Part 5

The men protested that they were good citizens, and that if he would let them off they would undertake missionary work in the cause of law and order. He let them go, then, and handed back their unloaded arms, promising them another fate, if he ever caught them in mischief. He watched them disappear behind the first rise; then, whipping up, he made the best time he could for Turkey Track Ranch, where he rested a day, delivered the borrowed buck-board, taking his prisoner next morning to jail.

XI

Redeeming No-man's Land

BILL MCDONALD AND LON BURSON GATHER IN THE BAD MEN. "NO MAN IN THE WRONG CAN STAND UP AGAINST A FELLOW THAT'S IN THE RIGHT AND KEEPS ON A-COMIN'"

It was natural that other work in No-man's Land should follow this first experiment. It having been demonstrated that Bill McDonald could go into that infested place and not only come out alive, but bring back his man, other and more extensive contracts were laid out for him. There were several bad gangs there to be broken up before legitimate settlers could live there, and it was decided that McDonald was the man for the job.

McDonald on his part was ready for the undertaking, it being of a sort which he found always most congenial. Deciding that it was a good thing to have a reliable partner in the handling of a gang, he selected for his associate another deputy marshal--one Lon Burson of Henrietta--a quiet athletic fellow with plenty of grit and endurance.

"I could always rely upon Lon," McDonald said, in speaking of that period, long after; "I believed I knew just what he would do, every time, and he never failed me." It may be added that Burson on his part had complete faith in McDonald, and that their ideas of conducting a campaign were in exact accord.

They began on what was thought to be one of the worst gangs, a band of nine who had established on Beaver Creek a general headquarters from which they conducted a miscellaneous business in crime--stealing cattle and horses, robbing trains and shooting down bank officials when occasion offered, frequently crossing over into adjoining States for that purpose.

McDonald had laid out the plan of attack, which was to arrive on the scene at his favorite early hour--daybreak--and then to do no parleying or long distance firing, but to charge at once and storm the works. His theory was--and is to-day--that the criminal cannot stand up against the man who is not afraid of him and does not hesitate.

"If you wilt or falter he will kill you," he has often said, "but if you go straight at him and never give him time to get to cover, or to think, he will weaken ninety-nine times in a hundred. No man in the wrong can stand up against a fellow that's in the right and keeps on a-comin'. I made up my mind to that long ago, and I've never made a mistake yet."

Here in homely vernacular is expressed a mighty truth. Crime is always coward and cannot stand against the conviction of right. Error cannot survive in the face of truth that does not falter and "keeps on a-comin'."

McDonald and Burson proceeded in the saddle to Higgins, in Lipscomb County--a station on the Santa Fe Bail road, and their last base of supplies. Here they chartered a big three-seated hack in which to bring back their prisoners, should their raid prove successful. They put their own horses to this vehicle, loaded their saddles in behind and continued their journey.

It was toward evening when they arrived in the neighborhood of the outlaw den and camped in a secluded place, to wait for morning. The house stood in the edge of the prairie, near Beaver Creek and was easy of access. It was made of logs and seemed to be a deserted ranch place, probably built by some adventurous person who had long since departed for a locality where there was more law, even if less grass.

One of the band--an early riser--had just gone out to round up the horses when the two deputies, mounted, made their approach, next morning. He discovered them when they were about four hundred yards away and made for the house, McDonald and Burson following at full speed. The outlaw was a little in advance, and his eight companions were out in front with their Winchesters when the officers bore down on them.

"Go round the house, Lon, and come in from behind. I'll 'tend to them on this side," said McDonald as they dashed up.

This maneuver was immediately put into action and in less than a minute later the deputies were on the spot, their game between them. In another instant both deputies had slid from their horses and were in the midst of the confused, half awake outlaws.

"Drop them guns! Drop 'em, and put up your hands!" commanded McDonald--his own gun and Burson's leveled.

There was not even an attempt at resistance. The bandits were simply dazed, overwhelmed by the suddenness and vigor of the onslaught. Heretofore, attacks--always made by a posse--had begun with scouting and skirmish and ended with a running fight, usually at long range. The plan of two mere deputies coming straight upon them and demanding sudden and complete surrender was wholly new. As before remarked, there was something about it terribly convincing--almost supernatural.

McDonald kept the men covered, now, while Burson secured their weapons. Then, hand-cuffed and shackled, they were marched to the big hack, crowded into it and driven fifty miles to Higgins; thence by rail to the United States Commissioner at Wichita Falls.

McDonald, as usual, was sociable enough with his prisoners, once secure, and delivered to them his customary homily, as they drove along.

