common talk. So Henderson and a stock detective who was with him put a match to Signor's haystacks, and there was a great bonfire. This stopped incendiarism in that neighborhood. The remedy was not legal, but it was effectual. When we moved away our herd, "Johnnie" also shifted his quarters into the Lost Cabin country west of Casper. This was not a congenial place for a man of his ideas of property. One day he disappeared. Drygulched was the verdict of the neighbors, and some of them knew it personally.

Notwithstanding the foregoing and other stirring events, the Wyoming authorities became more lax than ever, and it led on to reprisals of a more active and dangerous character. The courts whose judges were elected by popular vote were swayed towards vice instead of virtue. Nowadays when small cattlemen and sheep-owners are in control, the horse, cattle or sheep thief gets short shrift. Days have changed since these we write of. Over twenty-five years ago less than 70 miles north of Cheyenne, Wyo., a man had settled in a rather remote and wild part of the country. He had built his cabin, corrals and fenced some land. He had a few head of cattle and some horses. The neighbors began to notice that he made periodical trips with a load of meat to Laramie City, where it was sold to a butcher. The city authorities had their eye on him, but everything seemed to be in proper order. A detective was sent to watch him on the range, and it soon transpired that outside cattle got into his pasture without any trouble and, like Bluebeard's wives, they disappeared. There was a cow and a big calf in his vicinity, so some of the neighbors roped the calf, made an incision under the skin just above the hoof and placed a marked 10-cent piece in it. They also examined the marks of the calf carefully. One afternoon the cow and calf were driven into the pasture, and there they remained for several days. Then there was a bawling cow outside the fence. She was evidently too thin for beef purposes. The calf was located in the suspect's corral. A night or two after the sheriff of the county arrested the man. The calf was bearing his brand, and it

was identified by its color marks, and then the tell-tale 10-cent piece was taken out of the slit above the hoof.

With all this damning evidence, caught red-handed in the act, the guilty one was not convicted. First his case was dismissed on a technicality; second attempt failed of conviction, I forget the cause, third he commenced suit for $25,000 damages against the company whose calf he had stolen. This was adding insult to injury. One summer morning at daybreak, just as he was starting to Laramie City with a load of purloined beef, a bullet struck his heart, and he was left dead in his corral.

The eastern man or woman will exclaim "dreadful!" but we shall transpose a little. Follow me to some quiet New England town. Outside it there stands a vine-clad or rosecovered cottage where happiness reigns. Along comes a burglar and helps himself. You catch him in the act, collar him with your silver and gold, hard-earned among these pineclad hills, and then when the day of trial comes some sharp attorney discovers in the indictment that in your name of "Smith" the "i" has not been dotted, the burglar is entitled to a clearance. He comes again, coveting first, and then taking more of your world's goods for which he is arrested. An indulgent jury disagrees, and the prisoner, who has been out on bail for months, is free once more. Then his attorney commences suit against you for false imprisonment, defamation of character, or some other flimsy excuse. While this case is being got ready for trial, as you are on the defensive, your burglar comes again and tries to help himself once more. Then if you are a man of spirit, what do you do? Take down your shotgun and let him have it.

Now this is the parallel of what was happening all over the West. I write particularly of Wyoming, because I was there and went through such scenes. Put yourself, reader, in the place of those men whose herds had been cut in two in 188687, who were poor, discredited, in many cases disheartened, although they did not show it, and watch the steady aggression of the thief on their property, and then if you have the

heart cast a stone at the men who made an effort to defend themselves.

Some thirty-three years ago (in the summer of 1891) Maj. Wolcott and I were walking across a beautiful alfalfa meadow on Deer Creek, a short distance from his house. The great waves of thick hay lay bristling in the sun and, holiday (4th July) as it was, there was no cessation of work. The rakes and the wagons were gathering the green alfalfa into stacks. The hay lifters elevated load after load, and winter feed was rapidly accumulating. The subject of stealing on the range came up, and after a good deal of discussion the gallant major said there was urgent necessity for a lynching bee, especially in the northern part of the state, and he developed a plan he had in his mind.

At that time like many other cowmen I had thrown discretion to the winds, and was quite willing to draw a rope on a cattle thief if necessary, yet his scheme was so bold and open that I told him it was an impossible one, and that, so far as I was concerned, to count me out. After sleeping over it a night, I talked again to him, and strongly advised against any such action. I went away to Europe for a long holiday, and the matter left my mind. On returning early in April, while we called at Queenstown, Ireland, for the London mails, I bought a newspaper in which there was a lurid account of a fight betwixt cowboys and owners of cattle in Wyoming. It was vivid and looked bad, as a number were reported killed on both sides. It alarmed me, and it was on my mind all the way across the Atlantic. At New York I got the real news. I emphasize this because latterly I was accused of having planned and instigated the famous raid into Johnson County, whereas I was innocent as an unborn babe. From the time Wolcott spoke to me till I saw the telegraphic dispatch in the Irish paper I had not even a hint of the impending trouble. Further, I believe if I had been actively at work on the range that winter the famous "Johnson county invasion" would never have happened. Some of my associates were in it tooth and nail. One of them, C. A. Campbell

was of the party and every man in it made a band of the best, bravest men who ever lived. This refers of course to the Wyoming men. I do not class the hired bad men from Texas and other points who were with them. But even among them there were some highclass qualities developed. A quarter of a century changes people's ideas and the passing of time gives time for reflection and mellows one's judgment. We are apt in these days to cry out loudly when an enraged populace strings up some worthless brutal nigger who has raped some innocent woman, and you will read the story of vigilance committees in early frontier days, more especially in San Francisco, with horror, and yet if you had lived in such times the critic of today would probably have been the performer of a far away yesterday. In this world of complex conditions it is hard to define where law ends and individuality begins. Great reforms are brought about by revolutionary methods. The Boston tea parties, the victories of Washington were protests flung world-wide against a Teutonic dictator. The Chartists of 1848 are mild-mannered enthusiasts in the light of modern days.

CHAPTER XXXIII

O in these early days we learned many a lesson, righted

S many a wrong by protest, some of them bloody in a

manner indefensible and yet the great end of justice was attained. The quarantining of Texas cattle for Texas fever, in fact, the eradication of the tick, goes away back to Col. Hardisty and his band of bad men and brother cattleowners who camped near Camp Supply, and were only disbanded by Federal troops. And so up in Wyoming the rights in and to property were vastly advanced by owners standing up for their rights when the legal machinery of the state was sadly in want of oil.

Following the lynching of "Cattle Kate" and her companion in sin, several cattle thieves had been hanged or shot. It was coming to them without a doubt. On account of the Burlington Railroad building from Alliance, Neb., to Billings, Mont., there was an immense demand for beef from the various contractors to feed their men, and a good deal of the supply came from cowpunchers whose herds of cattle were visionary. The owners supplied the beef, but got no pay for it. It was almost impossible to detect this class of thieving, and as the sheriffs of the different counties were elected by popular vote, their sympathies to say the least of it were with the rustlers. The reign of law was consigned to the ice chest. It was frozen up.

This was the state of affairs that faced the Wyoming cattle-owners in 1891, for about that year the evil was hydra-headed. Consequently there were numerous meetings during the fall and winter that followed. The men who took the leading part in this class of work were Maj. Wolcott, ExGov. Baxter and H. B. Ijams, secretary of the live stock board. They were backed by every large cattleman in the state, and behind them they had the moral influence of the two Senators, Warren and Carey. The acting Governor,