THE CONFESSIONS AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY
OF
HARRY ORCHARD

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

HOW I STARTED AFTER GOVERNOR STEUNENBERG

SOME time in August, 1905, Moyer came back from California where he had been on a vacation. Nearly ever since the Industrial Workers' convention at Chicago, I saw him on the street and he asked me what I was doing, and I told him we were after General Bell. He said we would have to cut that out in Denver while he was there, as he could not stand any more torture from being thrown into prison, as he was half dead now. He said they had some work to do on the outside, and for me to come down to the office and we would talk it over. The next day I went down and I think Pettibone went with me, or came a little later, and Moyer said he would not take any more chances of being thrown in jail, and said further that the way his health was, he could not stand another siege like they had given him at Telluride, and that would be the first thing that would happen if we bumped Sherman Bell off. He said they had some work on the outside to do, and then he said he wanted me to go down to Goldfield, Nev., and do away with Johnnie Neville. He said he could not get him out of his mind and could not sleep nights thinking about him, and that he knew too much and was liable to get them in trouble any time and especially so if he got hard up.

Moyer called Haywood and Pettibone into his office, and he explained his condition to them, and said we had some work on the outside that they had wanted done for a long time and that we had better do that now. Pettibone said he would like to get some of these fellows in Denver while we were fixed for it, and Haywood said he was willing to take his chances, but Moyer absolutely refused to have anything done in Denver while he was there. Then Haywood said he wanted to get ex-Governor Steunenberg before he left the office, and further said he had sent two or three men down there to get him, but they had all failed. These men they had down there at different times were Steve Adams and Ed Minster and Art Baston, and a man named McCarty from the Cœur d'Alenes.

Moyer said that he thought it would have a good effect if we could bump Steunenberg off and then write letters to Peabody, Sherman Bell, and some others that had been prominent in trying to crush the Federation, and tell them that they, too, would get what Governor Steunenberg got; that we had not forgotten them, and never would forget them, and the only way they would escape would be to die, and they need not think because we had overlooked them for a while that we had forgotten them. Haywood said we would go back to Paterson, N. J., and send these letters from there and write them in such a way that they would think it was some of those foreign anarchists that had sent them, as that is the American headquarters for the anarchists. He said he did not know what would be worse than to know some one was on your trail to kill you, and not to know who it was or when to expect it, and that it would be like a living death and that these fellows would be afraid of their shadows, and if we got Steunenberg, after letting him go so long, then they would think sure that we never forgot any one that had persecuted us.

We talked a whole lot more on this, and Pettibone said this would be all right, but he would like to do a little work at home, and he further said he was afraid it would be a hard proposition to get Steunenberg down in a little country town, like Caldwell, Idaho, where he lived. Haywood said he had been told that Steunenberg was in the sheep business and got in a buckboard and drove out to his sheep camps in the mountains, and paid no attention or even thought his life was in danger, and that it had been so long since the Cœur d'Alene trouble that he likely had forgotten it. They said I could make the round trip—either go to Nevada for Neville, and then to Caldwell, or to Caldwell first. I told them I would go to Caldwell first. Moyer wanted me to go to Nevada first or to get around there as soon as I could. Their plan was for me to go down to Goldfield and get in with Neville and pretend to get drunk with him, and put some cyanide of potassium in his whisky or whatever he was drinking. This they thought would be easy, as he kept a saloon, they wanted this done as quietly as possible, and thought there would be no suspicion attached to it if he did die suddenly, and no notice would be paid to it in a new place like Goldfield. Moyer was the only one that was very anxious to have Johnnie killed. I told him I would do it, but I did not intend to at the time.

Moyer told me to get what money I would need from Haywood; he asked me how much I would need, and I told him $800. Haywood had given me $60 a few days before this and he gave me $240 more, and said he hoped I would succeed in getting Steunenberg, as he had already cost them a lot of money. I told him I would do the best I could. I did not see him again before I left. Moyer went out that afternoon fishing up Platte Cañon, and Pettibone wanted me to go with him that night, and make one more attempt on General Bell, and I did, but did not try much to see him. The next day I got everything ready, and packed the big clock bomb that I had brought up from Cañon City in my trunk, and bought a return ticket to Portland, Ore., good for ninety days with stop-overs any place on the route, good also to return via Seattle and Spokane, Wash.

We had talked over the proposition and Pettibone wanted me to look over the country around Seattle and Puget Sound, and see if I could not find a small place on the Sound close to the British line. We had letters from Arthur Parker, a Cripple Creek miner, who had gone up there and got a place, and he liked it very much. Pettibone and Haywood said if I found a place that I thought would suit us to write them and they would dig up the money to buy it, and I told them I would hunt up a place somewhere, as I thought I had taken chances enough and was entitled to the price of a small place. Pettibone and I were going to live there, but we were going to make it a headquarters where Haywood and Moyer could send men they wanted to keep out of sight. We also thought that, being near the British line, we could do some smuggling there.

