As the Vigilantes regulated things in the mining camps, so now in slightly different fashion the new property owners on the upper range established their own ideas, their own sense of proportion as to law and order.

The cattle associations, the banding together of many owners of vast herds, for mutual protection and mutual gain were a natural and logical development.

Outside of these there was for a time a highly efficient corps of cattle-range Vigilantes, who shot and hanged some scores of rustlers.
It was a frenzied life while it lasted--this lurid outburst, the last flare of the frontier.

Such towns as Dodge and Ogallalla offered extraordinary phenomena of unrestraint.

But fortunately into the worst of these capitals of license came the best men of the new regime, and the new officers of the law, the agents of the Vigilantes, the advance-guard of civilization now crowding on the heels of the wild men of the West.