Lurid tales have been told of what went on at that meeting. There is a dramatic story of Joe Morrill's sudden appearance, backed by a score of ruffians; of defiance and counter-defiance; of revolvers and "blood on the moonlight"; and of a corrupt deputy marshal cowering with ashen face before the awful denunciations of a bespectacled "tenderfoot"; but unhappily, the authenticity of the story is dubious. The meeting, so far as the cold eye of the historian can discern, was dramatic only in its implications and no more exciting than a sewing-circle. The Marquis de Mores was present; so also was Gregor Lang, his most merciless critic; but whatever drama was inherent in that situation remained beneath the surface. By-laws were adopted, the Marquis was appointed "as a Committee of One to work with the committee appointed by the Eastern Montana Live Stock Association in the endeavor to procure legislation from the Territorial Legislature of Dakota favorable to the interests of the cattlemen"; and the meeting was over. It was all most amiable and commonplace. There was no oratory and no defiance of anybody. What had been accomplished, however, was that, in the absence of organized government, the conservative elements in the county had formed an offensive and defensive league for mutual protection, as the by-laws ran, "against frauds and swindlers, and to prevent the stealing, taking, and driving away of horned cattle, sheep, horses, and other stock from the rightful owners thereof." It meant the beginning of the end of lawlessness in the Bad Lands. XIV I'll never come North again. My home is the sunny South, Where it's never mo' than forty below An' the beans don't freeze in your mouth; An' the snow ain't like white smoke, An' the ground ain't like white iron; An' the wind don't stray from Baffin's Bay To join you on retirin'. From _Medora Nights_