When the prisoners were arraigned, behind them lay a tortuous trail. The journey to Casper, the ride northwards, the brutal ending of Champion and Ray, the surrender at the T. A. Ranch, the disagreeable dominance of the army at Fort McKinney, the return on horseback and by rail to Cheyenne, the long, weary days there made easier by the gentle discipline of Col. Egbert, the trip to Laramie and then Cheyenne once more. All this with its sad associations and memories lay behind them. On the bench was Judge Scott, slow, solemn, impartial, a little embarrassed, knowing full well that the trial was a mere puppet show. The lawyers talked, objected, went through the motions as if it were an earnest business. One of them is now on the Supreme Bench in Washington, D. C. He must look back with amusement to the mimicry of the scene enacted.

Several panels of jurymen were examined and not a juror selected. The city of Cheyenne was exhausted and Judge Scott told the sheriff to go into the country and get more men, but the sheriff said in effect, "I am a poor man. I have no money to travel over the country and select jurors. Johnson County must supply the sinews of war." The prosecuting attorney from that county made a howl, but the judge ruled that the sheriff was right. The warrants of Johnson County, scarcely worth the paper they were written on, could not pay the wages and traveling expenses of deputy sheriffs. The people of that county, or at least a portion of them, had plundered the cattlemen, and now they were anxious, through their attorneys, to make these men stand indirectly the expenses of their own trial for murder. It was a bit ridiculous, but it was part of the play. The court came to a standstill. The judge could not force the sheriff to produce jurors, there were no funds in sight, and in the prisoners' dock were over a score of the very flower of Wyoming's citizens accused of murder, but only protectors of their property when you come down to the real cause. So it was arranged after an afternoon and evening's talk that the Johnson authorities should dismiss the case. It was the only thing they

could do, but there lay still in the path of these men the danger of being arrested if they went back to Johnson County, and they demanded a clean bill, so that there would be no aftermath. Another pull had to be made on the exchequer and cattle-owner and absent Texan were free of the charge. It cost the cattle-owners around $100,000. They responded freely, although it was the panic year of 1893. But money counts for little when placed beside nobility of character, of patient self-denial, of loyal friendship: the strong supporting the weak morally and financially. From this fiery furnace of trial and tribulation came pure gold, no tawdry counterfeit, but the real stuff, represented by splendid examples of courage, honesty and everlasting belief in the justice of their cause. Against this were a few cattlemen, some of them oldtimers, who failed to support their friends, who before the raid were far from silent critics of Wyoming's tardiness in punishing the rustlers. They were absent at the hour of need, and among their fellowmen they were despised and a black mark put against their names. Politics was the cause of some retreating; cowardice and self-interest influenced others. But sufficient for the day is the evil thereof. Today Wyoming is a better state to live in, so far as property rights are concerned, than it was twenty-five years ago. The "invasion" cleared the air.

CHAPTER XXXIV

Mr. Clay's romance, reproduced herewith from the Live Stock Report of December 20, 1901, while not essentially part of the serial "My Life on the Range," is fittingly republished at this time in connection with the three preceding chapters dealing with the Swan Land & Cattle Co. As almost twentythree years have elapsed since the "Silence of the Sybille" was written and published it will be read for the first time by the large majority of our readers and we venture to say with fresh interest by those who will recall it.

T

HE sun had set over Sherman Hill in a cloud of dull white; the roseate afterglow was absent and the dome of the Capitol at Cheyenne missed the evening setting of purple and old gold. As Jake Freeborn, the wellknown cashier of the Stock Growers' National Bank, looked at the barometer in the hall of the club he gave his head a shake and exclaimed, “I never saw old reliable point to such a depression before." It had been a lovely winter in Wyoming; day after day brought bright, sunny weather, with slight coverings of snow, not enough to water the old cows on the divides, where there was a little feed left after a dry, trying summer. By mid-March the ranchman thought he was out of the woods, and was only waiting for spring to see his cows, thin almost as their shadows, pick up and come to life again. The cattle and sheep owners who had been east or elsewhere since Christmas were dropping into Cheyenne to await the spring stock meetings before dispersing for the season's work. The next morning was dull. It looked like a mist from the windows, but your eye caught little eddies of snow playing around the veranda, and up and down the street small wreaths of gray pepper were being formed, the dust mixing but not melting with the snowy covering that was falling. A team was at the door to take a ranchman north to Bear Creek, but "Mike" Glover, who stood in the doorway of the club said, "Turn them back to the stable; you may reach Bear Creek or you may not, but my advice is, don't try it."

