TIL TAYLOR— SHERIFF 



these formative days when law was flouted and defied 

 by these desperadoes, many of them gravitated to the 

 mining camps of Eastern Oregon. They seemed to be 

 a conscienceless type. Many were men "wanted" or 

 not wanted in the East; many of them not only made 

 highway robbery a profession, but openly boasted of it. 



Thus a form of organized brigandage developed. 

 No sheriff could bring in a criminal to justice without 

 becoming a victim of the "gang." This order of 

 things held sway and whole communities were terror- 

 ized until the law-respecting citizens organized into 

 vigilance committees and courts against these outlaws, 

 these law-preservers being known as "vigilantes." The 

 "short cut" was sometimes administered to some of 

 the worst by way of the "short end of a halter rope." 



Among the names written blackest in this North- 

 west story are those of Romaine and his terrible band, 

 one of whom remarked to the outfit when about to 

 swing for his crimes, "Good-bye, boys. I'll meet you 

 in hell in fifteen minutes." There was the famous 

 McNab and the notorious "Hank" Vaughan raised in 

 The Dalles, who always slept with gun in hand. It 

 was he who, when fleeing from pursuit with a band of 

 horses he had rustled, killed the sheriff of Umatilla 

 and wounded the deputy. 



Since then, there have been and probably always will 



be, men who for one reason or the other live outside 



the law. Those days were days of frontier terrors in 



which the outlaw outdevilled the Indian and where the 



.45 was often a man's best friend. They were days, 



too, of romance and adventure, a vestige of which still 



remains here and there in the dying embers which 



the flame of conquest has left on scorched remnants 



of a primitive frontier. 



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