In 1894, when A. S. Mercer published this angry eyewitness account of the cattlemen’s invasion of Wyoming, the book was so thoroughly and ruthlessly suppressed that few copies of that edition remain today. Although historians have since questioned some of Mercer’s conclusions about the Johnson County range war, they have never controverted the facts of the cattlemen-homesteader struggle as he grimly reported them. With the intention of "executing" alleged rustlers and terrorizing the homesteaders, a band of fifty-two cattlemen and hired gunmen invaded Johnson Country, Wyoming, in April 1892. After besieging and killing "the bravest man in Johnson County," the raiders in turn found themselves besieged by the homesteaders and finally in the protective custody of the Untied States cavalry. Further legal and illegal maneuvering permitted the invaders to go unpunished, but the cattlemen never again attempted to retain their hold over the range with organized mob violence. In this new edition of The Banditti of the Plains the original text has been followed with the utmost fidelity, even including the illustrations. An informed and interesting foreword by William H. Kittrell has been added to the book.

Wyoming attorney John W. Davis retells the story of the West’s most notorious range war. Having delved more deeply than previous writers into land and census records, newspapers, and trial transcripts, Davis has produced an all-new interpretation. He looks at the conflict from the perspective of Johnson County residents—those whose home territory was invaded and many of whom the invaders targeted for murder—and finds that, contrary to the received explanation, these people were not thieves and rustlers but legitimate citizens. The broad outlines of the conflict are familiar: some of Wyoming’s biggest cattlemen, under the guise of eliminating livestock rustling on the open range, hire two-dozen Texas cowboys and, with range detectives and prominent members of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, “invade” north-central Wyoming to clean out rustlers and other undesirables. While the invaders kill two suspected rustlers, citizens mobilize and eventually turn the tables, surrounding the intruders at a ranch where they intend to capture them by force. An appeal for help convinces President Benjamin Harrison to call out the army from nearby Fort McKinley, and after an all-night ride the soldiers arrive just in time to stave off the invaders’ annihilation. Though taken prisoner, they later avoid prosecution. The cattle barons’ powers of persuasion in justifying their deeds have colored accounts of the war for more than a century. Wyoming Range War tells a compelling story that redraws the lines between heroes and villains.