A Marshal's Fruitless Hops-Field Chase
A warrant execution goes wrong when a marshal spends half a mile chasing the wrong man through the hops vines.
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.
An interesting race took place at the ranch of Henry Welch, about nine miles west of Gilman yesterday. City Marshal John McQuade had a warrant for one Jarrett Trigg and, learning he was picking hops, went to take him. One picker ran down through the field, and McQuade followed him, leading to a race of half a mile. Imagine McQuade's surprise when, after catching the fugitive, he found it was not his man, but James Welch, the boy who escaped from the reform school about three weeks ago. As McQuade had no warrant for Welch, he did not bring him in. In the meantime, Trigg took to the woods and could not be found.
“Imagine McQuade's surprise when, after catching the fugitive, he found that it was not his man, but James Welch.”
The mention of hops picking reflects the massive labor industry that defined rural King County in the 1890s. The 'Gilman' mentioned is now the modern city of Issaquah.
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