[Gutenberg 43379] • Hands Up; or, Thirty-Five Years of Detective Life in the Mountains and on the Plains / Reminiscences by General D. J. Cook, Chief of the Rocky Mountains Detective Association

GENERAL DAVID J. COOK.

This book consists of a series of reminiscences of Gen. D. J. Cook, chief of the Rocky Mountain Detective Association, which has been in existence for the past thirty-five years, during which time Gen. Cook has been continuously at its head. He organized it in the beginning and has remained with it from that time until his own name and that of the association have become almost synonymous terms in the entire Rocky Mountain country, where both are known and where both are respected and relied upon implicitly by honest people, and where both are proportionately feared by evil doers of all classes likely to “have business” with them. The stories told are all true records, but while their number is quite considerable they are only a portion of the thrilling experiences—whether his own or those of officers of his association—with which his mind is stored. Indeed, if Gen. Cook should attempt to even furnish a complete narrative of his own adventures, it would fill a volume much larger than this one, for his has been a life of excitement and adventure, of exposure and hardships, of heroic deeds and many narrow escapes. Beginning as the son of an Indiana farmer, Mr. Cook has by his own unaided exertions, placed himself at the head of the detective force of the West, and has in many ways made himself prominent as a useful citizen of a growing region.

David J. Cook was born August 12, 1840, in Laporte county, Ind., being a son of George Cook, a farmer and land speculator. Receiving a moderate education, he worked on farms in Indiana, Iowa and Kansas until 1859. His father settled in Iowa in 1853, on the present site of Laporte, now a thriving city, but then a howling wilderness. Selling out to good advantage, the family moved to Jefferson county, Kan., in 1855, settling on a tract of land north of where the little city of Meriden now stands, on Rock creek. When the wave of excitement which swept the country on the discovery of gold at Pike’s peak came, it bore him to the Rocky mountains, where he spent nearly two years in mining in what is now called Gilpin county, Colorado. Returning to Kansas he bought a farm, but in the fall of 1861 he went to Rolla, Mo., and engaged in running supply trains.

He was soon afterward transferred to the ordnance department of the Army of the Frontier, and early in 1863 came again to Colorado and established the association with which his name has since been connected, and which has so long been a terror to evil doers and a trusty guardian of the public safety.

CONTENTS

A Hidden Treasure

Capture of the Allison Gang

A Cowboy’s Sad Fate

Denver’s Last Legal Hanging

The Italian Murderers

Musgrove and His Gang

The Exchange Bank Robbery

The Hayward Murder

A Dunkard Disgraced

The Wall Murder Mystery

Slick Scoundrel

A Bogus Detective’s Fate

The Leichsenring Robbery

A Deal with the Black Hills Road Agents

In the Express Business

A Farm Hand’s Awful Crime

A Half-Million-Dollar Robber

A Utah Murderer’s Capture

A Tale of Two Continents

Two of a Kind

Hanged in a Hog Pen

A Tussle with the Habeas Corpus

A Desperate Railroad Contractor

Dealing with Strikers

A Victim of Draw Poker

A Horse Thief’s Folly

Pueblo Vengence

The Retribution of Fate

A Townful of Thieves

Ragsdale Gates

Taken by Surprise

A Race for Life

A Dream of Death

A Mexican Bandit

Conclusion