"I just want to show you fellows, up here, how easy it is to take you," he said affably. "You-all have got the notion that you can run this country your own way, and that there ain't any officers that can come up here and make you behave. Now, you-all are mightily mistaken. I'm going to put every one of you fellows in jail and a lot more like you. You know well enough it ain't right to act like you-all have been doing--driving off other men's cattle and robbing trains and shooting men that you had the drop on. You might know you'd get into trouble. The United States has made laws against such business as that, and them laws cover this country the same as anywhere else and every one of your kind up in here is going to find it out."

The gang was landed safely in Wichita Falls. Some of them were eventually convicted; the rest either became better citizens or sought quieter territory for their industries. The cleaning up of No-man's Land had begun.

The work of active reform was not allowed to languish. News of the first successful raid traveled quickly, and State Senator Temple Houston--son of Governor Sam Houston--notified McDonald that the Sheriff of Hansford County was in need of assistance to cope with a bad gang which had a rendezvous just across the border from Hansford, in No-man's Land. These bandits had been carrying on the usual business of horse and cattle stealing, and general highway robbery. Unlike some of the officials, the sheriff of Hansford, though not noted for reckless bravery, was in no way in league with the thieves and desired only their extermination. His jurisdiction, however, extended no farther than the Texas line, and thus far no State or federal officer had rendered any assistance. As a result, the band, becoming very bold, had pitched their camp just over the line, and had defied arrest, declaring they would shoot the first man that stepped across.

When Bill McDonald got the word from Senator Houston, he immediately sent over for Lon Burson and then proceeded to Canadian, Hemhill County, where Houston lived. Here they learned more fully what work was cut out for them, and presently continued their journey over into Hansford, where, from the sheriff, they secured the names of the offenders, as far as possible, and a partial list of their misdeeds. Complaints were now filed against six men, the usual commodious hack was secured; also, a light buggy for possible side excursions, and McDonald and Burson, accompanied by the sheriff as a guide, drove through the gray of early morning, to the line which divided Hansford County from No-man's Land.

Arriving at the border, the sheriff pointed out where the robber den--a log building--was located, not more than eight hundred yards beyond. Then he said he would wait there until they got back.

"Come right along with us," said McDonald, "we need you to identify the men."

But the officer said. "No," that the men knew him, and it might alarm them if they saw him coming. Besides, he had no authority over there.

"Never mind that," urged McDonald, "I'll risk the consequences, and I'll make you one of a deputy's posse, which fixes your authority all right."

But the sheriff still said "No," that he didn't care for any more authority than he had--that anything new in that line might make him proud. He said he thought he would enjoy sitting there in the hack where he would have a good view of what happened to them when they tackled that outfit.

McDonald and Burson, therefore, set out in the light buggy, driving leisurely across the intervening space. Arriving near the log-house, they discovered that five men were up, and sitting sleepily on the ground in front of their cabin, their Winchesters leaning against the wall behind them. Evidently they did not look for any attack, and even when they saw the approaching buggy, their wits were not sufficiently collected to suspect that these might be officers; nor could they realize that any two men in a buggy would drive over to attempt their capture. In another instant they were covered.

"Get up from there and throw up your hands!" was the word of greeting they received. "And don't try to touch them guns. The first man that tries it I'll kill him."

The five men rose--it was polite to do so--also, they refrained from offering any discourtesy in the matter of the guns. McDonald now called the roll of the names he wanted, and curious as it may seem, each man answered to his name. One man of the six wanted, being missing, the officers proceeded to hand-cuff and shackle the five captured men, and marched them back to the hack, where the sheriff of Hansford was waiting.

Of course the sheriff didn't believe it was true. He had had such dreams before and thought he would wake up, presently, at home, in bed. When he convinced himself at last that he was not asleep, he offered to aid in the search for the sixth man. He was well acquainted with the Territory trails, and McDonald decided to send Burson to Hansford with the hack-load and to proceed with the buggy and the sheriff after Number Six of the gang who, it appeared, had a place of his own some twenty miles away.

Number Six was out looking after his cattle--about thirty in number--the result of industry--when McDonald and the sheriff of Hansford arrived, and not expecting official guests, was unprepared. He had, in fact, "no more gun than a rabbit," as Deputy Bill said afterward, and his capture was child's play. That night the gang complete set out for Wichita Falls, to be tried later in the United States Court at Dallas.

Raids followed each other rapidly. One gang of cattle thieves after another was gathered in, and took up the march for Dallas and trial. Outlawing in No-man's Land became an unpopular occupation. Men of more legitimate enterprise began to wonder if the time was not coming, by and by, when they could do business on or within the borders of that territory without the protection of a company of soldiers. The fame of Bill McDonald was on every man's tongue, and those who had not seen him, especially the outlaws still at large, usually conceived him to be a very terrible person: large, bushy, heavy of voice and fierce of mien. Yet he was just the opposite of all these things. He was slender, quiet, blue-eyed, and gentle of voice--only, he had that gift of command--that look, and that manner of speech with law-breakers which they did not disobey. The time came presently in No-man's Land when his name alone and a rumor that he was coming was sufficient to cause a gang to contemplate emigration. Perhaps they believed he bore a charmed life, and it was useless to resist him. If so, they were hardly to be blamed for such a conviction.

