When even the officers of the law were in league with the thieves or afraid of them, there was little that the individual could do except pocket his losses with as good grace as possible and keep his mouth shut. The "system" tolerated no interference with its mechanism. Fisher, smarting under the theft of six of the "top" horses from the Marquis de Mores's "outfit" called one of the cowboys one day into his office. His name was Pierce Bolan, and Fisher knew him to be not only absolutely trustworthy, but unusually alert. "You're out on the range all the time," said Fisher. "Can't you give me a line on the fellows who are getting away with our horses?" The cowboy hesitated and shook his head. "If I knew," he answered, "I wouldn't dare tell you. My toes would be turned up the first time I showed up on the range." "What in ---- are we going to do?" "Why, treat the thieves considerate," said Bolan. "Don't get 'em sore on you. When one of them comes up and wants the loan of a horse, why, let him have it." Fisher turned to the foreman of one of the largest "outfits" for advice and received a similar answer. The reputable stockmen were very much in the minority, it seemed, and wise men treated the thieves with "consideration" and called it insurance. There were ranchmen, however, who were too high-spirited to tolerate the payment of such tribute in their behalf, and too interested in the future of the region as a part of the American commonwealth to be willing to temporize with outlaws. Roosevelt was one of them, in the valley of the Little Missouri. Another, across the Montana border in the valley of the Yellowstone, was Granville Stuart. Stuart was a "forty-niner," who had crossed the continent in a prairie-schooner as a boy and had drifted into Virginia City in the days of its hot youth. He was a man of iron nerve, and when the time came for a law-abiding minority to rise against a horde of thieves and desperadoes, he naturally became one of the leaders. He played an important part in the extermination of the famous Plummer band of outlaws in the early sixties, and was generally regarded as one of the most notable figures in Montana Territory. At the meeting of the Montana Stockgrowers' Association, at Miles City in April, there had been much discussion of the depredations of the horse and cattle thieves, which were actually threatening to destroy the cattle industry. The officers of the law had been helpless, or worse, in dealing with the situation, and the majority of the cattlemen at the convention were in favor of raising a small army of cowboys and "raiding the country."