Forestry Department might require my services in protecting the reservation from devastations of this character, I lost no time in taking the hint and signing a complete set of the affidavits. Later Ormsby secured the affidavits of Jacobs and several others in Detroit. He kept his word in reference to getting me appointed as a forst ranger, which position I held until October 15, 1902, when I was discharged."
Heidecke resumed his testimony by relating all that occurred about two years later when Edward W. Dixon, at that time a Special Agent, called upon him at Detroit and interviewed him relative to the 12 homestead claims in township 11-7. Dixon had been detailed by the General Land Office to make an investigation in search of evidence that could be made the basis for indictments by the Federal Grand Jury, and in the course of his duty, read over some of the affidavits that Heidecke had signed.
The mountaineer declared that the statements therein contained were true and correct in every particular, as he was well acquainted with the 12 homesteaders. Shortly thereafter he was subpoenaed to appear before the United States Grand Jury, at Portland, but before doing so, sought out Captain Ormsby, at Salem, and consulted with him relative to the situation. He was deliberating whether or not to ignore the subpoena altogether and skip out, but Ormsby advised him not to do so, claiming there was no danger as there was no power on earth could break the two reports, and for him to stand pat, at the same time suggesting that he see Dan Tarpley about the matter before taking any further action.
Heidecke called upon Tarpley, as advised by Forest Superintendent Ormsby, and was furnished with certain data which he was to commit to memory for use before the Grand Jury. He wrote down in his memorandum book that Maud Witt was light, and of medium height, while Nellie Backus was heavy and dark; in fact, he had descriptions covering each person who had made the homestead filings. Somehow or other his memory went back on him when he faced the inquisitorial body, and after holding out for a time, he finally went all to pieces and told everything, making a complete confession of his part in the fraudulent transaction. Judge Thomas O'Day, of counsel for the defense, took Heidecke in hand and subjected him to an excruciating cross-examination, and one which, in all truth, the witness will have good reason to remember for the remainder of his natural life.
"Heidecke, you self-confessed perjurer," thundered the counsel, "you, who have come here and had the audacity to declare that you accepted this money, and knew at the time that you were lending yourself to the commission of a crime, yet wavered not, and after benefiting thereby, and with no offer made to refund your ill gotten gain, state to this court and jury that you have repented, and, in the hope of saving your cowardly self, you would make believe that this thing was forced upon you?"
Heidecke, like Montague, was on the verge of collapse, and when counsel for the prosecution came to his assistance, it reached him none too soon, for he was indeed a sorry plight.
Frank O'Brien, clerk of the St. Charles Hotel at Albany, and Charles Pfeifer, of the Revere House, of the same city, both identified the signatures of McKinley, Tarpley, Loomis. Heidecke and myself from the registers of their respective hotels, at different times when those named had stopped there.
Ira P. Hower, of Eugene, testified to having loaned McKinley $2,100 on the George A. Howe claims. Through this witness the title to the different fraudulent tracts was traced from McKinley to N. Haskell Withee, of La Crosse, Wis. The next morning this witness was recalled and told how he had been accustomed to keeping the Howe deeds in a certain bureau drawer at his residence with other valuable papers, but that in searching for the documents a few days previously, the discovery was made that they had "mysteriously" disappeared. L. E. Bean, Hower's attorney, corroborated his client relative to the search for the missing deeds. Page 166
