merica]

Of course, such a man as this, whether confronted by an officer of the
law or by another man against whom he has a personal grudge, or who has
in any way challenged him to the ordeal of weapons, was steadfast in his
own belief that he was as brave as any, and as quick with weapons. Thus,
until at length he met his master in the law of human progress and
civilization, he simply added to his own list of victims, or was added
to the list of another of his own sort. For a very long time, moreover,
there existed a great region on the frontier where the law could not
protect. There was good reason, therefore, for a man's learning to
depend upon his own courage and strength and skill. He had nothing else
to protect him, whether he was good or bad. In the typical days of the
Western bad man, life was the property of the individual, and not of
society, and one man placed his life against another's as the only way
of solving hard personal problems. Those days and those conditions
brought out some of the boldest and most reckless men the earth ever
saw. Before we freely criticize them, we ought fully to understand them.

Chapter II

The Imitation Desperado--_The Cheap "Long-Hair"_--_A Desperado in
Appearance, a Coward at Heart_--_Some Desperadoes Who Did Not "Stand the
Acid."_

The counterfeit bad man, in so far as he has a place in literature, was
largely produced by Western consumptives for Eastern consumption.
Sometimes he was in person manufactured in the East and sent West. It is
easy to see the philosophical difference between the actual bad man of
the West and the imitation article. The bad man was an evolution; the
imitation bad man was an instantaneous creation, a supply arising full
panoplied to fill a popular demand. Silently there arose, partly in the
West and partly in the East, men who gravely and calmly proceeded to
look the part. After looking the part for a time, to their own
satisfaction at least, and after taking themselves seriously as
befitted the situation, they, in very many instances, faded away and
disappeared in that Nowhere whence they came. Some of them took
themselves too seriously for their own good. Of course, there existed
for some years certain possibilities that any one of these bad men might
run against the real thing.

There always existed in the real, sober, level-headed West a contempt
for the West-struck man who was not really bad, but who wanted to seem
"bad." Singular