They were decent sort of people; but when a young boy Charley went on the plains, where he became a brutal ruffian.

A good many years ago there was a story current in Atchison county, that when this Hayes was acting as wagon-boss on the plains, in a train owned by Russell, Majors & Waddell, that one of the teamsters having offended him he tied him up to a wheel of one of the train wagons, and, holding a pistol in one hand, he cowhided him with his black-snake whip with the other.

And this teamster was a white man.
But there are avenging furies that follow a man, even though the law does not reach him.

There is a man now living in Atchison county whose truthfulness has never been questioned, and he stated that he spent a winter in the Missouri River bottoms, sleeping in the same cabin with Charley Hayes, and that it seemed as if the devil had a mortgage on the ruffian's soul, and tormented him in his sleep with images of the horrors that awaited him in the future world.

That it seemed as if he was wrestling in mortal struggle with the men he had maltreated and murdered, and that they were choking him to death.