[Illustration: “‘CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!’ CAME THE ANSWER FROM CUTLER’S GUN.” (SEE PAGE 319.)] THE WIDE WORLD MAGAZINE. Vol. XXII. JANUARY, 1909. No. 130. The Beulah County “War.” BY H. M. VERNON. One of the most striking characteristics of the Westerner is the high regard in which he holds womankind. Even in the roughest mining camps a woman is absolutely safe, and is treated with a consideration unknown in many more civilized centres. This remarkable story illustrates the Westerner’s innate chivalry in a very striking fashion. Sooner than drag the name of a young schoolmistress into a quarrel, a resident of Three Corners, Montana, allowed himself to be made an outlaw, and for weeks defied the population of a whole county to arrest him, even when a field gun was brought out to shell his fastness. How in his extremity the girl he had befriended came to his rescue and put an end to this extraordinary “war” is graphically told in the narrative. In the extreme western part of the State of Montana, U.S.A., in the County of Beulah, lies a little town called Three Corners. At first only a junction on the Rio Grande Railway, from which point countless thousands of cattle were shipped to all parts of the world, Three Corners grew to be a flourishing place. The wooden shanties, gambling “joints,” and dance halls gave way to brick buildings, several banks, a school, and other signs of progress, as respectable settlers moved farther toward the Golden West. Of course, a part of the old town remained, and with it a few of the characters typical of a Western “cow town.” Among these was a tall, raw-boned man who had drifted West in the ‘eighties, settling at Three Corners and opening a gambling-house. His name was “Jim” Cutler. He was a man of very few words, but with one great failing--he would shoot first and argue afterwards. Yet this gambler, who was known and feared far and wide as a “gun-fighter,” was at heart the mildest of men, beloved by all the children in the town, to whom he gave coppers galore. Furthermore, Cutler would put up with all manner of insult from a man under the influence of liquor, or from “Tenderfeet” who did not know their danger. Cutler’s shooting propensities were directed solely toward avowed “bad men” or those who delighted in being known as bullies. In the course of his altercations with such characters this tall, raw-boned man--who could, and did, “pull his gun” like a streak of lightning--added to the population of the local cemetery with a score of six.