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The Adventures of Deadwood Dick
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CHAPTER XXII: A FEW REMINISCENCES OF THE
RANGE. SOME MEN I HAVE MET. BUFFALO BILL. THE JAMES BROTHERS. YELLOWSTONE
KELLEY. THE MURDER OF BUCK CANNON BY BILL WOODS. THE SUICIDE OF JACK ZIMICK. |
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It
has now been many years since I quit the range, and as my mind wanders
back over those years as it often does, memories both pleasant and sad
pass in review and it is but fitting that I record a few of them as a
final to the history of my life which has been so full of action, which is
but natural as the men of those days were men of action. They had to be,
and probably their actions were not all good, that I freely admit, but
while that is so, it is equally so that their actions were not all bad,
far from it. And in the history of the frontier there is recorded
countless heroic deeds performed, deeds and actions that required an iron
nerve, self denial in all that these words imply, the sacrificing of one
life to save the life of a stranger or a friend. Deeds that stamped the
men of the western plains as men worthy to be called men, and while not
many of them would shine particularly in the polite society of today or
among the 400 of Gotham, yet they did shine big and bright in the
positions and at a time when men lived and died for a principle, and in
the line of duty. A man who went to the far west or who claimed it as his
home in the early days found there a life far different from that led by
the dude of Fifth Avenue. There a man's work was to be done, and a man's
life to be lived, and when death was to be met, he met it like a man. It
was among such men and surroundings that I spent so many years of my life
and there I met men some of whom are famous now, while others never lived
long enough to reach the pinnacle of fame, but their memory is held no
less sacred by the men who knew them well.