Then both men fell, and were carried to their respective lodgings, both swearing that better aim should do deadlier work next time.  Both were bedridden a long time, but Jules got to his feet first, and gathering his possessions together, packed them on a couple of mules, and fled to the Rocky Mountains to gather strength in safety against the day of reckoning.  For many months he was not seen or heard of, and was gradually dropped out of the remembrance of all save Slade himself.  But Slade was not the man to forget him.  On the contrary, common report said that Slade kept a reward standing for his capture, dead or alive!

After awhile, seeing that Slade’s energetic administration had restored peace and order to one of the worst divisions of the road, the overland stage company transferred him to the Rocky Ridge division in the Rocky Mountains, to see if he could perform a like miracle there.  It was the very paradise of outlaws and desperadoes.  There was absolutely no semblance of law there.  Violence was the rule.  Force was the only recognized authority.  The commonest misunderstandings were settled on the spot with the revolver or the knife.  Murders were done in open day, and with sparkling frequency, and nobody thought of inquiring into them.  It was considered that the parties who did the killing had their private reasons for it; for other people to meddle would have been looked upon as indelicate.  After a murder, all that Rocky Mountain etiquette required of a spectator was, that he should help the gentleman bury his game —­otherwise his churlishness would surely be remembered against him the first time he killed a man himself and needed a neighborly turn in interring him.

Slade took up his residence sweetly and peacefully in the midst of this hive of horse-thieves and assassins, and the very first time one of them aired his insolent swaggerings in his presence he shot him dead!  He began a raid on the outlaws, and in a singularly short space of time he had completely stopped their depredations on the stage stock, recovered a large number of stolen horses, killed several of the worst desperadoes of the district, and gained such a dread ascendancy over the rest that they respected him, admired him, feared him, obeyed him!  He wrought the same marvelous change in the ways of the community that had marked his administration at Overland City.  He captured two men who had stolen overland stock, and with his own hands he hanged them.  He was supreme judge in his district, and he was jury and executioner likewise—­and not only in the case of offences against his employers, but against passing emigrants as well.  On one occasion some emigrants had their stock lost or stolen, and told Slade, who chanced to visit their camp.  With a single companion he rode to a ranch, the owners of which he suspected, and opening the door, commenced firing, killing three, and wounding the fourth.

From a bloodthirstily interesting little Montana book.—­["The Vigilantes of Montana,” by Prof.  Thos.  J. Dimsdale.]—­I take this paragraph: