IN COWBOY LAND. 



209 



when these stages have passed, find themselves 

 surrounded by conditions which accentuate 

 their worst qualities, and make their best qual- 

 ities useless. The average desperado, for in- 

 stance, 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 descendants 

 would doubtless accommodate themselves by 

 degrees to the changing circumstances. But 

 unfortunately in the far West the transition 

 takes place with marvellous abruptness, and at 

 an altogether unheard-of speed, and many a 

 man's nature is unable to change with suffi- 

 * cient rapidity to allow him to harmonize with 

 his environment. In consequence, 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, al- 

 though not in all respects a conventionally 

 moral, ancestor. 



Most of the men with whom I was inti- 

 mately 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 



