Читать книгу Vigilante Days and Ways. The pioneers of the Rockies; the makers and making of Montana and Idaho онлайн

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The two roads upon which the shebangs were located were the only thoroughfares in the country, and not a day passed that they were not traversed by people in going to and returning from the interior mining camps, and in coming into and departing from the country. The number of robberies and murders committed by the banditti will never be known. Mysterious disappearances soon became of almost weekly occurrence. The danger which every man incurred of being robbed or killed was demonstrated by numerous escapes made by horsemen who had been assaulted and fired upon, and escaped by the fleetness of their horses. It was fully understood that whoever passed over either of these roads would have to run the gantlet in the neighborhood of the shebangs, and people generally went prepared. Crime was fearfully on the increase all through the secluded districts which separated the river from the distant mining camps. The country itself, about equally made up of mountains, foothills, cañons, dense pine forests, lava beds, and deep river-channels, was as favorable for the commission of crime as for the concealment of its perpetrators.