THE DANGEROUS CLASSES ‘OUT WEST.’

Globe, Volume I, Issue 38, 14 July 1874, Page 3

THE DANGEROUS CLASSES ‘OUT WEST.’

Unless a large proportion of American local papers were carefully read, a very faint idea could be formed of the lawlessness of the border, and of more than the border. Nor, indeed, would the reading of any quantity of papers completely enable the dweller in an old country to arrive at a fair judgment of the state of things in new settlements ; for many incidents, each of which would excite a whole county in England, are passed over as being too common to need remark ; and sometimes are omitted through fear. Let me briefly relate what I happen to know of the state of things. To intending emigrants, the information may be useful. The house in which I dwelt in New Mexico stands at the corner of what is intended to be a plaza, or square, and on the very ground it occupies, Cherokee Bill committed one of the most wanton of all his murders. This desperado —all the ruffians are styled ‘ desperadoes’ in the West—although known by an Indian soubriquet, was a white man ; and about half-a-dozen years back, he was crossing the plaza with my informant, when they met a total stranger, probably a teamster, who was going quietly about his business. To the surprise of his companion, Cherokee Bill said : ‘ I feel like shooting somebody today, and I should like to see this fellow kick;’ and he shot him dead then and there. He was never molested for it; indeed, there was not at that time, and can hardly be said to be now, any one to notice such peccadilloes. In the natural course of events, Cherokee met his fate, as all such wretches do, after perpetrating an enormous amount of mischief.

The crimes, detection, or pursuit of horsethieves and cattle-stealers, will always occupy a very prominent place in border records. On the frontier, indeed, it would be a trite remark to say that the killing a man was held a trivial offence compared to the stealing of a horse, and the latter is punished with far the greater certainty and severity. Two young men, who up to that time had borne very good characters, stole a couple of horses from a certain rancho or farm, and information being given which put the owners on the right scent, they were pursued. The pursuing party consisted of live men, all well known to myself, one being proprietor of a large tract of land, another a farmer, while the others were men in the employ of the lirst. They overtook the thieves about eighteen miles from the town where I lived, and as we had an ‘ alcalde,’ or justice, they told the men they should take them into our place for trial. They all passed the night together very amicably, and started for the town in the morning. But the captors rode in by themselves, and explained, in the most nonchalant manner, that the men had tried to escape, and that they had been obliged to shoot them. They evidently did not intend to trouble themselves any further in the matter ; but we sent a wagon up to the wild mountain-road they had been travelling, and there, where the torrent which ran for many miles by the side of the road, made a sweep, so as to 'give a broader expanse of ground than usual, the bodies were found. It was the most unlikely place for an attempt to escape ; above and below the spot, the ravine, or canon, which held the road and the stream was very narrow, and a desperate rider might hope to escape by dashing into the brush on the slope ; but it seemed as if these prisoners, when trying to get away, had actually ridden their horses into the crescent formed by the bend of the river, just where there was no cover and no egress. Their captors declared, too, that as the prisoners would not stop, they gred after them. No surgical examination took place ; a brief inquiry was held before the justice, who no more dared to convict, or send the men for trial, than he dared try to muzzle a tiger ; and the decision was, that the prisoners met their death while trying to escape from justifiable arrest by an association in these parts. This association is something absolutely unique. Texas is, as probably every one knows, the greatest cattle-raising state in the Union, and it is probably the most lawless place which was ever ruled, or pretended to be ruled, by a settled government. Very great injury is caused to the stockmen by what is termed the Comanche cattle-trade ; those Indians ‘running off” great numbers of cattle, and selling them to their white accomplices in New Mexico, who drive them into Colorado and Kansas, where they sell them at an enormous pro6t. But for the white portion of the confederacy, it is self-evident that the trade could not exist ; the Indians might steal some for themselves, but the whites furnish them with arms, whisky, blankets, and money, and encourage them to make raids, until the loss is supposed to amount to ninety thousand head per year. The remedy is in the hands of the government, who could make it illegal for herds, or, as they are always called hero, ‘bunches’ of cattle to cross the state boundaries excepting at specified posts, where officers would examine the vouchers, and pass them. Nothing of this kind being done, the aggrieved stockmen took the law into their own hands, and raised a force —which still exists, as the events I speak of are of to-day—under the control of Mr John Hitson of Texas, himself a heavy suffmer by these robberies, and hence it is called ‘liibton’s Cavalry.’ Tin's force is about seventy strong; the land-owner pre-

viously alluded to, and his two men, who shot the horse-thieves, being of the corps, and it carries everything with a very high hand. Without the slightest warrant, they slop herds of cattle wherever they meet them, and if any of the animals are marked with the brands included in their list —and they have the marks of more than eight hundred cattleholders with them—they demand to see the bills of sale, and if these from any reason cannot be produced, the cavalry seize all cattle so branded. When these seizures arc numerous enough to form a respectable herd, they are sent away, and sold ; half the proceeds going to their respective owners, and half to the captors. To he continued.