The Bowbells tribune. [volume] (Bowbells, Ward Co., N.D.) 1899-1969, 1906-02-02
BAD MEN SPIKE THEIR GUNS
Western Outlaws Settle Down.

to the west, said an Indian Territory
official. ''In several notable instances
the courts have kindly solved the pro.
blem and the erstwhile bandits are liv.
ing lives of seclusion and industry in
the federal penitentiary at Leaven-
worth.
"But what is to become of the former
bad man who has finished his term of
imprisonment, or against whom no jury
will return a verdict, or, more difficult
still, who defes capture while appar-
emily courting it?
"Oklahoma and Indian Territory are
at present graphing with this delicate
subject; but the time is not far distant
when it will travel westward, as have
many of the outlaws whom it concerns,
and will be met in Wyoming and Dako-
ia where these men have fled. Already
No Mans Land Of northern Wyoming
has become known as refuge where
bandits, active or otherwise, are safe
from pursuit.
"Its first settlers were the overflow
of fugitive population from the Hole in
the Wall country of Wyoming. Thirty
or forty desperadoes formed coloniz-
ing party that first moved to the valley.
They built houses and stocked their
ranches with cattle and horses acquired
after their own distinctive manner.
'They have been there for nearly
two years now, and their number is
constantly growing. The settlement
is closely watched by officers, but so
long as the desperadoes remain within
their self-established limits they are
practically safe.
"There are several women in the val
ley, including the wives Of some of the
outlaws. The existence of the SETTLE
ment is a constant exasperation to the
officers, for if it could be successfully
raided and the bandits all captured the
sum total of rewards would establish a
sheriff's posse comfortably for the rest
of it's natural existence.
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gone but the outlaws who remain that
afford embarrassing problems. To be
sure, the Indian Territory is discreet
and seldom asks questions, and an out
law, married and settled down, soberly
farming or ranching, is as good as the
next man.
"But the territory is not the untamed
country it was in the early days. The
line must be drawn somewhere, and the
records of these one time bad men are
not so politely ignored, indeed, defend
ed, as they were in the old days. Fiji
teen years ago Jim Younger, released
from his long term in the Minnesota
penitentiary, would not have found the
world 50 cold and forbidding as to driv e
him to suicide.
FROM THE ROAD TO THE PLoW.
"Of all Indian Territory's famous bad
men the one who has most nearly solved
the question of what to do with himself
under the new conditions is Henry
Starr, a member of the famous Starr
gang, that at one time terrorized that
country. Starr is relative of Belle
Starr, probably the most notorious
woman outlaw Of the west, who was at
one time the wife Of Cole Younger, and
whose bloody record was at strange
variance with the warm hearted, wom-
anly impulses that occasionally mani
tested themselves.
"After the death of Belle and her
husband, Henry was leader of the gang,
and, young as he was, was even more
daring than his predecessors. He was
three times tried for murder, and twice
convicted, with many trials for robbery
thrown in, and innumerable accusa-
tions that were never wholly proved.
$50 great was his daring that it was
admired, even by the officers who hunted
him. His last conviction brought him a
sentence of fifteen years for robbery,
but his sentence was commuted on ac-
count of his bravery in quelling riot
in the Fort Smith Jail where he was
confined.
''Starr returned to his old haunts ap-
parently changed man, and nothing in
his record in the two or three years
that have since passed has altered his
determination to be on the square. He
himself attributes his change Of heart
to his wife, as pretty an Indian girl as
there is in the territory, and of one of
the best families in the Cherokee nation.
"She had been graduated from the
Cherokee Female. seminary and was
teaching school in the neighborhood
when, from among her many suffers,
she choose the handsome ex-outlaw and
with him settled down on farm near
Tulsa. There is a strain of Cherokee
in Starr himself, and the Dawes COM
mission has allotted to both him and his
wife valuable farming property, from
which the one-time fugitive will some
day be comfortably rich man.
GLAD TO GET AWAY.
''The territory is proud of Starr and
the manly way in which he is living
down his past. It is proud, too, though
in another way, of Ben Cravens, the
outlaw who set more officers at defiance
in the most insultingly airy fashion than
any criminal who ever held whole
territory in submission. %
"After making sensational escape