ux country
north of the Platte between 1875 and 1880) few long stayed--no matter
what their occupation--who were slow on the trigger: it was back to
Mother Earth or home for them.

Of the supporters of the law in that period Boone May was one of the
finest examples any frontier community ever boasted. Early in 1876 he
came to Cheyenne with an elder brother and engaged in freighting thence
overland to the Black Hills. Quite half the length of the stage road
was then infested by hostile Sioux. This meant heavy risks and high
pay. The brothers prospered so handsomely that, toward the end of the
year, Boone withdrew from freighting, bought a few cattle and horses,
and built and occupied a ranch at the stage-road crossing of Lance
Creek, midway between the Platte and Deadwood, in the very heart of the
Sioux country. Boone was then well under thirty, graceful of figure,
dark-haired, wore a slender downy moustache that served only to
emphasize his youth, but possessed that reserve and repose of manner
most typical of the utterly fearless.

The Sioux made his acquaintance early, to their grief. One night they
descended on his ranch and carried off all the stage horses and most of
Boone's. Although the "sign" showed there were fifteen or twenty in
the party, at daylight Boone took their trail, alone. The third day
thereafter he returned to the ranch with all the stolen stock, besides
a dozen split-eared Indian ponies, as compensation for his trouble,
taken at what cost of strategy or blood Boone never told.

Learning of this exploit from his drivers, Al. Patrick, the
superintendent of the stage line, took the next coach to Lance Creek
and brought Boone back to Deadwood, enlisted in his corps of
"messengers"; he was too good timber to miss.

At that time every coach south-bound from Deadwood to Cheyenne carried
thousands in its mail-pouches and express-boxes; and once a week a
treasure coach armored with boiler plate, carrying no passengers, and
guarded by six or eight "messengers" or "sawed-off shotgun men,"
conveyed often as high as two hundred thousand dollars of hard-won
Black Hills gold bars.

Thus it naturally followed that, throughout 1877 and 1878, it was the
exception for a coach to get through from the Chugwater to Jenny's
stockade without being held up by bandits at least once.

Any that happened to escape Jack Wadkins in the south were likely to
fall prey to Dune Blackburn in the north--the two most des