h also were
the excuses to be offered for some of the men who did what to them did
not seem wrong acts. The sudden hostility of the newly-come cow men
embittered and inflamed them, and from this it was easy and natural to
the arbitrament of arms.

[Illustration: HOW THE RUSTLER WORKED
The above plate illustrates the manner in which cow-brands were changed.
The original brand appears in each case to the left, and the various
alterations follow. It will be noted that with every change there is
something added--the rule always adopted by the swindler]

The bad man of the plains dates to this era, and his acts may be
attributed to these causes. There were to be found among these men many
refugees and outlaws, as well as many better men gone wrong through
point of view. Fierce and far were the battles between the rustlers and
the cow barons. Commerce had its way at last. The lawless man had to go,
and he had to go even before the law had come.

The Vigilantes of the cattle range, organizing first in Montana and
working southward, made a clean sweep in their work. In one campaign
they killed somewhere between sixty and eighty men accused of cattle
rustling. They hung thirteen men on one railroad bridge one morning in
northwestern Nebraska. The statement is believed to be correct that, in
the ten years from 1876 to 1886, they executed more men without process
of law than have been executed under the law in all the United States
since then. These lynchings also were against the law. In short, it may
perhaps begin to appear to those who study into the history of our
earlier civilization that the term "law" is a very wide and lax and
relative one, and one extremely difficult of exact application.

Chapter XII

Wild Bill Hickok--_The Beau Ideal of the Western Bad Man; Chivalric,
Daring, Generous, and Game_--_A Type of the Early Western Frontier
Officer_.

As has been shown in preceding chapters, the Western plains were passed
over and left unsettled until the advent of the railroads, which began
to cross the plains coincident with the arrival of the great cattle
herds which came up from the South after a market. This market did not
wait for the completion of the railroads, but met the railroads more
than half way; indeed, followed them quite across the plains. The
frontier sheriff now came upon the Western stage as he had never done
before. The bad man also sprang into sudden popular recognition, the
more so becaus