EMULOUS OF WASHINGTON.

“I don’t know that I can tell you fellows about the first dollar I ever earned,” said W. P. Epperson, the pioneer editor of the Colorado City————, “but I do know the first and last lie I ever told.”

“You ought to remember, seeing that it has not been over twenty minutes,” said George Geiger.

“Twenty minutes be smashed!” yelled Epperson, reaching for his gun, “it’s been twenty years this summer. My first lie was a trivial one about fishing, and the last happened in this way.”

“Twenty years, did you say?” interrupted the hired man with an incredulous look.

“That’s what I mean,” and the veteran editor took another chew of Battle Ax, while a halo of white settled down about his head.

“In the autumn of 1885,” he continued, “I stepped off a Union Pacific train at Silver Creek, Nebraska, and after a good supper I determined to drive across the country to Osceola, a distance of thirty miles. The driver of the livery rig was about the most handsomely attired imitation of a cow boy I had ever seen. He wore a new suit of corduroy with a broad sombrero and high-heeled boots with ornamented red tops, also a bright blue shirt and a rattlesnake skin necktie. I had him sized up for a green country boy from Indiana or Illinois who had seen but little of frontier life, and he confirmed my suspicions a little later as we were crossing the Platte River bridge by saying, ‘I suppose if you knew what my business had been you would hesitate to ride with me alone on the plains at night.’

“It was getting dark and we were crossing a wide stretch of the then desolate plain that lay between the Platte River and Osceola. I was enjoying a cigar and felt at peace with all the world, when a devilish thought struck me, and I asked, ‘What has been your business?’

“‘Well, sir,’ he replied, ‘I have been a cow boy.’

“‘The deuce you have,’ said I, ‘Shake, old man, you are a fellow after my own heart, and since you have been so kind to tell me your business, I will let you know who I am. I, sir, am Doc Middleton.’

“The fellow almost fell from his seat in surprise. Doc Middleton was the notorious outlaw whose depredations had become so terrorizing to the settlers of Nebraska that the State had offered a reward of $5,000 for his capture, dead or alive. I enjoyed the joke I was playing all the more when I saw the effect of my speech.

“‘Just now,’ I continued, ‘I am trying to get away from a sheriff’s posse; that is why I am making the cut across the country. They may overtake us, and if they do, there will be some heavy shooting.’

“‘With this I drew a big Colt revolver from my overcoat pocket and I said I had two more like it in my valise. I also told him if they overtook us he must get down by the dashboard and drive for dear life, that he might get shot in the back, but that would be cow boy’s luck.

By this time he was nervous and began looking backwards as he whipped the ponies up at a lively gait. I did not pretend to notice it and so kept up my lying.

“‘The first man I ever killed,’ I told him, ‘was a one-eyed man in Utah, who called me a liar, and I threw his body over a cliff, and my conscience hurt me for full half an hour afterwards. After that I soon got so I loved to blow a man’s head off just to see his brains fly.’

“It had grown quite dark, and having nothing better to do, I told him all the bloody stories I could think of and claimed them as my own experience until I became tired of the foolishness and lapsed into silence. We had made about half our journey and were passing a farm house set in a dense grove of trees. There were lights in the house and the young man broke the silence by asking, ‘Please, dear Mister Doc Middleton, may I go in and get a drink of water? I think I have got a fever in my throat.’

“‘Certainly, my boy, certainly,’ I replied taking the lines. He slid off the rig and ran to the house, while I sat there like a fool holding the horses. About twenty minutes passed and he did not return. Then I noticed the lights in the house had been extinguished. I called loudly for the young man to return, and when it flashed over my mind that to him I was the outlaw Doc Middleton, and he might warn the farmer of my presence, who might even then be waiting to get a shot at me, I yelled again for him in fear, louder than before, but there was no response. The more I thought of my predicament, the more nervous I became, until the cold sweat stood out like beads on my face.

“I could stand it no longer, and seizing the whip, I cut the horses a lash and crouched down by the dashboard just as I had been instructing the young man to do. In the sudden dash, the horses broke one of the buggy springs, and I wandered on the plains until morning, for I had missed the Osceola road. It cost me $2 to have the spring mended and $5 to send a man back to Silver Creek with the rig, to say nothing of being scared within an inch of my life.”