Some of the Difficulties of Reform
"FRONTIER" LAW AND PRACTICE. CAUGHT IN A NORTHER IN NO-MAN'S LAND
It is neither necessary nor possible to give a full history of all the raids that during the brief period of little more than a year broke up organized lawlessness in that stray corner of the nation and redeemed an abandoned land. The general plan was the same in all. The early morning hour; the hack and the Winchester; the surprise attack, and the pleasant drive home with the guests duly hand-cuffed and shackled; these were features common to each episode. Though conducted against desperate men, it was a bloodless warfare. Nobody was killed—scarcely a gun was fired. Bill McDonald's career was not to be always like that. There was to be shooting enough and blood-letting too, but the No-man's Land campaign was peculiar in the absence of these customary attributes of border warfare.
Yet there are one or two aspects of the happenings of that period which may not be overlooked here. As before suggested, the administrators of the law were not always to be relied upon. Some of them were actually in league with the law-breakers; others were honest enough, but afraid of them. But there was still another sort, who being both honest and courageous lacked information. Sometimes this resulted in curious complications which were annoying and discouraging to an officer. Often, the results were rather humorous in their nature. The following is an illustration of frontier jurisprudence.
McDonald had heard of a cow thief in No-man's Land who was working on his own hook—a sporadic case, as one might say—and went over to arrest him. He descended upon him in an unexpected moment, and though the outlaw strenuously protested that it being Sunday the law of arrest did not hold good, Deputy Bill conveyed him across the border and down into Roberts County where the cattle had been stolen and where there was a justice of the peace—it being hardly worth while to take a single prisoner to Wichita Falls. McDonald's idea was that the justice would have authority to bind his prisoner over until such time as the grand jury of that district should meet and indict him in regular form.
Now, Roberts County was a wild desolate place in those days. There was no town anywhere about, and few people. There had been no previous call for administration of the law of any sort, and up to that time no case had come before this justice of the peace. On the arrival of McDonald with his prisoner, his honor convened court with a sort of a helpless look. His office was merely a title, so far as he was concerned, and the wide realm of the law was to him an unexplored country. He had a copy of the "Revised Statutes," however, which he now took down and examined, perhaps for the first time. With McDonald's help he found the section which related to cattle stealing, and the penalty. Regular procedure, with indictments and trial by jury were as nothing to him. He only knew that he had been elected to his office, and that his duty was to administer the law as laid down. He read the law as pointed out, and assumed a judicial severity.
"You own up that you stole them cattle?" he said to the prisoner.
The prisoner nodded.
"Then as justice of the peace of this county I hereby send you to the penitentiary for ten years."
McDonald gasped.