When Slade reached Bordeaux, this was the condition in which he found him. He went up to the helpless man, deliberately shot him twice, killing him instantly. He then returned to Fort Laramie, and went through the farce of giving himself up, and was discharged. This was in 1862. It is believed that there was no mutilation, and that this was just an exaggeration of partisans growing out of the threat of some time before.

In 1860, the United States government granted a subsidy of forty thousand dollars to the first company that would build a telegraph line across the continent. Ed. Creighton, for

HISTORY OF WESTERN NEBRASKA

the Western Union Company had eleven hundred miles to build, and the California telegraph company was to build from the west and the twb were to meet and join at Salt Lake City. A special prize was given to the one that first reached Salt Lake City.

Creighton built his line up the Platte to Julesburg, then across to Mud Springs and through Mitchell Gap on into the west. He had the line completed to Salt Lake City on the 17th of October and on the 24th of the same month the California company reached the

City on the Lake. Creighton had bought during the summer one hundred thousand dollars of Western Union stock for $18,000.00 and when the project was completed, he was given three shares for one. And shortly afterwards he sold his one-third of his holdings for $85,000.00. It took a little less than six months to build the line, that made Creighton over a quarter of a million dollars.