The crack of pistols had ceased, and they
could walk the streets without constant exposure to danger. There
was an omnipresent spirit of protection, akin to that omnipresent
spirit of law which pervaded older and more civilized
communities....Young men who had learned to believe that the
roughs were destined to rule and who, under the influence of that
faith, were fast drifting into crime shrunk appalled before the
thorough work of the Vigilantes. Fear, more potent than
conscience, forced even the worst of men to observe the
requirements of society, and a feeling of comparative security
among all classes was the result."
Naturally it was not the case that all the bad men were thus
exterminated. From time to time there appeared vividly in the
midst of these surroundings additional figures of solitary
desperadoes, each to have his list of victims, and each himself
to fall before the weapons of his enemies or to meet the justice
of the law or the sterner meed of the Vigilantes. It would not be
wholly pleasant to read even the names of a long list of these;
perhaps it will be sufficient to select one, the notorious Joseph
Slade, one of the "picturesque" characters of whom a great deal
of inaccurate and puerile history has been written.
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