THE CATTLE COUNTRY OF THE FAR WEST 1 -. 



of the outrages quoted in Eastern papers as their handiwork are such in 

 reahty, the average Easterner apparently considering every individual who 

 wears a broad hat and carries a six-shooter a cowboy. These outrages 

 are, as a rule, the work of the roughs and criminals who always gather on 

 the outskirts of civilization, and who infest every frontier town until the 

 decent citizens become sufficiently numerous and determined to take the 

 law into their own hands and drive them out. The old buffalo- hunters, 

 who formed a distinct class, became powerful forces for evil once they had 

 destroyed the vast herds of mighty beasts the pursuit of which had been 

 their means of livelihood. They were absolutely shiftless and improvident ; 

 they had no settled habits ; they were inured to peril and hardship, but 

 entirely unaccustomed to steady work ; and so they afforded just the ma- 

 terials from which to make the bolder and more desperate kinds of crim- 

 inals. When the game was gone they hung round the settlements for 

 some little time, and then many of them naturally took to horse-stealing, 

 cattle-killing, and highway robbery, although others, of course, went into 

 honest pursuits. They were men who died off rapidly, however ; for it is 

 curious to see how many of these plainsmen, in spite of their iron nerves 

 and thews, have their constitutions completely undermined, as much by 

 the terrible hardships they have endured as by the fits of prolonged and 

 bestial revelry with which they have varied them. 



The "bad men," or professional fighters and man-killers, are of a 

 different stamp, quite a number of them being, according to their light, 

 perfectly honest. These are the men who do most of the killing in fron- 

 tier communities ; yet it is a noteworthy fact that the men who are killed 

 generally deserve their fate. These men are, of course, used to brawling, 

 and are not only sure shots, but, what is equally important, able to "draw" 

 their weapons with marvelous quickness. They think nothing whatever 

 of murder, and are the dread and terror of their associates ; yet they are 

 very chary of taking the life of a man of good standing, and will often 

 weaken and back down at once if confronted fearlessly. With many of 

 them their courage arises from confidence in their own powers and knowl- 

 edge of the fear in which they are held ; and men of this type often show 

 the white feather when they get in a tight place. Others, however, will 

 face any odds without flinching; and I have known of these men fighting, 

 when mortally wounded, with a cool, ferocious despair that was terrible. 

 As elsewhere, so here, very quiet men are often those who in an emer- 

 gency show themselves best able to hold their own. These despera- 

 does always try to "get the drop" on a foe — that is, to take him at a 

 disadvantage before he can use his own weapon. I have known more 



