the Little Missouri. Another, across the Montana border in
the valley of the Yellowstone, was Granville Stuart.

Stuart was a "forty-niner," who had crossed the continent in a
prairie-schooner as a boy and had drifted into Virginia City in the
days of its hot youth. He was a man of iron nerve, and when the time
came for a law-abiding minority to rise against a horde of thieves and
desperadoes, he naturally became one of the leaders. He played an
important part in the extermination of the famous Plummer band of
outlaws in the early sixties, and was generally regarded as one of the
most notable figures in Montana Territory.

At the meeting of the Montana Stockgrowers' Association, at Miles City
in April, there had been much discussion of the depredations of the
horse and cattle thieves, which were actually threatening to destroy
the cattle industry. The officers of the law had been helpless, or
worse, in dealing with the situation, and the majority of the
cattlemen at the convention were in favor of raising a small army of
cowboys and "raiding the country."

Stuart, who was president of the Association, fought the project
almost single-handed. He pointed out that the "rustlers" were well
organized and strongly fortified, each cabin, in fact, constituting a
miniature fortress. There was not one of them who was not a dead shot
and all were armed with the latest model firearms and had an abundance
of ammunition. No "general clean-up" on a large scale could, Stuart
contended, be successfully carried through. The first news of such a
project would put the thieves on their guard, many lives would
unnecessarily be sacrificed, and the law, in the last analysis, would
be on the side of the "rustlers."

The older stockmen growled and the younger stockmen protested,
intimating that Stuart was a coward; but his counsel prevailed. A
number of them, who "stood in" with the thieves in the hope of thus
buying immunity, carried the report of the meeting to the outlaws. The
"rustlers" were jubilant and settled down to what promised to be a
year of undisturbed "operations."

Stuart himself, however, had long been convinced that drastic action
against the thieves must be taken; and had quietly formulated his
plan. When the spring round-up was over, late in June, he called a
half-dozen representative ranchmen from both sides of the
Dakota-Montana border together at his ranch, and presented his
project. It was promptly accepted, and Stua