When Wild Bill Hickok stepped out into the street he saw coming across the railroad track a stranger, a young man tall as himself, though not so heavy of build. The newcomer was clad much like himself, in dark clothing, with neat boots. His coat swung easily free, but to the specialized eye of Wild Bill it covered something on either side. Moreover, he presently noted that the young man wore his guns in an odd way—the right-hand stock pointing back, the left-hand one pointing forward. This peculiarity he had never seen in the equipment of any man, cowman, gambler or professional bad man. He asked himself, if this man should happen to be left-handed, or if he were a two-handed man, which gun would be used first? That constituted, as Wild Bill admitted then and there, a sort of mental problem which it might take the thousandth of a second to decide.
There was no pretentiousness about the newcomer, more than there was about Wild Bill Hickok. They both were simple, quiet men, low of voice, pleasant of address. Two more typical killers did not then stand west of the Missouri stream, although they were from widely separated countries. The range, north and south, upper and lower, ran well-nigh two thousand miles in its longer dimension, and covered wide variations in all types.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” said the young man, advancing. “I know this is Marshal Hickok. I am McMasters, sheriff of Gonzales County, down in Texas.”
The blue-eyed man put out his hand readily.
“I know about you,” said he. “You are in the Rangers, too, down there. That’s a good body of men. I reckon they need to be good.
“Well, it’s a lovely morning,” he continued. “I’ve not had a drink yet this morning.”
They walked down the ragged street, if street it could be called, passing over the railroad track, whose rails as yet hardly had been burnished by any wheels; a track which ran but a few hours’ journey west of Abilene at that time. There was a switch which would accommodate perhaps twenty cars, some pens which would hold perhaps five hundred head of cattle, some chutes which never yet had been used. Like all the rest of Abilene, the yards presented an aspect of raw newness. The residential portion of the city consisted largely of sod houses, dugouts and canvas tents, although it did not lack unpainted pine in its more ambitious structures. The broken expanse of high-fronted wooden buildings along its single main street offered the appearance conventional in the new railroad town of the frontier of the West. There was a Golden Eagle Clothing Store; two or three offering general merchandise. There was no drug store, but there were two barber shops and the Twin Livery Barn. There was no church or school. But, as the apostle of Abilene had said, there were many saloons and free dance-halls, each in its way openly advertising its wares.