Le Fors started as a cowboy in the Southwest. His brother was shot dead on the street of one of the early-day border towns. Joe heard of the deed, quit his job, came in, and quietly attended to the matter of his brother’s burial. Then he got an officer’s commission and went after the murderer, who was known as a “bad man.” When the cowboy, in a spring wagon and without much knowledge of the roads in that vicinity, drove out of town on his mission, most of those who saw him guessed that he would not come back. But he returned, and after no great length of time. In the bottom of the wagon was the corpse of the murderer. Le Fors has never talked to any extent of that fight, except to say that he gave the man a chance and he lost.
Among the detective’s most notable feats was the capture of Tom Horn, said to have killed seventeen men. Horn’s quickness with a gun was marvelous, but when the test came, Le Fors proved too fast for him.
It is said that Le Fors had done more than any other man to make stock raising on the open ranges more than a mere venture.
Along Came Ruth, and Crash! See the Snakes!
When Miss Ruth Spencer, of Michigan City, Mich., accidentally tipped over a box containing Doctor John A. Dexter’s collection of thirty snakes in his biology laboratory at Olivet College, Olivet, Mich., she created something of a panic.
Professor Dexter had been offering one dollar apiece for all varieties of snakes caught in Eaton County not already in his collection. The result was that he had rattlesnakes, blue racers, water snakes, garter snakes, and others reposing in a large box in his laboratory. The box stood on a high table.
Miss Spencer came in to the classroom looking for the professor, and, seeing the box, became curious to know its contents. She tried standing on tiptoe, lost her balance, and tumbled the snakes nearly on top of herself[{56}] and all over the floor. With a scream she ran out of the room.
Meanwhile Professor Shedd was conducting a physics class in a room below, when suddenly a five-foot blue racer, which had crawled through the ventilator, dropped with a thud on his demonstration table. The class was automatically dismissed at once.
When Doctor Dexter arrived at his room, he recaptured most of the reptiles. But one blue racer, three garter snakes, and a small, black water snake are still at large in the science building.