With the Sioux pushed back within the lines of their new reservation in southern Dakota and semi-pacified, and with the Sidney road swept clean of road-agents, life in Boone's old haunts became for him too tame. Thus it happened that, while trapping was then no better within than without the Sioux reservation, the Winter of 1879-80 found Boone and four mates camped on the Cheyenne River below the mouth of Elk Creek, well within the reserve, trapping the main stream and its tributaries. For a month they were undisturbed, and a goodly store of fur was fast accumulating. Then one fine morning, while breakfast was cooking, out from the cover of an adjacent hill and down upon them charged a Sioux war party, one hundred and fifty strong. Boone's four mates barely had time to take cover below the hard-by river bank--under Boone's orders--before fire opened. Down straight upon them the Sioux charged in solid mass, heels kicking and quirts pounding their split-eared ponies, until, having come within a hundred yards, the mass broke into single file and raced past the camp, each warrior lying along the off side of his pony and firing beneath its neck--the usual but utterly stupid and suicidal Sioux tactics, for accurate fire under such conditions is of course impossible. Meantime Boone stood quietly by the camp-fire, entirely in the open, coolly potting the enemy as regularly and surely as a master wing-shot thinning a flight of ducks. Three times they so charged and Boone so received them, pouring into them a steady, deadly fire out of his Winchester and two pistols. And when, after the third charge, the war party drew off for good, forty-odd ponies and twenty-odd warriors lay upon the plain, stark evidence of Boone's wonderful nerve and marksmanship. Shortly after the fight one of his mates told me that while he and three others were doing their best, there was no doubt that nearly all the dead fell before Boone's fire. A type diametrically opposite to that of the debonair Boone May was Captain Jim Smith, one of the best peaceofficers the frontier ever knew. Of Captain Smith's early history nothing was known, except that he had served with great credit as a captain of artillery in the Union Army. He first appeared on the U. P. during construction days in the late sixties. Serving in various capacities as railroad detective, marshal, stock inspector, and the like, for eighteen years Captain Smith wrote more red history with his pistol (barring May's work on the Sioux) than any two men of his time.