Smoking Guns — Robert Kammen

In the Cherokee Strip lawmen were outnumbered by an army of outlaws. The enforcement of law was in the hands of U.S. Marshals like Heck Thomas and his deputies. They were paid two dollars a day, furnish their own horses and living expenses.These outlaw gangs, heavily armed, materialized out of nowhere, staged these surprise raids and faded across the plains, with a diminishing clatter of hoofbeats, they were gone.But Heck Thomas and other U.S. Marshals kept after these lawbreakers, out of pride, determined to avenge the deaths of fellow starpackers.