perate
bandit-leaders in the country.

In February, 1878, I had occasion to follow some cattle thieves from
Fort Laramie to Deadwood. Returning south by coach one bitter evening
we pulled into Lance Creek, eight passengers inside, Boone May and
myself on the box with 'Gene Barnett the driver; Stocking, another
famous messenger, roosted behind us atop of the coach, fondling his
sawed-off shotgun.

From Lance Creek southward lay the greatest danger zone. At that
point, therefore, Boone and Stocking shifted from the coach to the
saddle, and, as 'Gene popped his whip and the coach crunched away
through the snow, both dropped back perhaps thirty yards behind us.

An hour later, just as the coach got well within a broad belt of plum
bushes that lined the north bank of Old Woman's Fork, out into the
middle of the road sprang a lithe figure that threw a snap shot over
'Gene's head and halted us.

Instantly six others surrounded the coach and ordered us down. I
already had a foot on the nigh front wheel to descend, when a shot out
of the brush to the west, (Boone's, I later learned) dropped the man
ahead of the team.

Then followed a quick interchange of shots for perhaps a minute,
certainly no more, and then I heard Boone's cool voice:

"Drive on, 'Gene!"

"Move an' I'll kill you!" came in a hoarse bandit's voice from the
thicket east of us.

"Drive on, 'Gene, or _I'll kill_ you," came then from Boone, in a tone
of such chilling menace that 'Gene threw the bud into the leaders, and
away we flew at a pace materially improved by three or four shots the
bandits sent singing past our ears and over the team! The next down
coach brought to Cheyenne the comforting news that Boone and Stocking
had killed four of the bandits and stampeded the other three.

Within six months after Boone was employed, both Dune Blackburn and
Jack Wadkins disappeared from the stage road, dropped out of sight as
if the earth had opened and swallowed them, as it probably had. Boone
had a way of absenting himself for days from his routine duties along
the stage road. He slipped off entirely alone after this new quarry
precisely as he had followed the Sioux horse-raiders and, while he
never admitted it, the belief was general that he had run down and
"planted" both. Indeed it is almost a certainty this is true, for
beasts of their type never change their stripes, and sure it is that
neither were ever seen or heard of after their disappearanc