man, after whom the place had been named. This Jules had been
feathering his own nest at the expense of the company, and the new
management supplanted him with one Jack Slade, whose record up to that
time was either nineteen or twenty killings. Slade was put in charge
at Julesburg with instructions to clean up his division.

While the new superintendent was exterminating such highway robbers
and horse-thieves as Jules had gathered about him in this section, his
predecessor was biding in the little settlement, watching for a chance
to play even.

One day Slade came into the general store near the station, and the
Frenchman, who had seen a good opportunity for ambush here, fired both
barrels of a double-barreled shotgun into his body at a range of about
fifty feet.

Slade took to his bed. But he was made of the stuff which absorbs much
lead without any great amount of permanent harm. He was up again in a
few weeks. He hunted down Jules, who had taken refuge in the Indian
country to the north on hearing of his recovery. He brought the
prisoner back to Julesburg, and bound him to the snubbing-post in the
middle of the stage company's corral.

Accounts of what followed differ. Some authorities maintain that Slade
killed Jules. Others, who base their assertions on the statement of
men who said they were eye-witnesses, tell how Slade enjoyed himself
for some time filling the prisoner's clothing with bullet holes and
then exclaimed,

"Hell! You ain't worth the lead to kill you." And turned the victim
loose.

But all narrators agree on this; before Slade unbound the living
Jules--or the dead one, whichever it may have been--he cut off the
prisoner's ears and put them in his pocket.

It may be noted in passing that this truculent efficiency expert went
wrong in after years and wound up his days at the end of a rope in
Virginia City, Montana.

Ben Holliday carried the mails overland throughout the early sixties.
But during the summer of 1864 the Indians of the plains, for the first
time in their history, made a coalition. They united in one grand
war-party against the outposts along the line, and for a distance of
four hundred miles they destroyed stations, murdered employees, and
made off with live stock. The loss to the company was half a million
dollars.

It crippled Holliday. And the government so delayed consideration of
his claims for reimbursment that he was glad to sell the property. The
firm of Wells Fargo, w