven into California and _ sold.
Sometimes, in even bolder fashion,
they stole the horses of the U.S.
Army’s quartermaster corps. Although
the exact location is not now known,
it was about this time (1861) that
Helm shot two horse herders who
were protecting U.S. Army horses. A
little later Helm was in a saloon in
Lodi, Utah, when a soldier standing
at the bar recognized him. Before he
could reach his army weapon the out-
law had beaten him to the draw, and
the soldier, shot through the head,
slumped to the floor. Helm cowed the
rest of the patrons with his smoking
weapon as he ducked slowly out to his
horse. He disappeared from Lodi and
southern Utah.

Next he turned up in Los Angeles;
a sleepy little town, still more Spanish
than American, with a population of
about five thousand. Here Boone
Helm robbed a storekeeper named
Horne, and disappeared again. A
short appearance in San Francisco, and
then he returned to The Dalles on
the Columbia River.

By this time the Fraser River gold
rush was making all eyes turn north
to British Columbia. Miners from
California were arriving by thousands
in the new territory, and those who
could not come by ship to Vancouver
Island, traveled on foot and on horse
through western Oregon and Wash-
ington.

HOTEL LILLOOET

FULLY MODERN

LICENSED PREMISES

Owned and Operated by
Lillocet Ho'els Lid.

LILLOOET B.C.

Preyed on Fraser River Goldminers

There is no record of how many
lone gold seekers were held up or
murdered by Boone Helm and those
like him, but it is known that many
disappeared before they reached the
Fraser River. There is a record of
Boone Helm working this territory
(southern Oregon) about this time as
the following story reveals:

N. P. Langford, a prominent west-
erner and historian, was standing in a
hotel lobby in Salt Lake City in 1872,
talking to a group of men. Langford,
by the way, had been in the crowd at
Virginia City on the morning of
Helm’s execution. The outlaw’s name
came up in conversation and a
stranger passing by overhearing the
outlaw’s name stopped and joined the
group.

He told the party a curious story.
About 1861, the stranger said, he was
living alone in southern Oregon
where he had taken up a homestead.
He was running a few cattle on the
rich rangeland, when one day a
stranger appeared out of a nearby
patch of brush. He was half naked
and starving. After the rancher had
fed him the stranger said his name
was Boone Helm. He said he was the
only survivor of a group that had
taken a boat from Portland to San
Francisco and been wrecked on the
southern Oregon coast. He had made
his way inland, living on berries, try-
ing to strike the “California Trail.”
After Helm had rested a few days he
got boastful and spoke of his gun
battles and the men he had killed.
He stayed about a month with the
rancher, and when he left he was pro-
vided with clothing and footwear. A
few weeks elapsed after the outlaw’s
departure. Then one day the rancher
was startled to hear the sound of a
galloping horse rapidly approaching.
A young woman rode up to the shack,
and when she got off her horse she
breathlessly told the rancher she had
ridden from the nearest town where
she had a room in the hotel. One
night she awoke and heard through
the thin board walls two men, ap-
parently in the next room, planning
the murder and robbery of a lone
rancher. One of the men was ad-
dressed as “Boone” and from the con-
versation she felt the homesteader
was the intended victim, and so she
had come to warn him.

The young woman refused to give
her name but the rancher thanked her
and she promptly rode off.

A few days later Boone Helm rode
up to the homesteader’s place, accom-
panied by two other men. When he
dismounted, he told the homesteader
that he was going on a dangerous trip
and needed some firearms. He wanted
to know if he could borrow the
rancher’s guns. The rancher eyed him
coldly and answered by drawine his

THE SHOULDER STRAP