Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1912-07-07

dred and seventyve of his troopers on the Little Big
Horn in Montana, in 1876; the revolt and subugaton
of Chief Joseph and the Nez Perces in 1877 and the
outbreak and subversion of the Sioux Pine Ridge,
South Dakota in 1890 which had for of its incidents
the killing of Sitting Bull of Clusters slayers of the
Little Big Horn-the red fighter stepped out.
TODAY with one hundred thousand Indians in the State
of Oklahoma living and voting like white men, and some
of them holding Office and with large and rapidly in
creasng part Of the other two hundred thousand who
are scattered through the West wearing white mans
clothes and adopting white mans ways, the abor1gne
has ceased to be useful for purposes of romance and the
dime novel has dropped him.
But there other features OF lite on the frontier
within the recollection Of tens of thousands OF us which
the dime novels abstracts and brief chronicles OF the
hams Gold Plum, or Buffalo Bill, the Pony Express
Rider carries us back to the days from 1858 to the
completion of Coils P Huntngtons and Cakes Amess
transcontinenta1 railway in 1862 when John Butter
fields and Ben Holidays coaches and pony expresses
were the only tangible connecting link between our
western frontier the Missouri and San Francisco and
the Pacific Coast. Those were days when outlaws on
the plains levied tribute passengers IN the stages on
the of the pony mail carriers and on small par
ties of coonists the Oregon and Santa Fe trails
Joseph E. Badger lrs, BLACK John, ph1lp ;. waIne
captain Arizona and many books by other writer's
tell so plainly how all this was done that we feel we
could do it ourselves we tried One particular person
age of Warne's is described 1.-THE King Pin of the
Road Agents." and we learn in the story something
about "Patent Leather Joe's Big Game. In subse-
quent tale captain Mask Warne introduces US to the
Lady Road Agent, VINO DluHS anu utterly
"Patent Leather Joe."
PUT the frontiers most vocferous and pervasive per
- sonage of the half century since the dime novels
advent is the cowboy His deeds fill whole libraries 1t
was the te-cen books that got him first and exploited
him farthest. 1t not till later that the writers OF
more gh-tonei and expensive fiction took him up.
The long horned COW and the cowboy came in to-
gether AS recall the wilder and wider West of the old
days. they began few years after Appomattox TO PEI
distinctive feature of the landscape from the Texas Pan
handle to the Bad Lands of the upper Missouri, and
they grew number and obvousness for the next quar-
ter of century In cattle raising many large fortunes
Warne's captain Affair." the Cattle King" William G:
Patterns Cowboy Hotspur' and Cowboy Sport,
Dumonts EVIL Eye King of the Cattle Thieves, and
Ingrahams Cowboy Clan, or the Tigress from Texas,
give picture of this life in many aspects With the IN
rush of settlers who built homes and towns, and the
erection of barbed wire fences by powerful squatters
round vast tracts of Government land the ranges area
diminished its glory faded, and the dime novel1sts had
to seek other sources for material.
They found the material ready to their hand long be-
fore the COWBOY the Indian, fell down for them,
and it came to them in overwhelming measure On
June g. 1871 the James boys and the Youngers SIX or
persons in all robbed bank at Corydon Iowa. OF
fifteen thousand dollars and escaped to their homes in
Missouri On July co. 1873 just east OF Council Bluffs,
the gang wrecked a Rock Island train, killed and
sounded some of its crew. stole five thousand or SIX
thousand dollars from its express and got away
These the first OF long list OF bank and tram rob-
berries by these particular marauders Waterloo came
for of them in September, 1876, when in attempt.
ing to rob bank in Mortified, Minnesota, several of
the Youngers were captured others of the gang
killed. and Jesse and Frank James escaped For reward
of ten thousand dollars offered by Governor Crttenden
of Missouri the State in which most of the Jameses
crimes perpetrated, former member OF the gang
killed Jesse in 1892 and few months later his brother
Frank surrendered to Crittenden. He tried on
charge acquitted and has since been living an honest life
THESE crimes tell the "when" and the "why" of the
detective novel, and in the last third of century
the detective tale has outnumbered all the other types
of cheap fiction put together. Road agents active