The White Indian Boy by Elijah Nicholas Wilson

Later, we moved back into the Bear Lake, where we made our home for twenty years. During this time I was often called on to do dangerous service in the interest of our settlements. After the Indian troubles were over, we had outlaws to deal with who were worse than Indians. For a long time the frontier communities suffered from depredations committed by cattle rustlers and horse thieves. Organized bands operated from Montana to Colorado. They had stations about a hundred miles apart in the roughest places in the mountains. They would often raid our ranges and steal all the cattle and horses they could pick up, driving them into their mountain retreat. They got so daring finally that they even came into the settlements and robbed stores and killed men. The colonists did not get together to stop these outrages till after a fatal raid was made upon Montpelier, when a store was robbed and a clerk was shot dead. This roused the people of the valley to action. Gen. Charles C. Rich called upon the leaders of the towns to send two men from each settlement -- the best men to be had -- to pursue and punish the outlaws. Fourteen men responded to the call, among them four of the leaders themselves. It fell to my lot to be one of this posse.

We struck across the mountains east of Bear Lake, following the trail of the robbers to their rendezvous on the Big Piney, a tributary of the Green River. We knew that they had hidden themselves in this country, for two of the men with us, whose stock had been stolen, had followed the robbers to their den to recover their property. Finding the outlaws in such force, they didn't dare to claim their stolen stock but returned to Bear Lake for help.