Out on the frontier,and generally among those who spend their lives in,or on the borders of,the wilderness,life is reduced to its elemental conditions.The passions and emotions of these grim hunters of the mountains,and wild rough-riders of the plains,are simpler and stranger than those of people dwelling in more complicated states of society.As soon as the communities become settled and begin to grow with any rapidity,the American instinct for law asserts itself;but in the earlier stages each individual is obliged to be a law to himself and to guard his rights with a strong hand.Of course the transition periods are full of incongruities.Men have not yet adjusted their relations to morality and law with any niceness.They hold strongly by certain rude virtues,and on the other hand they quite fail to recognize even as shortcomings not a few traits that obtain scant mercy in older communities.Many of the desperadoes,the man-killers,and road-agents have good sides to their characters.
Often they are people,who,in certain stages of civilization,do,or have done,good work,but who,when these stages have passed,find themselves surrounded by conditions which accentuate their worst qualities,and make their best qualities useless.The average desperado,for instance,has,after all,much the same standard of morals that the Norman nobles had in the days of the battle of Hastings,and,ethically and morally,he is decidedly in advance of the vikings,who were the ancestors of these same nobles--and to whom,by the way,he himself could doubtless trace a portion of his blood.
If the transition from the wild lawlessness of life in the wilderness or on the border to a higher civilization were stretched out over a term of centuries,he and his descendants would doubtless accommodate themselves by degrees to the changing circumstances.But unfortunately in the far West the transition takes place with marvellous abruptness,and at an altogether unheard-of speed,and many a man's nature is unable to change with sufficient rapidity to allow him to harmonize with his environment.In consequence,unless he leaves for still wilder lands,he ends by getting hung instead of founding a family which would revere his name as that of a very capable,although not in all respects a conventionally moral,ancestor.
Most of the men with whom I was intimately thrown during my life on the frontier and in the wilderness were good fellows,hard-working,brave,resolute,and truthful.At times,of course,they were forced of necessity to do deeds which would seem startling to dwellers in cities and in old settled places;and though they waged a very stern and relentless warfare upon evil-doers whose misdeeds had immediate and tangible bad results,they showed a wide toleration of all save the most extreme classes of wrong,and were not given to inquiring too curiously into a strong man's past,or to criticizing him over-harshly for a failure to discriminate in finer ethical questions.Moreover,not a few of the men with whom I came in contact--with some of whom my relations were very close and friendly--had at different times led rather tough careers.This fact was accepted by them and by their companions as a fact,and nothing more.There were certain offences,such as rape,the robbery of a friend,or murder under circumstances of cowardice and treachery,which were never forgiven;but the fact that when the country was wild a young fellow had gone on the road--that is,become a highwayman,or had been chief of a gang of desperadoes,horse-thieves,and cattle-killers,was scarcely held to weigh against him,being treated as a regrettable,but certainly not shameful,trait of youth.He was regarded by his neighbors with the same kindly tolerance which respectable mediaeval Scotch borderers doubtless extended to their wilder young men who would persist in raiding English cattle even in time of peace.
Of course if these men were asked outright as to their stories they would have refused to tell them or else would have lied about them;but when they had grown to regard a man as a friend and companion they would often recount various incidents of their past lives with perfect frankness,and as they combined in a very curious degree both a decided sense of humor,and a failure to appreciate that there was anything especially remarkable in what they related,their tales were always entertaining.
Early one spring,now nearly ten years ago,I was out hunting some lost horses.They had strayed from the range three months before,and we had in a roundabout way heard that they were ranging near some broken country,where a man named Brophy had a ranch,nearly fifty miles from my own.When I started thither the weather was warm,but the second day out it grew colder and a heavy snowstorm came on.
Fortunately I was able to reach the ranch all right,finding there one of the sons of a Little Beaver ranchman,and a young cowpuncher belonging to a Texas outfit,whom I knew very well.After putting my horse into the corral and throwing him down some hay I strode into the low hut,made partly of turf and partly of cottonwood logs,and speedily warmed myself before the fire.We had a good warm supper,of bread,potatoes,fried venison,and tea.My two companions grew very sociable and began to talk freely over their pipes.There were two bunks one above the other.I climbed into the upper,leaving my friends,who occupied the lower,sitting together on a bench recounting different incidents in the careers of themselves and their cronies during the winter that had just passed.Soon one of them asked the other what had become of a certain horse,a noted cutting pony,which I had myself noticed the preceding fall.The question aroused the other to the memory of a wrong which still rankled,and he began (I alter one or two of the proper names):
