mposed of numerous smaller bands,
impossible to detect. Because its victims never lived to tell how or by
whom they had been robbed! This Legion worked slowly and in the dark.
It did not bother to rob for little gain. It had strange and unerring
information of large quantities of gold-dust. Two prospectors going out
on the Bannack road, packing fifty pounds of gold, were found shot
to pieces. A miner named Black, who would not trust his gold to the
stage-express, and who left Adler Creek against advice, was never
seen or heard of again. Four other miners of the camp, known to carry
considerable gold, were robbed and killed at night on their way to their
cabins. And another was found dead in his bed. Robbers had crept to his
tent, slashed the canvas, murdered him while he slept, and made off with
his belt of gold.

An evil day of blood had fallen upon Alder Creek. There were terrible
and implacable men in the midst of the miners, by day at honest toil,
learning who had gold, and murdering by night. The camp had never been
united, but this dread fact disrupted any possible unity. Every man, or
every little group of men, distrusted the other, watched and spied and
lay awake at night. But the robberies continued, one every few days, and
each one left no trace. For dead men could not talk.

Thus was ushered in at Alder Creek a regime of wildness that had
no parallel in the earlier days of '49 and '51. Men frenzied by the
possession of gold or greed for it responded to the wildness of that
time and took their cue from this deadly and mysterious Border Legion.
The gold-lust created its own blood-lust. Daily the population of Alder
Creek grew in the new gold-seekers and its dark records kept pace. With
distrust came suspicion and with suspicion came fear, and with fear came
hate--and these, in already distorted minds, inflamed a hell. So that
the most primitive passions of mankind found outlet and held sway. The
operations of the Border Legion were lost in deeds done in the gambling
dens, in the saloons, and on the street, in broad day. Men fought for
no other reason than that the incentive was in the charged air. Men
were shot at gaming-tables--and the game went on. Men were killed in the
dance-halls, dragged out, marking a line of blood on the rude floor--and
the dance went on. Still the pursuit of gold went on, more frenzied than
ever, and still the greater and richer claims were struck. The price of
gold soared and the com