The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-11-28
GUARDING A RAILROAD.
Band of Rangers Protects Line From
 STrain Robbers.

GIralH hODDeTS.
 To clean up the worst bandit belt in the country is the task to which the Union Pacific railroad has set itself. The fiat has gone forth from headquar- ters that the organized bands of train robbers that have operated in the bad lands of Wyoming are to be extermina- ted. To secure this result Tim" Ken hers company of mounted rangers has been formed to patrol the tracks of that railroad in the outlaw storm cen ter between Medicine Bow and Green River. Armed guards ride on every passenger train. A special car and en-. zine lie in the railroad yards at Chey- enne ready at moments notice to transport fast horses and hardy riders to the scene Of action. The industry of train robbing is to be suppressed at all costs. The suggestion that armed guards ride on every passenger train was made first by W. L. Park, superin- tendent of the Wyoming division of the line, after the Wilcox and Tipton hold ups of 1899 and 1900. This plan was shortly afterward put into force by w.. T. Canada, of Omaha, chief of the se- cret service of the Union Pacific system. The result has amply justified the pre- caution. From that day to this there has not been a hold-up in the protected territory. But the Union Pacific pros posed to make assurance doubly sure. To that end Tim Keliher's ranger company has been formed to patrol the bandit belt" which stretches from east of Rawlings to Green River through rough sparsely settled coun- try favorable to the operation of train robbers
 This company is composed of picked men. Every one of them is a dead shot, a good rough rider and is nervy as they make them" It costs the Un- ion Pacific about one thousand dollars month to maintain it's ranger service, but the Union Pacific flyers" go screaming through the bad lands of Wyoming without fear of bandits. For on every passenger train guards sit nursing deadly Winchesters, and some- where along the line between Cheyenne and Green River is the rangers car, loaded with fast horses and determined officers, ready to take up the trail as soon as electricity has flashed the mes sage of the hold-up. The extension of the long distance telephone to the ranch lands. following as it did the set. clement of the COW country, was the first shock to the hourishing industry of train robbing. Since the where abouts of the escaping desperadoes could be telephones from point to point in advance of their arrival, it be-. came necessary to abandon the more settled portions of the country as their fielda oi operation.
 There were established what became known as bandit belts. One stretched across Texas to Arizona along the Southern Pacific line. Another zig ragged through the Colorado moun- tains to the country about the well known Robbers Roost. A third-and the most dangerous of all--belted Wyo- ming in the rough COW country, where lie Jackson's Hole and the notorious Hole-in-the- Wall. Here among the Teutons, as the Big Horn Mountains are called, far from civilization and the long arm of the law, lurked a strange population composed of cattle rustlers, 'highwayrnen and fugitives from jus tice. The Hole-in-the-Wall especially was a natural fortification and what was of more avail to the desperadoes who infested it, every settler was at outs with the law. l a ...
 No sheriff's posse could invade it's sa- cred precincts and hale forth a crinni-. whispered apparently on the wings of the wind, and long before the daring sheriff had reached the spot his quarry