lunatic if the whole county asked me.  Why” (with the air of a man announcing an astounding discovery), “that lunatic didn’t have his right senses!  He wouldn’t eat, till me and Snyder got him down on the shavings and made him eat.”  Snyder was a huge, happy-go-lucky, kind-hearted Pennsylvania Dutchman, and was Bill Jones’s chief deputy.  Bill continued:  “You know, Snyder’s soft-hearted, he is.  Well, he’d think that lunatic looked peaked, and he’d take him out for an airing.  Then the boys would get joshing him as to how much start he could give him over the prairie and catch him again.”  Apparently the amount of the start given the lunatic depended upon the amount of the bet to which the joshing led up.  I asked Bill what he would have done if Snyder hadn’t caught the lunatic.  This was evidently a new idea, and he responded that Snyder always did catch him.  “Well, but suppose he hadn’t caught him?” “Well,” said Bill Jones, “if Snyder hadn’t caught the lunatic, I’d have whaled hell out of Snyder!”

Under these circumstances Snyder ran his best and always did catch the patient.  It must not be gathered from this that the lunatic was badly treated.  He was well treated.  He become greatly attached to both Bill Jones and Snyder, and he objected strongly when, after the frontier theory of treatment of the insane had received a full trial, he was finally sent off to the territorial capital.  It was merely that all the relations of life in that place and day were so managed as to give ample opportunity for the expression of individuality, whether in sheriff or ranchman.  The local practical joker once attempted to have some fun at the expense of the lunatic, and Bill Jones described the result.  “You know Bixby, don’t you?  Well,” with deep disapproval, “Bixby thinks he is funny, he does.  He’d come and he’d wake that lunatic up at night, and I’d have to get up and soothe him.  I fixed Bixby all right, though.  I fastened a rope on the latch, and next time Bixby came I let the lunatic out on him.  He ’most bit Bixby’s nose off.  I learned Bixby!”

Bill Jones had been unconventional in other relations besides that of sheriff.  He once casually mentioned to me that he had served on the police force of Bismarck, but he had left because he “beat the Mayor over the head with his gun one day.”  He added:  “The Mayor, he didn’t mind it, but the Superintendent of Police said he guessed I’d better resign.”  His feeling, obviously, was that the Superintendent of Police was a martinet, unfit to take large views of life.

It was while with Bill Jones that I first made acquaintance with Seth Bullock.  Seth was at that time sheriff in the Black Hills district, and a man he had wanted—­a horse thief—­I finally got, I being at the time deputy sheriff two or three hundred miles to the north.  The man went by a nickname which I will call “Crazy Steve”; a year or two afterwards I received a letter asking about him from his uncle, a thoroughly respectable man in a Western