Often
when we talk about the wild west we think about smoking guns
and bandits saying "hands up". The bandits often wore
a mask that covered their face. Sometime they robbed trains
but mostly it was the stagecoach that got into trouble with
the bandits. Because the stagecoach often transported money,
and the roads often went through big areas were nobody lived.
So the chances for a bandit to get away with a hold up was very
big. The bandits seldom killed anyone. It was the gold and the
money they were after. Some bandits got caught in the end. When
they didn't have more money left they made another robbery.
Many
of them became a habitual criminal. It was hard to live on the
wrong side of the law. Always have to be on the run. Never be
able to show your self in a town, because you might get caught.
But the worst crime in the west wasn't a robbery or a ambush.
The worst crime you could make was to steal a horse. Sometimes
a horse-theft were consider as a crime equally to murder. And
that's because the long distance in the west made you need the
horse to survive.
It
wasn't always the police or the soldiers who caught the criminals.
Sometimes the men around the neighborhood got together to hunt
down the robbers or horse thief's. And if they caught them they
often took the law in their own hands which mostly led to a
hanging. Many got killed that way, and many were probleby innocent.
It was often hard for a real judge to decide if someone were
guilty or not guilty. So how should a exasperated mob, were
everybody was
inciting each other, and already had made their decision that
the man they were hunting was guilty, be able to make the decision
who were guilty or not.
