Page:Thirty-One Years on the Plains and in the Mountains.djvu/487

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TURN DETECTIVE.
365

to come to his quarters the following day at ten o'clock and he would introduce me to the gentleman referred to.

I went to the General's quarters and the gentleman was present. His name was Howard. By whose authority he was working up this case I never learned, but, however, after questioning me for some time as to what I knew of the Mormons, he asked me what I would charge him per month to go along with him, play the hypocrite, and try to help work up the case. I told him it was all new work to me; that I knew nothing of detective work whatever. I said that if it were a case of Indians it would be quite different, but I did not think I would be of much service to him working among the Mormons.

He proposed that he would furnish me a suit of clothes suitable for the part I was to play, furnish money to pay my expenses, such as hotel bills, whiskey bills, ball-room bills, and pay me fifty dollars per month, I to do as he told me, or as near as I could. "And, at the end of one month," said he, "if your work does not suit me, or if I don't suit you, I can pay you off and you can go your way; or if you stay and we work up this case as I anticipate, as soon as the work is completed I will pay you one hundred dollars per month instead of fifty."

Under these conditions I went to work for him, and the next two days were spent in drilling me on Mormon phrases, their customs And so on, he having been there some three months, had got pretty well posted on the Mormon doctrine.

When I got my new suit of clothes on and he got my