to
bring about the organization of the county; a word spoken against the
move would also have served effectually to block it. There was,
however, a certain opposition to the movement for organization on the
part of the most sober elements of the population. Some of the older
ranchmen suggested to Packard and to Fisher that they count noses.
They did so, and the result was not encouraging. Doubtless they might
organize the county, but the control of it would pass into the hands
of the crooked. Whatever causes lay behind the sudden evaporation of
the project, the fact stands that for the time being the Bad Lands
remained under the easy-going despotism of the Marquis de Mores and
his prime minister, Jake Maunders, unhampered and unillumined by the
impertinences of democracy.

The Dickinson _Press_ had truth on its side when it uttered its wail
that Medora needed housing facilities for the unruly. Medora had
never had a jail. Little Missouri had had an eight by ten shack which
one man, who knew some history, christened "the Bastile," and which
was used as a sort of convalescent hospital for men who were too drunk
to distinguish between their friends and other citizens when they
started shooting. But a sudden disaster had overtaken the Bastile one
day when a man called Black Jack had come into Little Missouri on a
wrecking train. He had a reputation that extended from Mandan to Miles
City for his ability to carry untold quantities of whiskey without
showing signs of intoxication; but Little Missouri proved his undoing.
The "jag" he developed was something phenomenal, and he was finally
locked up in the Bastile by common consent. The train crew, looking
for Black Jack at three in the morning, located him after much
searching. But the Bastile had been built by the soldiers and resisted
their efforts to break in. Thereupon they threw a line about the shack
and with the engine hauled it to the side of a flatcar attached to the
train. Then with a derrick they hoisted Little Missouri's only
depository for the helpless inebriate on the flatcar and departed
westward. At their leisure they chopped Black Jack out of his
confinement. They dumped the Bastile over the embankment somewhere a
mile west of town.

The collapse of the efforts of the champions of order to organize the
county left the problem of dealing with the lawlessness that was
rampant, as before, entirely to the impulse of outraged individuals.
There was no court, no o