Setting Up the Sting
After initial efforts to control bootlegging failed, Kuykendall went to the Swain Detective Agency in Spokane and hired two operatives to come to Pomeroy and engage in sting operations against the bootleggers. The investigation took place early in 1914.
Most of the illegal sales occurred at a hotel and a lodging house. The operatives, posing as itinerant workers, quickly secured the confidence of the proprietors of these establishments and over a period of perhaps a month or more obtained considerable evidence against both the buyers and sellers of bootleg liquor.
In his book, The History of Garfield County, Kuykendall painted a vivid picture of some of the characters he crossed paths with in his quest for justice. In the parlance of the day, the biggest toad in the pond was one "Diamond Dick." Explained Kuykendall:
"The boldest and best-known bootlegger then operating was a man by the name of J. A. Dickson ... known only as "Diamond Dick" -- no doubt from the dime novel character of that appellation. He had a criminal record and was regarded as of the bad-man type. However, he had a sense of humor and a crude sort of wit that amused his cronies."Kuykendall soon experienced Diamond Dick's wit firsthand. By early March 1914, the "bootleg crowd" (Kuykendall) sensed trouble. Diamond Dick sent an associate into Kuykendall's office to demand that something be done to thwart the bootleggers. "He, of course, would be the last person to want anything done, and it was evident that he was fishing for information," observed Kuykendall:
"I told him that perhaps the officers would wake up someday and get busy. I saw this party (from my office window) talking to Diamond Dick on the street, and in a few minutes he was back in my office and reported as follows: 'Diamond Dick says that all the officers in Garfield County couldn't track an elephant in a foot of snow.' I told him 'You tell Diamond Dick he may be right, but his tracks are so much plainer ... that the officers have tracked him to his lair.' ... I saw him again talking to Diamond Dick on the street. In a few minutes he came back and reported 'Diamond Dick says that all the lawyers in Garfield County wouldn't make a wart on a good lawyer's hind end.' He used less polite terms in describing the location of the wart."
Diamond Dick Gets His
But justice triumphed. Diamond Dick was soon arrested and received 10 indictments. He was tried in April 1914. Kuykendall, by this time working as a Special Prosecutor, assisted the prosecution in its case, and wrote with thinly veiled glee of the result: "Diamond Dick was convicted on two or three indictments, and began to beg for mercy ... his air of braggadocio had deserted him. 'I'm licked! ... I throw up my hands,' he exclaimed. I reminded him of what he had said about the lawyers of Garfield County. 'I'll take it all back!' he exclaimed. 'I was a damn fool. I'll eat my words and swallow 'em.' "
Dickson subsequently entered pleas of guilty to the indictments and was sentenced in the county jail, where he may have passed some of his time working at a road camp set up specially for "jail birds" (Kuykendall) in the Blue Mountains, blasting stumps out of the newly built road between Teal Camp and the summit.
Upon release from jail, Dickson promptly resumed his bootlegging activities. In the spring of 1915, he was convicted again, spent more time in jail, and eventually wound up in the penitentiary. Later released, he worked as a railroad brakeman in Tacoma and claimed to have changed his nefarious ways. He died, probably in the 1920s; "his life was proof that the way of the transgressor is hard," concluded Kuykendall.
Prohibition remained in effect -- and bootlegging continued -- in Pomeroy until Prohibition was repealed by the 21st Amendment to the United States Constitution in December 1933.
