In Cowboy Land. 413 



who, when these stages have passed, find themselves sur- 

 rounded by conditions which accentuate their worst qual- 

 ities, and make their best qualities useless. The average 

 desperado, for instance, has, after all, much the same 

 standard of morals that the Norman nobles had in the 

 days of the battle of Hastings, and, ethically and morally, 

 he is decidedly in advance of the vikings, who were the 

 ancestors of these same nobles and to whom, by the way, 

 he himself could doubtless trace a portion of his blood. 

 If the transition from the wild lawlessness of life in the 

 wilderness or on the border to a higher civilization were 

 stretched out over a term of centuries, he and his descend- 

 ants would doubtless accommodate themselves by degrees 

 to the changing circumstances. But unfortunately in the 

 far West the transition takes place with marvellous abrupt- 

 ness, and at an altogether unheard-of speed, and many a 

 man's nature is unable to change with sufficient rapidity to 

 allow him to harmonize with his environment. In conse- 

 quence, unless he leaves for still wilder lands, he ends by 

 getting hung instead of founding a family which would 

 revere his name as that of a very capable, although not in 

 all respects a conventionally moral, ancestor. 



Most of the men with whom I was intimately thrown 

 during my life on the frontier and in the wilderness were 

 good fellows, hard-working, brave, resolute, and truthful. 

 At times, of course, they were forced of necessity to do 

 deeds which would seem startling to dwellers in cities and 

 in old settled places ; and though they waged a very stern 

 and relentless warfare upon evil-doers whose misdeeds had 

 immediate and tangible bad results, they showed a wide 



