Hair-trigger Overton and the General give themselves up to a heartfelt study of what advantages and disadvantages are presented by the situation. They decide to let the gifted Dickinson shoot first. He is so quick that the General cannot hope to forestall his fire. Also, any undue haste on the General's part might spoil his aim. By the pros and cons of it, as weighed between them, it is plain that the General must receive the fire of dead-shot Dickinson. He will be hit; doubtless the wound will bring death. He must, however, bend every iron energy to the task of standing on his feet long enough to kill his adversary. “Fear not! I'll last the time!” says the General. “He shall go with me; for I've set my heart on his blood.” Those wonderful pistols come over the Blue Ridge, and dead-shot Dickinson with his friends set out for that far-away Kentucky fighting ground. They make gala of the business, and laugh and joke as they ride along. By way of keeping his hand in, and to give the confidence of his admirers a wire edge, dead-shot Dickinson unbends in sinister exhibitions of his pistol skill. At a farmer's house a gourd is hanging by a string from the bough of a tree. Deadrshot Dickinson, at twenty paces, cuts the string; the gourd falls to the ground. “Some gentlemen will be along presently,” he says. “Show them that string, and tell them how it was cut.” At a wayside inn he puts four bullets into a mark the size of a silver dollar. “When General Jackson arrives,” he observes, tossing a gold piece to the innkeeper, “say that those shots were fired at twenty-four paces.” And so with song and shout and jest and pistol firing, the Dickinson party troop forward. They arrive in the early evening and put up at Harrison's tavern. The fight is for seven o'clock in the morning. Behind this gay cavalcade are journeying the General and hair-trigger Overton. The farmer repeats the story of the gourd and its bullet-broken string. A bit farther, and the innkeeper calls attention to that quartette of shots, which took effect within the little circumference of a dollar piece. The stern pair behold these marvels unmoved; hair-trigger Overton merely shrugs his shoulders, while the General's lip curls contemptuously. Dead-shot Dickinson has thrown away his lead and powder if he hoped to shake these men of granite. Upon coming to the battle ground, the General and hair-trigger Overton avoid the Harrison tavern, which shelters the jovial Dickinson _coterie_, and put up at the inn of David Miller. That evening, they hold their final conference in a cloud of tobacco smoke, like a couple of Indians. Finally, the General goes to bed, and sleeps like a tree.