end, which
was the extinction of the horse and cattle thieves.
To an extraordinary extent these thieves possessed the Bad Lands. They
were here, there, and everywhere, sinister, intangible shadows,
weaving in and out of the bright-colored fabric of frontier life. They
were in every saloon and in almost every ranch-house. They rode on the
round-ups, they sat around the camp-fire with the cowpunchers. Some of
the most capable ranchmen were in league with them, bankers east and
west along the railroad were hand in glove with them. A man scarcely
dared denounce the thieves to his best friend for fear his friend
might be one of them.
There were countless small bands which operated in western Dakota,
eastern Montana, and northwestern Wyoming, each loosely organized as a
unit, yet all bound together in the tacit fellowship of outlawry. The
most tangible bond among them was that they all bought each other's
stolen horses, and were all directors of the same "underground
railway." Together they constituted not a band, but a "system," that
had its tentacles in every horse and cattle "outfit" in the Bad Lands.
As far as the system had a head at all, that head was a man named
Axelby. Other men stole a horse here or there, but Axelby stole whole
herds of fifty and a hundred at one daring sweep. He was in appearance
a typical robber chieftain, a picturesque devil with piercing black
eyes and a genius for organization and leadership. In addition to his
immediate band, scores of men whom he never saw, and who were
scattered over a territory greater than New England, served him with
absolute fidelity. They were most of them saloon-keepers, gamblers,
and men who by their prominence in the community would be unsuspected;
and there were among them more than a few ranchmen who were not averse
to buying horses under the market price. With the aid of these men,
Axelby created his smooth-running "underground railway" from the Big
Horn Mountains and the Black Hills north through Wyoming, Dakota, and
Montana. His agents in the settlements performed the office of spies,
keeping him in touch with opportunities to operate on a large scale;
and the ranchmen kept open the "underground" route by means of which
he was able to spirit his great herds of horses across the Canadian
line.
By the spring of 1884, Axelby's fame had reached the East, and even
the New York _Sun_ gave him a column:
Mr. Axelby is said to be at the head of a trusty b
|