Twenty years ago, with the coming of the first railroads to El Paso, there came also many bad men, and our mayor and city fathers concluded in their wisdom that they must have a city marshal who would be “bader en anybody,” and they succeeded beyond their most sanguine expectations. They imported one Dallas Studemeier, and installed him in that office. His coming, if we can trace human events back to their causes, cost the lives of half a dozen men, his own included. The supplanted marshal, a Mr. Johnson, was the first victim. He was killed one night on San Antonio street, near its junction with El Paso, “by parties unknown,” as was said at the time. No one dared ask why or by whom he was killed. Studemeier brought with him a brother-in-law, one “Doc” Cummings, a man of his own ilk. Soon the Studemeier-Cummings party became involved in a quarrel with the four Manning brothers, who resided here at the time, and Cummings was killed by Jim Manning in a fight. It is enough to say that Manning was fairly tried and acquitted on a plea of self-defense. In the Bosques above El Paso there were several parties of cowboys, both American and Mexican, some of whom were, no doubt, looking after their own cattle, while others were certainly looking after other people’s cattle. One morning the bodies of two young Mexicans from Juarez were found dead at their camp near Canutilla, sixteen miles above El Paso. They had been recently shot. The Mexicans of Juarez asked permission to send an armed party to take home the bodies, and they passed through El Paso. With them went a young German named Kramkauer, a stranger in El Paso, but who we afterward learned was a good man, and he certainly was a brave man.