XII

Some of the Difficulties of Reform

"FRONTIER" LAW AND PRACTICE. CAUGHT IN A NORTHER IN NO-MAN'S LAND

It is neither necessary nor possible to give a full history of all the raids that during the brief period of little more than a year broke up organized lawlessness in that stray corner of the nation and redeemed an abandoned land. The general plan was the same in all. The early morning hour; the hack and the Winchester; the surprise attack, and the pleasant drive home with the guests duly hand-cuffed and shackled; these were features common to each episode. Though conducted against desperate men, it was a bloodless warfare. Nobody was killed--scarcely a gun was fired. Bill McDonald's career was not to be always like that. There was to be shooting enough and blood-letting too, but the No-man's Land campaign was peculiar in the absence of these customary attributes of border warfare.

Yet there are one or two aspects of the happenings of that period which may not be overlooked here. As before suggested, the administrators of the law were not always to be relied upon. Some of them were actually in league with the law-breakers; others were honest enough, but afraid of them. But there was still another sort, who being both honest and courageous lacked information. Sometimes this resulted in curious complications which were annoying and discouraging to an officer. Often, the results were rather humorous in their nature. The following is an illustration of frontier jurisprudence.

McDonald had heard of a cow thief in No-man's Land who was working on his own hook--a sporadic case, as one might say--and went over to arrest him. He descended upon him in an unexpected moment, and though the outlaw strenuously protested that it being Sunday the law of arrest did not hold good, Deputy Bill conveyed him across the border and down into Roberts County where the cattle had been stolen and where there was a justice of the peace--it being hardly worth while to take a single prisoner to Wichita Falls. McDonald's idea was that the justice would have authority to bind his prisoner over until such time as the grand jury of that district should meet and indict him in regular form.

Now, Roberts County was a wild desolate place in those days. There was no town anywhere about, and few people. There had been no previous call for administration of the law of any sort, and up to that time no case had come before this justice of the peace. On the arrival of McDonald with his prisoner, his honor convened court with a sort of a helpless look. His office was merely a title, so far as he was concerned, and the wide realm of the law was to him an unexplored country. He had a copy of the "Revised Statutes," however, which he now took down and examined, perhaps for the first time. With McDonald's help he found the section which related to cattle stealing, and the penalty. Regular procedure, with indictments and trial by jury were as nothing to him. He only knew that he had been elected to his office, and that his duty was to administer the law as laid down. He read the law as pointed out, and assumed a judicial severity.

"You own up that you stole them cattle?" he said to the prisoner.

The prisoner nodded.

"Then as justice of the peace of this county I hereby send you to the penitentiary for ten years."

McDonald gasped.

"Judge," he said, "I don't believe that's quite regular."

"Why; ain't that the law?"

"Well, yes, but you see he's entitled to trial, an' mebbe it would be just as well to bind him over under a good heavy bond, and if he can't raise it send him to jail over in Canadian until the grand jury meets. Of course I only mention that as being the usual way of doing things."

The justice looked a little disappointed.

"Why, yes, of course, if you want it that way," he said, "but the man's guilty and I thought you'd like to put the thing through as quick and easy as possible, and save expense. Oh, well, any way to suit you. I'll make his bond heavy enough, anyway." He paused to think, perhaps trying to imagine a sum large enough for a man who had plead guilty to the heinous crime of cattle stealing. "I'll put him under a heavy bond--a _good heavy bond_--I'll make it three hundred dollars!"

It will be seen that an official who was given to inspirations such as these could become a trial, even with the best intentions in the world; and there were others who added arrogance to their ignorance, and connivance at crime. Nor were the raids into No-man's Land altogether pleasure excursions even though Deputies Bill McDonald and Lon Burson, with their headlong tactics and general disregard of death, had things pretty much their own way when it came to the final show-down. There were long wearying journeys in a trailless land and long night vigils when bone and muscle and nerve were racked and the whole body cried out for sleep. The onset might be swift and reckless, once begun, but the preparation for that moment was cautious and slow and often beset with difficulties. The few dwellers in No-man's Land really desirous of getting rid of the outlaws, were afraid to reveal their anxiety, to give anything resembling information, or even to offer shelter to the officers. They knew that to manifest any interest on the side of law and order would incur the enmity of the gangs and bring down reprisal swift and bloody. McDonald and Burson realized this, and, however severe the conditions of weather and weariness, faced them, rather than impose any risk upon men whose only offense was to dwell among very bad neighbors.

