“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 stickups. 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.