Here was the sole remaining record of the man hunt's end. So passes the glory of the world! In this desolate resting-place, in a wind-swept and forgotten graveyard, rests all the remaining fame of certain bad men who in their time were bandit kings, who ruled by terror over half a Western territory. Even the headboard which once stood at the Kid's grave--and which was once riddled with bullets by cowards who would not have dared to shoot that close to him had he been alive--was gone. It is not likely that the graves will be visited again by any one who knows their locality. Garrett looked at them in silence for a time, then, turning, went to the buckboard for a drink at the canteen. "Well," said he, quietly, "here's to the boys, anyway. If there is any other life, I hope they'll make better use of it than they did of the one I put them out of." Chapter XIX Bad Men of Texas--_The Lone Star State Always a Producer of Fighters_--_A Long History of Border War_--_The Death of Ben Thompson_. A review of the story of the American desperado will show that he has always been most numerous at the edge of things, where there was a frontier, a debatable ground between civilization and lawlessness, or a border between opposing nations or sections. He does not wholly pass away with the coming of the law, but his home is essentially in a new and undeveloped condition of society. The edge between East and West, between North and South, made the territory of the bad man of the American interior. The far Southwest was the oldest of all American frontiers, and the stubbornest. We have never, as a nation, been at war with any other nation whose territory has adjoined our own except in the case of Mexico; and long before we went to war as a people against Mexico, Texas had been at war with her as a state, or rather as a population and a race against another race. The frontier of the Rio Grande is one of the bloodiest of the world, and was such long before Texas was finally admitted to the union. There was never any new territory settled by so vigorous and belligerent a population as that which first found and defended the great empire of the Lone Star. Her early men were, without exception, fighters, and she has bred fighters ever since.