nything but a
quarrelsome man, yet none but himself could enumerate the many conflicts
in which he had been engaged."

These are the words of one fighting man about another, and both men are
entitled to good rank in the annals of the West. The praise of an army
general for a man of no rank or wealth leaves us feeling that, after
all, it was a possible thing for a bad man to be a good man, and worthy
of respect and admiration, utterly unmingled with maudlin sentiment or
weak love for the melodramatic.

Chapter XIII

Frontier Wars--_Armed Conflicts of Bodies of Men on the
Frontiers_--_Political Wars; Town Site Wars; Cattle Wars_--_Factional
Fights_.

The history of the border wars on the American frontier, where the
fighting was more like battle than murder, and where the extent of the
crimes against law became too large for the law ever to undertake any
settlement, would make a long series of bloody volumes. These wars of
the frontier were sometimes political, as the Kansas anti-slavery
warfare; or, again, they were fights over town sites, one armed band
against another, and both against the law. Wars over cows, as of the
cattle men against the rustlers and "little fellows," often took on the
phase of large armed bodies of men meeting in bloody encounter; though
the bloodiest of these wars are those least known, and the _opera
bouffe_ wars those most widely advertised.

The state of Kansas, now so calm and peaceful, is difficult to picture
as the scene of a general bloodshed; yet wherever you scratch Kansas
history you find a fight. No territory of equal size has had so much war
over so many different causes. Her story in Indian fighting, gambler
fighting, outlaw fighting, town site fighting, and political fighting is
one not approached by any other portion of the West; and if at times it
was marked with fanaticism or with sordidness, it was none the less
bitter and notable.

The border wars of Kansas and Missouri at the time immediately preceding
the civil war would be famed in song and story, had not the greater
conflict between North and South wiped all that out of memory. Even the
North was divided over the great question of the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise. Alabama, Arkansas, California, Delaware, Florida, Georgia,
Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, New
Hampshire, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and
Virginia gave a whole or a majority vote for thi