suggested in these pages,
which deal rather with premises than conclusions. The lesson of our
dealings with our bad men of the past can teach us, if we like, the best
method of dealing with our bad men to-day.

There are other lessons which we might take from an acquaintance with
frontier methods of enforcing respect for the law; and the first of
these is a practical method of handling criminals in the initial
executive acts of the law. Never were American laws so strong as to-day,
and never were our executive officers so weak. Our cities frequently are
ridden with criminals or rioters. We set hundreds of policemen to
restore order, but order is not restored. What is the average policeman
as a criminal-taker? Cloddy and coarse of fiber, rarely with personal
heredity of mental or bodily vigor, with no training at arms, with no
sharp, incisive quality of nerve action, fat, unwieldy, unable to run a
hundred yards and keep his breath, not skilled enough to kill his man
even when he has him cornered, he is the archetype of all unseemliness
as the agent of a law which to-day needs a sterner upholding than ever
was the case in all our national life. We use this sort of tools in
handling criminals, when each of us knows, or ought to know, that the
city which would select twenty Western peace officers of the old type
and set them to work without restrictions as to the size of their
imminent graveyards, would free itself of criminals in three months'
time, and would remain free so long as its methods remained in force.

As for the subject-matter of the following work, it may be stated that,
while attention has been paid to the great and well-known instances and
epochs of outlawry, many of the facts given have not previously found
their way into print. The story of the Lincoln County War of the
Southwest is given truthfully for the first time, and after full
acquaintance with sources of information now inaccessible or passing
away. The Stevens County War of Kansas, which took place, as it were,
but yesterday and directly at our doors, has had no history but a
garbled one; and as much might be said of many border encounters whose
chief use heretofore has been to curdle the blood in penny-dreadfuls.
Accuracy has been sought among the confusing statements purporting to
constitute the record in such historic movements as those of the
"vigilantes" of California and Montana mining days, and of the later
cattle days when "wars" were com