The Unlucky Lothario of Walla Walla

The Walla Walla Democrat gives us the following sketch of the private history of the festive and amorous L. L. Bales. A new chapter in the history of L. L. Bales, of newspaper fame, has come to light by Geo. Bales denouncing him to the officers of the garrison as a deserter from Troop A, First Cavalry. Bales, alias Tom True, is a half-brother to Geo. Bales. According to the account, True was always a little peculiar and forever getting into scrapes with women. While yet a mere lad, he married a girl in Indiana, but constancy not being his trait, he skipped out. In 1871 he joined the First Cavalry, but tiring of army life during the Modoc War in Oregon, he took a government horse and gun, sold them, and fled. He was eventually captured and sent to Fort Kearney, but escaped and walked to Walla Walla in a destitute condition. His brother took him in and helped him. However, True seduced his brother's wife. Bales, finding his wife had been tampered with, gave her $500 to take their boy to her parents in Iowa. True had many escapades in Walla Walla after this. He took poison because a prostitute known as Spanish May did not reciprocate his affections, and later ran away with a sleek-looking colored girl, the daughter of J. B. Mitchell, the barber. The pair was pursued by the paternal parent to Seattle, where they were caught and True compelled to marry the damsel, notwithstanding that he had one wife back in the States. Last fall, Bales, having fallen in love with a chambermaid at the Columbia Hotel, persuaded True to return to Seattle to testify in a divorce suit. True, the man of two wives, parted with Mrs. True (No. 2) and took up with a young girl. Failing in an attempted suicide over this new romance, he eloped with a widow named Robinson and Mrs. Stroman, his brother's intended. This was more than Bales could endure, and finding his brother had sought shelter in Seattle, he informed the officers of the post of True's desertion.