“Quick and as dead to centres with either a Sharp’s or a Colt’s as you could put your finger. There’s no discount on Ed’s gun play, and so I tell you now. The trouble lies inside Ed; he’s too easy, too ready for a talk. And he can’t read his man. Indians and Mexicans? yes; I’d trust Ed to take a six-shooter and report favourably on twenty of ’em at a clatter. But a white man is too cunning; those Texas killers that come over the Jones and Plummer trail will throw him off his guard. There’s the loose screw, he’s guileless; if it’s a case of white man, he doesn’t know when to shoot. As I tell you, make Ed marshal, and he’ll never see another summer.” “But what can I do? I’ve already told him.” “Yes,” returned Mr. Masterson with a sigh, “and he’s as obstinate as a badger. You’ve got the notion planted in Ed’s head, and you couldn’t shoot it out with a buffalo gun! The way you’ve put the cards in the box, Kell, there’s nothing to do but appoint him. I can see the finish, though!” Within the fortnight following Mr. Kelly’s investment of Ed Masterson with authority as Marshal of Dodge there arose an incident which went far to uphold the fears of Mr. Masterson. It was made plain, even to the dullest, that Marshal Ed was too thoughtless to secure a best and, for himself, a safest result in the discharge of his official duties. The proof came in the broad glare of an afternoon, when the unblinking sun was still four hours high. A lonesome stranger had sought the Dance Hall; finding that theatre of mirth deserted, the desolation of the place weighed heavily upon him. Smitten of the hope of adding vivacity to the scene and rendering it more cheerful, the lonesome stranger pulled his pistol and shot into the upright piano which reposed at the far end of the room. The lonesome stranger put three bullets through and through the instrument; and, as each cut a string, the deficiencies thus arranged were found later to mar the production of those gallops and quicksteps and mazurkas upon which Dodge depended in hours of revelry. Mr. Peacock, who took to the sidewalk when the lonesome stranger produced his pistol, called aloud upon Marshal Ed for aid. That officer responded, and stepped into the Dance Hall just as the lonesome one fired the third shot. “Here, here!” exclaimed Marshal Ed, his thumbs jauntily in his belt, and never a move toward his weapon, “here, you horse-thief! what do you figure now you’re doing?” By way of reply the lonesome one sent the fourth bullet into the left shoulder of Marshal Ed. The latter, upon this hint, got his own artillery to bear and, while the shot in his shoulder knocked him off his feet, the lonesome one also went to the floor with a bullet in his hip.