This book makes no pretense of carrying a continuous story, or of writing history in a chronological sequence. It is a group of incidents well told but hung loosely together, the only thing binding them being the sturdy character of the Judge himself. Incidentally it deals with the dramatic story of the Kansas and Missouri Border trouble, the birth of the Civil War and the early pioneer history of Wyoming and the Dakotas, with marvelous pen sketches of western Indians, empire builders, the vultures of mining camps, and the life of new and raw communities, better than it could ever be told except by one who had lived the life and who could write in the language of those who had lived it. He has put wonderful splotches of local color into the story of his adventures.