The Birmingham age-herald., 1914-04-19
VANGUARD" /"


 By Edgar Beecher Bronson George H. Doran company, publishers, New York. There are just three men who can | chronicle the red roaring days of the old 1 fl ontier, when fold flashed from creeks l In the high Sierras and the sombreros l of dons One of these three men is Edgar | Reecher Bronson. newspaper. rancher and big game hunter. Twice has he told of the far west in "Reminiscences of n Ranchman," and in ''The Red-Booded.' ' | Now he has chronicled them again Tn "The Vanguard" the real life story of a 1 professional killer of bad men.
 | For IA years MT. Bronson was a ranch man, driving his steers from Texas to his | big home ranch near Cheyenne. When | he sold out he owned 22.000 steers, and | he knew every foot of country from | Yuma to the River Platte. But when he | first went west to become cowpuncher, | under a fighting foreman, no man dared | ride alone, for the Sioux and Dakotas 1 prowled ceaselessly through the coulees, and road agents held up one stage in 10. l But MT. Bronson is not just a rancher. He is man of the world. He was night city editor of the New York Tribune when he was a youngster; he covered the suit l of Tilton against Henry Ward Beecher. 1 which was so dramatic and notorious that | he had to turn in 19 columns of big news | each day. But always he was a lover of
 
 was assistant pilot in balloon trip that lasted for 26 hours and was the world s l record in endurance for 30 years to come. | So when his health threatened to break | down. he went west. far west. But he did not forget his skill as a teller of stories l with nervous intensity.
 | MT. Bronson has hunted every sort of
 big game in Central Africa, and been the guests of titled English commissions | CTS. He spent two years in exploring | Brazil and Peru, and crossed the Andes | with native carriers only. For 10 years he was New York business man. who
 ooca sionally hiked off to the Canadian wilds for big game hunting. Edgar
 Beecher Bronson Is indeed a man of the
 world, but always he is akin to the grim | heroic men of the prairie-schooners
 | MT. Bronson's new book, '"rhe Van | guard,' follows carefully, though in his own vivid style, the actual incidents in
 mine guard and coach guard who in quick
 hot fights wiped out a score of western
 badmen, and was an outlaw for 70 years,
 because of justified killings. It is based | on notes made by Stocking himself, filled out from MT. Bronson's own experiences To follow the thread of the story would
 be to make catalogue of all the wild deeds and nervy men who made the days of the Old Frontier as romantic as the Crusades The men who fought with Kit Carson: the gamblers and vaqueros and prospectors Lively roping fiestas, end ing up in a fight between a bull and 8 grizzly. A miners camp in the high and silent Serras. where eagles wheel about peaks shining and aloof. Frontier towns
 with yellow lamp ligt elaring on adobe walls.
 There is in ''rhe Vanguard" a chapter of western history that had never beer really told--the share that California troops took in the civil war; their strug
 gle with the Navaios and Apaches wht
 tried to take advantage of the war ant
 loot the settlements. Week-long scoutl
 there were. through desert and arroyo
 swirling dust-clouds in which rode Indians
 bumped low over their horses necks ant flashing them with the riata: wild night,