"; G. D. Bradley's "Story of the Pony
Express"; "Overland Stage to California," by F. A. Root and W. E.
Connely; Inman's "Santa Fe Trail"; Humphreyville's "Twenty Years Among
Our Hostile Indians"; Richardson's "Beyond the Mississippi"; Bourke's
"On the Border With Crook"; J. Ross Brown's "Adventures in the Apache
Country"; Charles Siringo's "History of Billy the Kid"; Bard's "Life
of Billy Dixon, Scout and Plainsman"; Brown's "History of Texas."

CONTENTS

PAGE
HOW DEATH VALLEY WAS NAMED 3
JOAQUIN MURIETA 25
TOMBSTONE 54
TOMBSTONE'S WILD OATS 80
THE SHOW-DOWN 105
THE PASSING OF JOHN RINGO 132
JOHN SLAUGHTER'S WAY 160
COCHISE 190
ONE AGAINST MANY 218
THE OVERLAND MAIL 248
BOOT-HILL 277

WHEN THE WEST WAS YOUNG

HOW DEATH VALLEY WAS NAMED

There were three of us sitting on a pile of lumber in a sun-baked
little mining town down near the Arizona border. One of my companions
was the sheriff of the county and the other was an old man with snowy
beard and sky-blue eyes whom every one called "Mac." To look at him
was to behold a vision of the past.

As we were whiling away the time with idle talk something was said
which aroused the spirit of reminiscence within this survivor of the
unfenced West. He closed his jack-knife with a snap, threw away a pine
stick from which he had been peeling shavings, and turning his
sky-blue eyes on the sheriff, "I remember--" he began.

After which he told of cheating Death in quicksand fords, of day-long
battles with naked Apaches in the malapi, of fighting off bandits from
the stage while the driver kept the horses on a run up Dragoon Pass,
of grim old ranchmen stalking cattle-thieves by night, of frontier
sheriffs and desperadoes and a wilderness that was more savage than
the wild riders who sought sanctuary within its arid solitudes. He did
not talk for mo