of the size usually making up
the boat companies of that time, or the average family traveling,
mounted or on foot, through the forest-covered country of the Ohio
valley. Meason killed and pillaged pretty much as he liked for a term of
years, but as travel became too general along the Ohio, he removed to
the wilder country south of that stream, and began to operate on the old
"Natchez and Nashville Trace," one of the roadways of the South at that
time, when the Indian lands were just opening to the early settlers.
Lower Tennessee and pretty much all of Mississippi made his
stamping-grounds, and his name became a terror there, as it had been
along the Ohio. The governor of the State of Mississippi offered a
reward for his capture, dead or alive; but for a long time he escaped
all efforts at apprehension. Treachery did the work, as it has usually
in bringing such bold and dangerous men to book. Two members of his gang
proved traitors to their chief. Seizing an opportunity they crept behind
him and drove a tomahawk into his brain. They cut off the head and took
it along as proof; but as they were displaying this at the seat of
government, the town of Washington, they themselves were recognized and
arrested, and were later tried and executed; which ended the Meason
gang, one of the early and once famous desperado bands.

[Illustration: TYPES OF BORDER BARRICADES]

From the earliest days there have been border counterfeiters of coin.
One of the first and most remarkable was the noted Sturdevant, who lived
in lower Illinois, near the Ohio river, in the first quarter of the last
century. Sturdevant was also something of a robber king, for he could at
any time wind his horn and summon to his side a hundred armed men. He
was ostensibly a steady farmer, and lived comfortably, with a good corps
of servants and tenants about him; but his ablest assistants did not
dwell so close to him. He had an army of confederates all over the
middle West and South, and issued more counterfeit money than any man
before, and probably than any man since. He always exacted a regular
price for his money--sixteen dollars for a hundred in counterfeit--and
such was the looseness of currency matters at that time that he found
many willing to take a chance in his trade. He never allowed any
confederate to pass a counterfeit bill in his own state, or in any other
way to bring himself under the surveillance of local law; and they were
all obliged to be esp