THE NOTORIOUS BELLE STARR

Belle Starr was a fit successor to her father and led a gang equally as daring. The narration of a single one of their exploits will serve to show the character of the work they did. One day about eight years ago, while Maj. Neal was agent of the Sac and Fox Indians, Belle Starr and her brother Frank and Bill and John Wade drove up to the agency with a barrel of whiskey, and in plain view of the agent's quarters, and the officers of the Indian police, began selling the fiery liquid to the Indians, two of the gang keeping up a constant firing into the agency buildings with Winchesters. They sold as long as nay of the Indians had money to buy and then drove leisurely away. The Wades were captured soon after and bought their freedom by turning traitor and delivering Frank Starr to the officers, who turned him over to the Texas authorities, where he was given a life sentence for murder.

The last of the old school of outlaws was Ned Christie and Bill Pigeon, both Cherokees. Christie led many a daring raid years ago, but for nearly a decade has been wholly on the defensive, living in a stone fort in the mountains of the Creek country, defying the deputies and repulsing attack after attack, only to at least fall a victim of treachery. It was less than a year ago when he was shot down by a traitorous member of his gang who, Judas like agreed to deliver him to the officers for a monetary consideration.

In the mountain fastnesses, forty miles from Muldrow, in the Cherokee Nation, still live Bill Pigeon, over 80 years of age, and the only surviving member of the old-time outlaw bands.

The story of his life and adventures reads like a sensational romance rather than the account of every day life. For nearly half a century a fugitive from justice a man after whom the officers sought vigilantly for years and for whose arrest large rewards were offered, a man whose hands in the past were often steeped in crime-he now lives in quiet, obscurity, asking only to be let alone to live his few remaining day and in peace.