go on enumerating man after man who stood
pre-eminent, whether as a killer of game, a tamer of horses, or a
queller of disorder among his people, or who, mayhap, stood out with a
more evil prominence as himself a dangerous man--one given to the
taking of life on small provocation, or one who was ready to earn his
living outside the law if the occasion demanded it. There was tall
Proffit, the sharp-shooter, from North Carolina--sinewy, saturnine,
fearless; Smith, the bear-hunter from Wyoming, and McCann, the Arizona
book-keeper, who had begun life as a buffalo-hunter. There was
Crockett, the Georgian, who had been an Internal Revenue officer, and
had waged perilous war on the rifle-bearing "moonshiners." There were
Darnell and Wood, of New Mexico, who could literally ride any horses
alive. There were Goodwin, and Buck Taylor, and Armstrong the ranger,
crack shots with rifle or revolver. There was many a skilled packer
who had led and guarded his trains of laden mules through the
Indian-haunted country surrounding some out-post of civilization.
There were men who had won fame as Rocky Mountain stage-drivers, or
who had spent endless days in guiding the slow wagon-trains across the
grassy plains. There were miners who knew every camp from the Yukon to
Leadville, and cow-punchers in whose memories were stored the brands
carried by the herds from Chihuahua to Assiniboia. There were men who
had roped wild steers in the mesquite brush of the Nueces, and who,
year in and year out, had driven the trail herds northward over
desolate wastes and across the fords of shrunken rivers to the
fattening grounds of the Powder and the Yellowstone. They were
hardened to the scorching heat and bitter cold of the dry plains and
pine-clad mountains. They were accustomed to sleep in the open, while
the picketed horses grazed beside them near some shallow, reedy pool.
They had wandered hither and thither across the vast desolation of the
wilderness, alone or with comrades. They had cowered in the shelter of
cut banks from the icy blast of the norther, and far out on the
midsummer prairies they had known the luxury of lying in the shade of
the wagon during the noonday rest. They had lived in brush lean-tos
for weeks at a time, or with only the wagon-sheet as an occasional
house. They had fared hard when exploring the unknown; they had fared
well on the round-up; and they had known the plenty of the log
ranch-houses, where the tables were spread w