Florence in the fourteenth century retained the military genius of Sir John Hawkwood to its standards and set him to lead its armies in the field. Sir John, as rental for his valour, was given a princely salary while he lived and a marble tomb when he died, which latter monument is still extant, a Florentine exhibit when tourists turn that way. Impressed by the Italian example, Ingalls upon being met by the belligerent obstinacy of Cimarron retained Mr. Tighlman. Would he get those records? Mr. Tighlman would. Mr. Tighlman possessed a capacity for strategy. He went after the records on Sunday. He argued that, Sunday being a day of rest, the male inhabitants of Cimarron would one and all be in the saloons. Mr. Tighlman deduced rightly on that point, and his rapine of the records was only discovered by chance. A Cimarronian, journeying from one barroom to another, observed him as he threw the last volume into the waggon and sounded an alarm. Within two minutes thereafter, Mr. Tighlman was shot at five hundred times. And yet he got away and took the records with him. His only injury was received when, a shot having killed a dog at his very feet, he fell over the dog and broke his leg. For all that, he dragged himself aboard the waggon and escaped. Mr. Tighlman covered his retreat with a shotgun. As a bloodless method of engaging the local faculties, he opened right and left with buckshot on the large front windows that fenced the street. There was a prodigious breaking of glass, and the clatter thereof carried Cimarron almost to a stampede. As showing the blind hurry of the inhabitants, Mr. Tighlman said that he saw one gentleman miss his footing and fall, and before he could even think of getting up eight of his fellow townsmen fell on top of him. It was through such stirring scenes that Mr. Tighlman made his exit, and Jim gained mention because he drove the waggon. The foregoing has nothing at all to do with what follows, and is thrown in only because it may serve as an introduction to Jim. At what might be called the true beginning of this sketch, Mr. Masterson was located in Tucson, nursing an interest in mines. He had been absent from Dodge divers years. In the interim he had made but a single trip to Dodge, and that a flying one. His brother Jim was temporarily in Camp Supply at the time, two hundred miles to the south, and he missed him. This, however, did not disturb Mr. Masterson, who was in Dodge for the commercial restoration of Mr. Short. During those years of Mr. Masterson’s absence, the hungry tooth of time had left its marks. Mr. Kelly was dead, Mr. Tighlman was in New Mexico, Mr. Trask had drifted to Montana, Cimarron Bill was in Utah, while Mr. Wright was in Topeka, a member of the Legislature. Of those who had been close to Mr. Masterson only Mr. Short remained.