go into winter quarters and live on the horses. One by one the pack animals were destroyed, as the weary weeks dragged into months, while the five gamblers and Boone Helm lived on horsemeat, cut wood, played cards, and cursed their fate. Eventually only the racehorse was left; this animal was killed and its meat smoked in chunks. With this supply of food they decided to make a final attempt to reach Fort Hall. It was Fort Hall or perish. With clumsily fashioned snow shoes, using the horse- hide for thongs, they started breaking trail, the strongest in front, the weakest behind. Gradually the party strung out, Burton and Helm in the lead. The Kentuckian then proposed to Burton that they push on and abandon the rest of the party, and Burton weakly agreed. Finally the pair reached the Snake River, and moved down it towards Fort Hall. They had finished their share of the horsemeat and were trying to exist on prickly pear, the only edible thing they could find. By now both men were practically starving and Burton was snow blind.

Helm Turns Cannibal

Finally Boone Helm decided to strike out for Fort Hall alone, but when he reached the stopping place the buildings were deserted, and there was neither food nor assistance. Returning to the camp, where Burton lay at his last gasp, Boone Helm com- mitted the grisliest crime of his career—he shot Burton, and then cut parts of one of the dead man’s legs off for food. He must have existed in this way for a number of days, for then he cut off Burton’s other leg, and wrapping it up in a red flannel shirt, slung it on his back and started

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on the trail for Salt Lake City. Eight miles along the trail he met an Indian, who was also nearly starving. But the Redman wouldn’t touch the human flesh offered him. The pair stayed to- gether for two weeks, living on ants and shrub called tobacco plant.

It was seven months after Boone Helm and his party had left The Dalles, that the Kentucky outlaw, hollow eyed and dirty, his clothes in rags, stumbled into the camp of J. W. Powell, a fur buyer, who was traveling from Fort Owen in the Bit- ter Root Valley to Salt Lake City. In Powell’s party were James Misinger, an American, a French-Canadian called Grand Maison, a half-breed and three Indians. They had just made camp one night on the Snake River above Fort Hall, when an apparition that was almost inhuman staggered toward their fire. The gaunt and emaciated killer told of the party of five leaving The Dalles the previous October, and how they had separated and perished, all but he and Burton. He told them that he was collecting wood for the fire one night when he heard a shot and he returned to find that Burton, unable to endure the hunger and cold, had committed suicide.

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Boone Helm schemed to steal their horses

However, after Helm had told his story, the Indian who had stayed with him, came into Powell’s camp. He was known to Powell as Mo Quip and he told Powell the story of Helm having a man’s leg wrapped in a shirt.

Inclined to take pity on the Ken- tuckian, Powell equipped Helm with a horse, some clothing and moccasins. A curious feature of the trip to Salt Lake was when Grand Maison showed Powell a wash leather bag of gold coins that Helm had asked the Frenchman to keep for him until they reached their destination. There was $1,400 in the bag. Powell returned it to Helm when they reached Salt Lake.

Salt Lake City at that time was in the throes of what nearly amounted to insurrection. The original Mor- mon pioneers had refused to recog- nize the laws of the United States, and, in fact had sent a number of U.S. Government officials packing back to Washington. U.S. troops were ordered to occupy the territory, and a so-called Army of Occupation under General Johnson was in command. However, apart from the tenseness be- tween the Mormons and the Gov- ernment’s troops, there seems to have been plenty of civic life for Boone

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