Tall, gaunt and weather-beaten and with coal-black eyes set deep beneath hairless eyebrows, he was sinister and forbidding.

Into his forty-five years of existence he had crowded a century of experience, and unsavory rumors about him existed in all parts of the great West.

From Canada to Mexico and from Sacramento to Westport his name stood for brigandage.

His operations had been conducted with such consummate cleverness that in all the accusations there was lacking proof.
Only once had he erred, and then in the spirit of pure deviltry and in the days of youthful folly, and his mistake was a written note.

He was even thought by some to have been concerned in the Mountain Meadow Massacre; others thought him to have been the leader of the band of outlaws that had plundered along the Santa Fe Trail in the late '60's.
In Montana and Wyoming he was held responsible for the outrages of the band that had descended from the Hole-in-the-Wall territory and for over a hundred miles carried murder and theft that shamed as being weak the most assiduous efforts of zealous Cheyennes.