“Nothing but this, Kid. Bat Masterson is sitting in the game. He has a reputation as a killer and he earned it. When he was marshal of Dodge City bad men rode from the Texas Panhandle and from Deadwood, Dakota, to shoot it out with him, and he dropped them all. Nobody knows how many; he probably don’t know himself. He beat them all to the ‘pull’ and even now, when he is not exactly young, he is the fastest human being with a gun. All he has left is his reputation, and he would die rather than lose it to a couple of ‘stick-ups.’ If I had him in a dark street I wouldn’t hesitate to ‘throw him up’ and he would ‘go up’ too, but he would never stand for it with others looking on. I could have put the gun on him, said: ‘Masterson, I know you; I’ll kill you if you bat an eye,’ and you could have started to gather up their coin. So far, so good; but if the brim of your hat or the tip of your shoulder had got between Mr. Masterson and my eye he would have ‘pulled’ on us and I would have had to let go at him. If I didn’t kill or disable him with the first shot, he’d have slaughtered the pair of us. “I’m not afraid of him, but I am not knowingly going to put myself in the position of killing anybody for his money. When Masterson sits in a game, he lays a gun on his lap. His life is forfeit to any ambitious young bad man looking for a reputation. Anybody but a ‘stick-up’ could kill him and get away with it, if he were fast enough or dirty enough to shoot him in the back. He has the right to sit with a gun on his lap, and besides, it gives him just a slight psychological edge on the other players. “In short, Kid, I don’t want any of Mr. Batterson Masterson’s money by the stick-up route. There are a lot of bad men here getting by on gall, but he has guts and I flatter myself that I’ve been around enough to know the difference. That’s my philosophy, Kid; you can take it or leave it,” he concluded. That was the tribute Sanc, who killed one man and was hanged, paid Bat Masterson, who killed twenty and died peacefully in his bed at a ripe and respected old age. Then came a night when the Sanctimonious Kid failed to show up at the room. I was worried and made the rounds of the gambling houses, joints, and hangouts, but failed to find him or anybody who had seen him. My fears were put to rest later when Soapy Smith, who won our bankroll, appeared in the “Missouri House” and told with the good grace of a man who had lost fortunes how he had been “taken” by a “stick-up” man for fifteen hundred dollars. “It was the first time in a year I had been off Larimer Street, and it serves me right,” he laughed. “Anyway, I know him and told him so; and I’m going to kill him on sight.”