Someone had whisky, but it was not apparent until late in the afternoon, when the target shooting incidents began. The boys were a sober lot--the good, honest kind, and not a desperado among them, barring One-Eyed Ed. Others there were, sure enough, who might be considered hardly fit for even the most humble society, for they looked like pirates--all of them--hair long, clothes weather-beaten and rough, faces unshaven and grizzled, and language or topics of conversation not what would be called cultured by any means. Yet there was in this outfit a predominance of good, honest hearts, most of them measuring life from a standard never understood if ever known in "God's Country." These sailors of prairie schooners, these pioneer transportation men of the virile, virgin West, knew little law or order or justice, as we know them; they frequently violated what is known as the law, but they didn't know it. They had but one degree of murder. It wasn't murder for them to fight and kill with pistols. It was the custom. Murder was something else. It was to kill a man who was not "heeled" or when his back was turned, or to mount another man's horse and ride away. This was murder in the first degree--the same as if the owner of the horse had been shot to death while asleep. In those days some things were as necessary, as indispensable as life--a horse, a saddle, a pair of blankets, a gun and ammunition and a butcher knife--perhaps a small bag of salt. The last, however, would be termed a luxury, although nearly every man in those days had a little salt stored away in a weather-proof pocket or saddle bag for the sage hen, antelope, deer, or buffalo beef he might have for dinner or breakfast. But let me tell you how Preston spent the rest of his day. It was early in the afternoon when he perforated Snow's sombrero, but it was sun-down when he shot and killed Tom Sash, the boss herder, a splendid Texan, who had charge of an Indian contract beef herd which had come up the trail from the Lone Star state to the Platte Valley guided by a half dozen range men in charge of Sash, and were being grazed along the Platte bottoms previous to being doled out as per agreement with Uncle Sam to the clouted redskins at the White River Agency at Red Cloud. All during the previous summer, as the wagon trains passed to and from Sidney and the northern forts and agencies, Sash had told the wagon bosses not to go hungry for lack of veal. "We are anxious to fatten these cattle," he would say, "and you are welcome to a calf or two any time you want it." Sash was all right and the bullwhackers couldn't sing his praises loud enough. It was at the close of Snow's engagement with Preston that the wagon boss told Preston to try his hand on some Indian veal. So Preston disappeared down the river, returning at suppertime with the admission that he had not only veal but "yearling steak." And he had some of it with him.