The advice was good. It was the beginning of a three days' blizzard, and such a blizzard! The snow came driving from all points of the compass. It built up great drifts in the streets of Cheyenne. It howled wildly around the Stock Growers' National Bank corner, and even Van Tassel, lithe, active and energetic, was scarcely able to make his way from the Nob Hill of Wyoming's capital to the business part of the city. The weather god was doing his worst. Out on the plains the shepherds were catching it; the cattleman could do nothing with his outside stock, but he was busy feeding on the meadows and pastures. The wires, telegraph and telephone were down, and the Cheyenne Northern train was stalled somewhere. The storm on the third day spent its fury. When the clouds rolled by and the sun came out there was nothing but wreaths on every street corner of Cheyenne. Many of the house walls were marbled with plastered snow, while from the eaves great icicles hung toward the ground. It was a weird, melancholy sort of scene. The roar of the storm was past, but the aftermath was yet to be gleaned.

The train from the north had got in, bringing direful accounts of the loss and disaster to stock, so the next morning we started out in it, and, after bucking snow on Pole and Horse Creeks, we dropped down to Iron Mountain-where the iron horse enters the valley of the Chug. It is a downhill pull in a sheltered valley. In summer the stream meanders through rich meadow lands. In winter frost often holds it firmly in its grasp, but there is as a rule a light snowfall, and through the leafless trees that guard the stream you see only brown hillsides, or buttes of clay and decomposing rocks. Over bridge and trestle, across trembling meadows, through herds of cattle, in sight of ranches where hayricks abound; down, down by the stream's side the train rushes, whistling at crossings, letting off steam and tooting sharp shrieks of danger to trespassing calves, till it pulls up at Chugwater, where Judge Foss, the Rip Van Winkle of the valley, accosts the trainmen and most of the passengers. The engine gets water and coal. There is more tooting and

whistling. Then it glides away further down the valley and the great excitement of the day has passed, so far as Chugwater is concerned.

Over half a mile below is the Kelly place, called after Hi Kelly, who lived there a quarter of a century ago. The buildings are spacious, there is a big square brick house with shingle roof, standing in a grove of cottonwoods; a big barn built of logs and boards, shingled also, and various sheds that are useful in winter days. Around the place are meadows and great willow patches, with box elder, which in summer are woven almost solid with wild hops and trailing clematis. There in old days the white-tailed deer used to harbor, and even now they come across from the breaks of Goshen Hole to spend their midsummer days when the alfalfa is luscious and the hand of the hunter is stayed.

The teams that had been used in the afternoon in the hay wagons had gone into the barn and the men were bedding them down for the night. At the door stood the foreman, a big, stalwart fellow, passed thirty by one or two years. A Nova Scotian by birth, he had lived long in the West, and most, if not all, of the time on the Swan ranch. He had seen it in its zenith as an open range, had then helped in the craze to build wire fences, and now, after many ups and downs it was settling down to new conditions of greatly improved cattle and proper care in winter. Just as he turned to go in the house, the cow outfit rode up. Heading them was a dark little fellow whom Banks, the foreman, addressed, "Hello, Dave, where from?" Dave's laconic reply was "Sybille." Then he and his men dropped deftly from their horses, took their saddles off and led their horses into the barn and fed them. All then made tracks to the house and began to strip their outer garments. Off came gloves, big overcoats, blue overalls and, lastly, overshoes, a sine qua non for a horseman in those parts during the winter; in fact, they are not amiss on the Laramie plains on summer mornings. Dave looked the typical cowpuncher. Under medium height, he was spare, sinewy, and he sat on the horse as a