Daily Arizona silver belt., 1909-08-01
PROSPECTOR PIRATES

In some of the more thiny settled parts oi the United States today there are people who traverse the plains in 'prairie schOoners" and because of their marauding and nomadic hab- its have gained the name of ''dry land pirates. :" With sublime disregard for the laws of prop erty and possession, they roam the country singly or in groups, and by appropriating lit tie here and there from the ungnarded camps and ranch houses they fight off the wolf that is more or less liable to attack any individual with no other vocation than to travel over the earth's surface with clildlike trust in the god of circumstance to give them their daily bread.
 Arizona, though not the most favored haunt for the "'prairie schooner" has yet class of people whose promiscuous thevery warrants their being called 'prospector pirates" It may be misnomer to dignify them with the name prospector, for it is doubtful whether they make any pretense at locating claims, unless it is to cover up their real object of living from the stores of honest and reliable people who have occasion to camp in the hills and valleys of the territory Of these human jackals, Globe district has more than its share. There is hard ly person that has camped in the country but has tale of loss at the hands of these nomadic thieves.
 Time was in the early days when such petty theft from isolated camps was laid at the door of the much-abused Mexican. It was further true in those days that offenses of this kind gave ample occasion for the dealing of swift retribution to the guilty. Lacking the protec- ton of inscribed statutes prohibiting "sneak thieving, the people who suffered from the ma rauders seized readily upon the privileges af- forded by the unwritten law in all new countries and visited punishment upon the offenders in ways of their own devising. While the methods in vogue may have been apparently oversevere in some cases, they had, nevertheless. the much desired effect of discouraging any similar thefts on the part of others The unlawful ac- quiring of can of pork and beans or a slab of bacon gradually came to fail as an incentive to dodge bullets or test the strength of the non-elastic hemp from the limb of some con- venient tree.
 For few years there was cessation of thievng in camps, probably from the salutary effect of various summary and decisive four barrel tribunals in which the guilty ones came to sudden grief. But in recent years there has been a revival of detestabe petty crime by a class of individuals who, lacking the reputa- ton for honesty necessary to obtaining "grub stake" attempts to wrest living from the public by assuming ownership of property with ont benefit of a bill of sale
 Several men of this stamp have lately been brought to such justice as is afforded by the courts. Despite this fact, the thieves still con- tinue their depredations, as anyone having a camp in the country can testify. Now while the day of the drum-head trial in the manzanita. the sixshooter cross examination and the live oak gallows has passed never to return in all it's grim significance, yet there is undeniahly limit set to the patience of all people, and even the most gentle person may be goaded to the perpetrating of a desperate act by measures