“I’ll show you, Mr. Masterson,” observed the eager Jack, pointing westward towards the Cimarron Crossing. “He lined out in that direction. An’ say, he was simply hittin’ the high places!” Now, be it known that Rattlesnake had fled away to the north and east, as though heading for Hays—a course the reverse of that given by Jack. The intervention, and the brisk falsehoods so cheerfully fulminated, took away the breath of Higginson Peabody. Before he regained it Mr. Masterson was a mile on his way to the Cimarron Crossing. “How could you lie like that?” demanded Higginson Peabody, regarding Jack with wondering horror; “how could you lie like that, and you but fourteen! That Rattlesnake man went east, not west; and Mr. Masterson is an officer of the law!” “What of it?” retorted Jack, indignantly; “d’you think I’d throw down a subscriber?” Then, as he reached for his cap: “I reckon I’d better go over to the Alhambra an’ see how hard old Kell got plugged. It ought to be good for a column. Say!” and Jack beamed on Higginson Peabody, “if he’d only beefed old Kell, wouldn’t it have been hot stuff?” Higginson Peabody, when he graduated from Harvard, had been invited into the counting-room of his father’s State Street bank. But the old migratory instinct of his puritan ancestry was rife within him, and he hungered to go abroad into the land. The expanding West invited him; also, he distasted a bank and liked the notion of a paper. “Well,” said the elder Peabody, “I don’t blame you. Massachusetts and Boston aren’t what they were. New England to-day is out in Kansas and Nebraska.” Higginson Peabody resolved to start a paper. Dodge occurred to him; a friend returning had told him that newsy things were prone to happen in Dodge. The soil, by the friend’s word, was kindly; Higginson Peabody thought it would nourish and upbuild a paper. Wherefore, one bright autumnal morning, he dropped off at Dodge. Going over to the hotel he took a room by the month and confided to Mr. Wright that he would found the _Weekly Planet_. Mr. Wright squeezed the hand of Higginson Peabody until it hung limp as a rag. “It was an inspiration when you decided to come to Dodge,” said Mr. Wright. “Do you think,” asked Higginson Peabody, painfully separating each finger from its fellows, “do you think your city ready for the birth of a great paper?” “Ready? Dodge’ll sit up nights to rock its cradle and warm its milk!” quoth Mr. Wright. Mr. Wright went down to the Long Branch and told Mr. Short. As information radiated from the Long Branch the extremest corner of Dodge was filled with the news in an hour.