At one time the deputies were after a gang of five men, wanted for murder and theft, and were driving from Higgins into No-man's Land, with hack and team, their saddles loaded in behind, as usual. It was late in the year, now, and suddenly in the swift Texas fashion a norther came down, with piercing wind and fine driving snow. If the reader has never seen a Texas norther, or a Dakota blizzard, he will hardly understand their predicament. The wind leaps up in a wild gale almost in an instant; the air from being balmy takes on a sudden bitterness that wrings the body and numbs the heart and pinches the very soul. Then the snow comes, fine and blinding--sharp and hard as glass. No living being was ever created that could survive long in the face of a storm like that. Cattle know when a norther is coming and find shelter in canyons, or gather into thick bunches in the open, their heads to the center. Birds speed away to the south, ahead of it, or find shelter in hollows and crannies until the demon has passed by. A storm like that always means death. The Texas norther and the Dakota blizzard have strewn the prairies with bones.

McDonald and Burson in the face of such a tempest tried to press on, hoping to find a shelter of some sort--anything that would break the terrible wind. But everywhere was only the wide prairie, level as the sea and lost now in the swirling drift. Night was coming on rapidly, and unless a place for camp was found soon, their case would be hopeless, indeed. It seemed to them that they had drifted for hours, battling against the norther--though it probably was less than one hour--when they came upon some stacks of prairie hay, which indicated the habitation of men. Without seeking further, they made for the shelter of the stacks, burrowed themselves and their horses into them, allowing the latter to feed liberally from the hay. There they remained all night and until the afternoon of the next day, the men without food. The storm abated then, and the officers undiscouraged, pressed on, reaching the outlaw camp late in the afternoon, instead of at their favorite morning hour.

The surprise was quite as complete, however, for the last thing that those bandits expected was that two officers should suddenly appear out of that white devastation to take them to jail. They were too much astonished to attempt resistance and were on their way to Wichita Falls that night, following the road which earlier in the year so many of their kind had taken.

Indeed it was this capture at the end of 1888 that marked about the close of the heaviest work in that particular section. The year's crusade had demonstrated that No-man's Land was not big enough to hold a band of cow thieves and two deputies like Bill McDonald and Lon Burson at the same time. It was no encouragement to a band of hard-working outlaws, just as they had got their plant established and things well under way to be suddenly pounced down upon and put out of business by two men who had no regard for the customary rules of fighting, but just rushed right in with a lot of impertinent orders and an assortment of hand-cuffs and always had a big hack ready to start at a moment's notice for Wichita Falls.

"What is the use?" one of the freebooters is said to have complained, "A fellow no more than gets started when these dam' fools come in and upset everything."

What _was_ the use? Such of the No-man's Land fraternity as still remained unhung and out of jail set out for other fields of labor. Some of them located in the more barren districts of New Mexico and Arizona. Some of them settled in the further places of what was then known as the Cherokee Strip, where they joined with congenial spirits in that territory, and pretending to be engaged in agriculture--for they were in a more settled country--Indian country--continued their old business at the new stand. These we shall meet again presently, for if they had said good-by to Bill McDonald, he had not said good-by to them. It would require new tactics to deal with the new conditions--to identify the outlaw in the pretended agriculturist, and to get evidence for his conviction. It would require the development of another talent in Bill McDonald's make-up, and that talent was ready for cultivation, as we shall see.

XIII

Captain Bill as a Tree-man

THE LOST DROVE OF LAZARUS. A PILGRIM ON A "PAINT HOSS". A NEW WAY OF GETTING INFORMATION IN THE "STRIP"

Meanwhile, the ranch on Wanderer's Creek had suffered. Compelled to be absent most of the time, McDonald was unable to give his herd personal protection, and now and again bunches of his cattle were driven off by outlaws from across the border. His brave wife, facing the problem of the wilderness with only a few hired helpers, did her best, but was not always able to prevent these raids. The thieves would seem to have taken especial delight in watching for the times when Deputy Bill was absent and then descending on his herds, mainly for the booty, no doubt, but also by way of retaliation. It was a dangerous thing for them to do, and though they were certain to pay for it in the end; the double temptation of profit and revenge was not to be resisted.

But while the ranch did not prosper, its owner was in no immediate danger of bankruptcy. With his success in breaking up the gangs in Hardeman and adjoining counties, and in No-man's Land, McDonald's fame had grown amazingly. As a thief-taker he was regarded as a past-master. That an outlaw could neither intimidate nor elude him, and that when he was feeling well he could whip any number of them single-handed, before breakfast, was the current belief. The Cattle-men's Association--a combination of law abiding ranchmen, one of the strongest organizations ever known--invited his special attention to their herds and contributed a monthly acknowledgement of one hundred and fifty dollars, which with his numerous fees made his income an ample one--often as large as five hundred dollars a month--sometimes double this amount.