The Sheriff’s Cold Night and A Surprise Marriage
After evading capture in a dramatic escape from the Moxee, a fugitive is arrested and promptly married by the local justice.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Bod Taggart failed to get away at the time specified. He went into hiding on the Moxee, where Sheriff Simmons supposed he had him corralled; but as that officer approached the front door of the house in which he was secreted, Taggart flew out of the back door, hatless and coatless. The sheriff waited around all night in the cold, but failed to get sight of his victim. On Sunday, however, he was arrested at Puyallup and brought to Yakima, and on Monday, Justice Henton united him in marriage to Miss Laura A. Myers.
“Taggart flew out of the back door, hatless and coatless.”
This strange blend of criminal pursuit and sudden marriage illustrates the informal, often unpredictable nature of frontier justice and social conventions in late 19th-century Yakima.
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