I left Denver between the 25th and 30th of August, 1905, over the Rio Grande Railroad. I stopped at Salt Lake City a few days and met some of my old friends, among whom were Charlie Shoddy and Lewis Cutler. The latter lived in Salt Lake, but Shoddy came from the Cœur d'Alenes, Idaho, with me shortly after the trouble in 1899. We had worked together in Arizona and Nevada since, but I had not seen him since leaving Utah for Colorado, and we talked over old times. He said it had been coming pretty tough for him, and said I looked pretty prosperous, and asked me what I had been doing. I told him I had found a new way of making a living without working so hard, and he said he wished I would tell him how. I told him to keep me posted where he was and I would write to him if I had something on.

I then left Salt Lake and came on to Nampa, Idaho, which is about nine miles from Caldwell, and stopped off there and stayed a few days at the Commercial Hotel. I met a man named Wilcox from Colorado there, and I talked with him a good deal, and he told all about the country, as he had been here before.

I asked him if he knew Mr. Steunenberg, and he told me he did, well, and was talking to him just a day or two ago at the depot, when the governor was waiting for a train. Mr. Wilcox spoke of the trouble in Colorado and said Mr. Steunenberg said that Governor Peabody did not act quick enough in that trouble. I think I stayed in Nampa three days and Mr. Wilcox left.

Then I went down to Caldwell and stopped at the Pacific Hotel, and told Mr. Dempsey, the proprietor, I would stay a few days, and that a friend of mine in Colorado wanted me to stop off there and see what the chances were to buy some lambs. He told me the names of some sheep-men there, and among other things he mentioned Governor Steunenberg's name. He further told me that he was not at home much, but was in Boise and Mountain Home most of the time and was engaged in buying and selling sheep.

I took a walk around and located where Governor Steunenberg lived, and then took the train in the afternoon and went to Boise and stopped at the Capitol Hotel one night. This was in the early part of September. I looked over the register, but did not find Mr. Steunenberg's name. The next morning I went over to the Idan-ha and took a look over the register, and found his name there. I went back to the Capitol, and paid my bill, and got my grip and went over to the Idan-ha and got a room. My room was on the same floor that Mr. Steunenberg's was, and that noon, when the chambermaids were off the floor, I tried a skeleton key I had to see if it would open his room, and it did all right.

I got to talking to a man down in the hotel lobby that afternoon and he asked me my business and I told him I was going to Portland to the fair, but I stopped off here for a friend of mine in Colorado to make some inquiry what the chances would be to buy a few thousand lambs for feeding purposes. He said that was his business and that he was working for a stock company from Wyoming, and he took me across the street from the Idan-ha Hotel and introduced me to a Mr. Johnson and his son, who were commission men. Mr. Johnson named over some of the big sheep-men and I told him I thought I heard my friend say that he bought some the year before from a man by the name of Steunenberg. Yes, he said, probably so, as ex-Governor Steunenberg was in the sheep business. Then he said, "By the way, that's him over there in front of the Idan-ha now," and he pointed him out. That was the first time I had ever seen Governor Steunenberg to know him.

In a little while we went down and went back to the hotel, and I thought I would get my grip and go to Nampa, and get the big bomb I had made for Governor Peabody in Cañon City out of my trunk in the depot, and come back, and either set it with the alarm clock and leave it in the grip and set it under his bed, or set it like the Bradley bomb—with a string on his bedroom door, so it would go off when he went to his room.

While on my way from Boise to Nampa I got to thinking what this would do, and that they would look pretty close after all strangers, and that my coming there and going away so quick would look pretty suspicious. This bomb had twenty-five pounds of dynamite in it, and I knew it would blow that part of the hotel all to pieces, and probably kill a lot of people. But that was not the reason I stopped, for I had no heart at that time and thought very little of how many I killed, as long as Mr. Steunenberg was one of them. I was only thinking what the chances of myself were in being discovered. I knew I could get the bomb in his room, and get away from the hotel, and if I used an alarm-clock, I might be half-way to Portland and not be discovered. The only danger of this was that he might look under the bed and find it, and if I set it at his door, the time he would be killed would depend on what time he went to bed. I knew this latter was the surest way to catch him, but I did not know how far I might get away before he might go to his room, and I did not want to set this at the door until about dark for fear some of the chambermaids might go in the room.

As I had my ticket and money enough, I made up my mind all at once I would go on to Portland and Seattle, and look around Seattle and the sound for the little ranch we had spoken of and then go up to Wallace and look after a proposition D. C. Coates had spoken of when he was in Denver the month before. I always dreaded to do these murders, and usually put them off as long as I could or rather as long as I had money.

So I took the train and went on to Portland that same night, and stayed there a few days, and took in the fair, and then went on to Seattle and stayed there a week or so. This was about the middle of September. Pettibone had given me the address of an old partner of his at Seattle, named William Barrett, and I hunted him up and he showed me around the city. This was my first time there. I told Barrett I wanted to get a small place up on the sound somewhere close to the British line. He took me down and introduced me to some real estate men and I went out and looked at some places near Seattle, but I did not like them, and I did not like the weather there, as it was cold and raining there then. I got Barrett to send Pettibone a good map of the sound country and I left there for Spokane, stayed there one night, and started for Wallace, Idaho. I stopped off at Wardner to seek Jack Simpkins and I found him and told him where I had been, and what I went to Caldwell for, and what I was in Wallace to look up.

NEXT: The Assassination Of Governor Steunenberg