In spite of the wild and sometimes forbidding scenery that meets the traveler’s eye from the train window, there are probably few more peaceful communities than Bannock county in the farming sections of the east. Women frequently live alone and unprotected on isolated ranches and are seldom molested. The case of Hugh Whitney, the bandit and outlaw who robbed Pocatello of a true citizen, and upon whose head there rests a large reward, is today an exception. His story is too well known to be repeated in detail here. In brief, Hugh Whitney, who was a Wyoming sheepman, and a companion, held up a saloon at Monida, just over the Montana line, in 1911, and were apprehended on a train running south toward Pocatello. The sheriff who had boarded the train to make the arrest, placed his guns on a seat in order to handcuff the prisoners. Whitney grabbed these and shot both the sheriff and Conductor James Kidd, who was helping the officer. Conductor Kidd died in Pocatello within a few days. The sheriff recovered. Whitney and his companion jumped from the moving train and separated in making their escape. Whitney was trailed by posses for weeks, and in the course of the chase killed several of his pursuers. Although blood-hounds were used in the attempt to capture him, he eluded all pursuit with an ingenuity worthy of a better cause. When the excitement had died down somewhat, he and his brother held up a bank in Cody, Wyoming, driving the employes into the safe and locking them up there while they made their escape. Evidently the days of “bad men,” in the criminal sense of the term, are not yet ended in the far west, but the facility of communication afforded by the railway, telephone and telegraph makes their trade very hazardous, and the ordinary citizen lives in less danger of being held up or shot than does the wayfarer on the streets of New York or Chicago. CHAPTER XI. POCATELLO. The city of Pocatello, so named in memory of an Indian chief, stands at the western entrance to the Portneuf canyon, and for that reason is appropriately known as the “Gate City.” Its site marks the junction of the Montana and Idaho divisions of the Oregon Short Line railroad, and the tremendous volume of traffic that passes through its yards, together with the many departments maintained here, is rapidly developing a large and prosperous city. Twenty-five years ago the town was a mere hamlet; in 1910 the United States Census returns gave a population of 9,100, and in 1914 Polk’s Directory credits Pocatello with over 12,000 inhabitants, to which must be added some 500 transients. The city is the metropolis and county seat of Bannock county, and the second largest place in the state of Idaho.