Mr. Hickok, while he knew the name, was driven to wade through the communication before he could come by even a glint of its purport. This he did slowly and painfully, feeling his way from word to word as though fording a strange and turbid stream. At last, when he made it out, Mr. Hickok’s face came brightly forth of the shadows like the sun from behind a cloud. Evidently the news was good. Mr. Hickok glanced again at the name. It was the name of Mr. Masterson, whose life he had once saved. Lest you gather unjustly some red and violent picture of Mr. Hickok, as one to whom the slaughter of his kind was as the air he breathed, it should be shown that he had saved many lives. The record of this truth would gratify Mr. Hickok were he here to read, for he often remembered it in his conversation. “If I’ve took life,” Mr. Hickok would remark, “I’ve frequent saved life. Likewise, I’ve saved a heap more than I’ve took. A count of noses would show that the world’s ahead by me. Foot up the figgers, an’ you’ll see I’ve got lives comin’ to me right now.” What Mr. Masterson said was this: He had staked out a claim in the Deadwood district; the assay showed it full of yellow promise. Mr. Hickok was to be a part owner; likewise, he must meet Mr. Masterson in Cheyenne. Incidentally, the latter had notified the American National to cash Mr. Hickok’s draft for two hundred dollars, so that poverty, should such have him in its coils—which it did—might not deter him from proceeding to Cheyenne. Nothing could have better dovetailed with the broken destinies of Mr. Hickok. Within thirty minutes he had drawn for those two hundred dollars. In forty he had sent three messages. The first was to Mr. Masterson, promising an appearance in Cheyenne. The others were of grimmer purpose, and went respectively to Abilene and Hays. These latter were meant to clear the honour of Mr. Hickok. When Mr. Hickok went into the drama there broke out in Hays and Abilene a hubbub of cheap comment. There were folk of bilious fancy and unguarded lip who went saying that Mr. Hickok had fled to the footlights for safety. He had made enemies, as one who goes shooting up and down is prone to do; certain clots and coteries of these made Hays and Abilene their home camps. It was because he feared these foes, and shrunk from the consequences of their feuds, that he called himself an actor, and went shouting and charging and shooting blank cartridges at imitation Indians throughout an anæmic East! Such childish employment kept Mr. Hickok beyond the range of his enemies, that was the reason of it; and the reason was the reason of a dog. Thus spake Mr. Hickok’s detractors; and none arose to deny, because Mr. Hickok’s honour was his honour, and the West does business by the aphorism, “Let every man kill his own snakes.”