VIII BOONE HELM 127 IX DEATH SCENES OF DESPERADOES 137 X JOSEPH A. SLADE 145 XI THE DESPERADO OF THE PLAINS 154 XII WILD BILL HICKOK 167 XIII FRONTIER WARS 187 XIV THE LINCOLN COUNTY WAR 196 XV THE STEVENS COUNTY WAR 227 XVI BIOGRAPHIES OF BAD MEN 256 XVII THE FIGHT OF BUCKSHOT ROBERTS 284 XVIII THE MAN HUNT 292 XIX BAD MEN OF TEXAS 313 XX MODERN BAD MEN 340 XXI BAD MEN OF THE INDIAN NATIONS 371 XXII DESPERADOES OF THE CITIES 393 ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE Plummer's Men Holding Up the Bannack Stage (_Frontispiece_) The Scene of Many Little Wars 12 Types of Border Barricades 36 The Scene of Many Hangings 138 How the Rustler Worked 164 Wild Bill Hickok's Desperate Fight 172 John Simpson Chisum 198 Men Prominent in the Lincoln County War 218 The "Women in the Case" 222 The McSween Store and Bank 240 Billy the Kid 258 "The Next Instant He Fired and Shot Ollinger Dead" 272 Pat F. Garrett 294 A Typical Western Man-Hunt 302 The Old Chisum Ranch 330 The Old Fritz Ranch 358 A Border Fortress 358 "Afterward" 398 Chapter I The Desperado--_Analysis of His Make-up_--_How the Desperado Got to Be Bad and Why_--_Some Men Naturally Skillful with Weapons_--_Typical Desperadoes_. Energy and action may be of two sorts, good or bad; this being as well as we can phrase it in human affairs. The live wires that net our streets are more dangerous than all the bad men the country ever knew, but we call electricity on the whole good in its action. We lay it under law, but sometimes it breaks out and has its own way. These outbreaks will occur until the end of time, in live wires and vital men. Each land in the world produces its own men individually bad--and, in time, other bad men who kill them for the general good.