Catherine Hayes has been held out as an example of a virtuous opera singer who was always chaperoned by her mother and never had affairs but come down from the mountain into the real world. Kate was human and enjoyed a sexual life just as Lola Montez did. When I first read a tale of her being involved with the outlaw known as Rattlesnake Dick in San Francisco and Grass Valley, I was inclined to dismiss it.
Her recent biographer, in his detailed chronology of her appearances, didn’t list Grass Valley at all and so I believed him. Then I read the Nevada Journal of April 1853 and there was Kate singing ballads for the miners in and around Grass Valley. She left San Francisco on the 20 March 1853 for ‘a trip into the interior’. She probably rode there with the man who brought the news about Dick and was followed later by her mother and maids in a coach with the baggage. Her manager, Bushnell does not seem to have accompanied them.
I can’t verify the tales but there is a strong possibility that she went there to save her lover from being hanged for stealing a mule. Rattlesnake Dick was in jail at Rattlesnake Bar accused of the crime which was very serious then. A mule could mean life or death for a miner since it was needed to carry all his possessions into the mountains. Anyway, Kate arrived on her horse and Dick was acquitted. My guess is that a message was sent to her in San Francisco and she went post haste to rescue him. In fact, he would have been hanged long before she got there unless they believed she was coming and would pay handsomely to have the charge dropped. Dick was shot dead two years later during a robbery attempt
