tner
with Roosevelt and the Ferris boys in the Chimney Butte Ranch and I
have always thought he and Roosevelt had agreed beforehand to nominate
me."

Packard took up his duties, somewhat vague in his mind concerning what
was expected of him. There was no organization behind him, no
executive committee to give him instructions. With a large liberality,
characteristic of the frontier, the "mass meeting" had left to his own
discretion the demarcation of his "authority" and the manner of its
assertion. His "authority," in fact, was a gigantic bluff, but he was
not one to let so immaterial a detail weaken his nerve.

The fire department died stillborn; but the police force promptly
asserted itself. Packard had decided to "work on the transients"
first, for he could persuade them, better than he could the residents,
that he had an organization behind him, with masks and a rope. From
the start he made it a point not to mix openly in any "altercation,"
where he could avoid it, for the simple reason that the actual
fighting was in most cases done by professional "bad men," and the
death of either party to the duel, or both, was considered a source of
jubilation rather than of regret. He devoted his attention mainly to
those "floaters" whom he suspected of being in league with the
outlaws, or who, by their recklessness with firearms, made themselves
a public nuisance. He seldom, if ever, made an arrest. He merely drew
his man aside and told him that "it had been decided" that he should
leave town at once and never again appear in the round-up district of
the Bad Lands. In no case was his warning disobeyed. On the few
occasions when it was necessary for him to interfere publicly, there
were always friends of order in the neighborhood to help him seal the
exile in a box car and ship him east or west on the next freight. A
number of hilarious disciples of justice varied this proceeding one
evening by breaking open the car in which one of Packard's prisoners
lay confined and tying him to the cowcatcher of a train which had just
arrived. Word came back from Glendive at midnight that the prisoner
had reached his destination in safety, though somewhat breathless,
owing to the fact that the cowcatcher "had picked up a Texas steer on
the way."

Packard's activity as chief of police had value in keeping the
"floaters" in something resembling order; but it scarcely touched the
main problem with which the law-abiding ranchmen had to cont