itted long after the Younger boys
were in the penitentiary.

In view of the bloody careers of all these men, it is to be said that
the law has been singularly lenient with them. Yet the Northfield
incident was conclusive, and was the worst setback ever received by any
gang of bad men; unless, perhaps, that was the defeat of the Dalton gang
at Coffeyville, Kansas, some years later, the story of which is given in
the following chapter.

Chapter XXI

Bad Men of the Indian Nations--_A Hotbed of Desperadoes_--_Reasons for
Bad Men in the Indian Nations_--_The Dalton Boys_--_The Most Desperate
Street Fight of the West_.

What is true for Texas, in the record of desperadoism, is equally
applicable to the country adjoining Texas upon the north, long known
under the general title of the Indian Nations; although it is now
rapidly being divided and allotted under the increasing demands of an
ever-advancing civilization.

The great breeding ground of outlaws has ever been along the line of
demarcation between the savage and the civilized. Here in the Indian
country, as though in a hotbed especially contrived, the desperado has
flourished for generations. The Indians themselves retained much their
old savage standards after they had been placed in this supposedly
perpetual haven of refuge by the government. They have been followed,
ever since the first movement of the tribes into these reservations, by
numbers of unscrupulous whites such as hang on the outskirts of the
settlements and rebel at the requirements of civilization. Many white
men of certain type married among the Indians, and the half-breed is
reputed as a product inheriting the bad traits of both races and the
good ones of neither--a sweeping statement not always wholly true. Among
these also was a large infusion of negro blood, emanating from the
slaves brought in by the Cherokees, and added to later by negroes moving
in and marrying among the tribes. These mixed bloods seem to have been
little disposed toward the ways of law and order. Moreover, the system
of law was here, of course, altogether different from that of the
States. The freedom from restraint, the exemption from law, which always
marked the border, here found their last abiding place. The Indians were
not adherents to the white man's creed, save as to the worst features,
and they kept their own creed of blood. No man will ever know how many
murders have been committed in these fair and pleasa