That was the situation when one Tucson evening in the Oriental, Mr. Masterson was handed a telegram. He had been hearing evil news all day about his mines, and thinking this a further bad installment tore open the envelope with only a listless interest. What he read stiffened him. The message said: “Updegraffe and Peacock are going to kill Jim. Come at once. —A.” With the stop at Deming and a sand-storm raging near Raton, Mr. Masterson was thirty hours reaching Dodge. They were hours without sleep. The imagination of Mr. Masterson raced ahead to Dodge, and drew him pictures. At Albuquerque he feared Jim was already dead; at Las Vegas he entertained no doubt; at Trinidad he knew it was so. “It’ll be with Jim as it was with Ed,” sighed Mr. Masterson. “I’ll come too late.” What increased the depression of Mr. Masterson was the raw newness and the youth of Jim. The threatened one was gifted, too, with the recklessness that had betrayed Marshal Ed. This, with his inexperience, only made him the surer victim. As against this there would arise to Mr. Masterson the hopeless thought of Mr. Updegraffe—as coldly game as any who ever spread his blankets in Dodge! There was none more formidable! Cautious, resolute, without fear as without scruple, it called for the best name on the list when one talked of matching Mr. Updegraffe! Mr. Peacock was not so dangerous. Still, even he might be expected to shoot an enemy who was looking the other way and thinking on something else. At the least he made a second gun to add to Mr. Updegraffe’s, and with that invincible one for a side partner and only a boy to face, Mr. Peacock must be counted. These were the sorrowful reflections of Mr. Masterson when the conductor passed through, crying: “Dodge the next stop! Twenty minutes for lunch!” Whether it were the work of the mysterious “A” who summoned Mr. Masterson, or of some one other than that concealed individual, word had been furnished to Mr. Peacock and Mr. Updegraffe of Mr. Masterson’s coming. There the pair stood waiting in the center of the grass-green plaza of the town. Mr. Masterson saw them as he stepped from the train; he never saw any one else. This genius for concentration is a mark of the born gun-player. Mr. Masterson did not parley. His brother had been slain, and here before him were his destroyers. He could feel the revenge-hunger seize him! Making straight for the waiting ones he called: “You murderers might better begin to fight right now!” Mr. Updegraffe, with all the coolness of ice, fired point-blank at Mr. Masterson. The shot was two inches wide, and buried itself in a Pullman. At this, certain tourists who had filled the windows with their eager faces, crept beneath the seats.