Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 July 1875 — How Perley Got Even. [ARTICLE]

How Perley Got Even.

A party of rough miners near White Pine, away out West, played a rather severe joke upon a green hand, one D. W Perley, and had afterward occasion to regret their fun. Perley and the rest went to a “ rodeo,” or dance, and the boys, feeling rather well, concluded to duck Perley in a running brook. They soused him beneath the water, and when he came out he was very cold and wet, indeed, shivering like a cat pulled from a well. Perley said little, but thought a great deal and waited. The dance over, the party camped out for the night, and then Perley rose for revenge. He took the cook into his confidence, paying him for his assistance, and then did some more waiting. Much whisky had made the miners drowsy and they were soon all lying on the ground sleeping soundly. Then Perley and the cook seized pick and shovel and went out into the darkness. The former had matured his plan for vengeance, and an admirable plan it was, too. The design was to turn the seething mountain torrent from its natural channel and so divert it that it would whelm the sleepers below. Up the stream to the proper point went Perley and the cook and fell to work. It was no light task they had undertaken, but one was laboring for money and the other for revenge, and men do not mind fatigue with such incentives. It waß nearly morning when the dam was completed and all ready to let the water into the new channel. The final blows were given and the chafing stream escaped into the new channel—a roaring torrent. It raged down upon the sleepers in the tent and went over them as the waters did over Pharaoh and his hosts. Tent, provisions and tools went, and the miners, halfdrowned, escaped to land with difficulty. When daylight came Perley and the cook were gone, and a band of wet miners sat upon the bank very melancholy and full of sorrow at having paid so dearly for a ruthless act. Perley was more than even with them.