Arrived in Sidney, Jim found McCarthy absent, at North Platte, due to return the next day. Coming to the station the next morning, Jim found the express reported three hours late, and returned to his room in the railway House, fifty yards north of the depot. He doffed his coat, shoulder scabbard, and boots, and lay down, shortly falling into a doze that nearly cost him his life. Most inconsiderately the train made up nearly an hour of its lost time. Jim's awakening was sudden, but not soon enough. Before he had time to rise at the sound of the softly opening door, McCarthy was over him with a pistol at his head. Jim's left hand nearly touched the gun pocket of his coat, and his right lay in reach of the other gun; but his slightest movement meant instant death. "Heerd you come to hang my hide up an' skin the town, but you're under a copper and my open play wins, Black Jim! See?" growled McCarthy. "Well, Mac," coolly answered Jim, "you're a bigger damn fool than I allowed. Never heard of you before makin' a killin' there was nothin' in. What's the matter with you and your gang? I'm after that bullion, and I've got a straight tip: Lame Johnny's the bird that hooked onto it. If you're standing in with him, you better lead me aplenty, for if you don't I'll sure get him." "Honest? Is that right, Jim? Ain't lyin' none?" queried McCarthy, relieved of the belief that his gang were suspected. "Sure, she's right, Mac." "But I heerd you done said you was comin' to do me," persisted McCarthy. "Think I'm fool enough to light in diggin' my own grave, by sendin' love messages like that to a gun expert like you, Mac?" asked Captain Jim. Whether it was the subtle flattery or Jim's argument, Mac lowered his gun, and while backing out of the room, remarked: "Nothin' in mixin' it with you, Jim, if you don't want me." But Mac was no more than out of the room when Jim slid off the bed quick as a cat; softly as a cat, on his noiseless stockinged feet he followed Mac down the hall; crafty as a cat, he crept down the creaking stairs, tread for tread, a scant arm's length behind his prey--why, God alone knows, unless for a savage joy in longer holding another thug's life in his hands. So he hung, like a leech to the blood it loves, across the corridor and to the middle of the trunk room that lay between the hall and the hotel office. There Jim spoke: "Oh! Mr. McCarthy!" Mac whirled, drawing his gun, just in time to receive a bullet squarely through the heart. During the day Jim got two more scalps. The rest of the McCarthy gang got the impression that it was up to them to pull their freight out of Sidney, and acted on it. In 1882 the smoke of the Lincoln County War still hung in the timber of the Ruidoso and the Bonito, a feud in which nearly three hundred New Mexicans lost their lives. Depredations on the Mescalero Reservation were so frequent that the Indians were near open revolt.