ON THE FRINGE 317 



proceedings. Everything was quiet, to all appearance, 

 in the town that night. Next morning the body of 

 Big-nosed George was found hanging to a telegraph- 

 post just outside the depot, and the discovery caused 

 no surprise, although no one could give the slightest 

 information as to how the tragedy had happened. It 

 was rumoured that shortly after midnight a party of 

 armed men, masked and mounted, had surrounded 

 the building in which the prisoner was confined, had 

 forcibly taken him from custody, and forthwith hanged 

 him in the manner described. 



Next day everybody went about his business just 

 as usual, satisfied that substantial justice had been 

 done that the murder of Jim Rankin, the Sheriff, 

 had been duly avenged, and that there was now one 

 desperado the less in the Territory* of Wyoming. 



A few years later I had an opportunity of witnessing 

 the proceedings in an alleged cattle-stealing case in 

 the far west. In conjunction with certain circum- 

 stances which were indirectly connected with the 

 case, and partly led up to its trial, the proceedings 

 in question throw an interesting sidelight on some 

 aspects of frontier life, and so I will endeavour briefly 

 to relate the story. 



The scene was the town of Caspar, which is 

 not one of the leading cities of the United States. 

 It is a frontier town in the State of Wyoming, 

 about 150 miles north-west of Cheyenne, little 

 known until it became the terminus of a branch of 

 the Union Pacific Railroad. It has two streets, at 

 right angles to one another, of the usual western- 

 town description. Its exports are mainly sheep, 

 cattle, and wool, and its chief imports horses, dry- 



* Wyoming has since become a State. 



