THE DESERT AND THE ROSE 173 



tinct in our section. As it chanced a deadly feud 

 was at that date raging at no very distant point 

 between cattle and sheepmen. The Bad Man, East 

 and West, will be extinct when laws are justly ad- 

 ministered and human beings' "angry passions" 

 cease to rise; just as lynchings will be unheard of 

 when the proper administration of justice comes in- 

 to its own. In New Mexico, at all events — which 

 is not Texas — lynchings are practically unknown, 

 or unknown in my experience. But when men are 

 permitted to commit murder, not once, but several 

 times, and by some quibble of the law, combined 

 with the financial ability to pay lawyers, escape pun- 

 ishment, sooner or later the people are tempted to 

 take the law as it is meant into their own hands — 

 law as it is written, not as it is too often applied. 

 Commonsense assures us that there is but one ob- 

 vious remedy for lynching; but into much bombastic 

 talk commonsense declines to enter. As for cow- 

 boys — they will continue to exist so long as "the 

 wonderful country" spreads before the cattlemen 

 leagues and leagues of high ranges unfit for cultiva- 

 tion. With every passing year more fences are erect- 

 ed, but cowboys, even if in diminished numbers, re- 

 main indispensable. Did space allow, I could relate 

 anecdotes of the Wild West cowboy, which would 

 place him a good deal higher in the scale of good 

 breeding and chivalry than many so-called educated 

 and superior men can lay claim to — in the experi- 

 ence of a lone woman, that is. And surely no one 

 is better fitted than the said lone woman to set the 

 truth before the uninformed reader. 



