nting, and so, very often, by a
graveyard route. You could not always stop to feel the pulse of a
suspected killer.

The use of firearms with swiftness and accuracy was necessary in the
calling of the desperado, after fate had marked him and set him apart
for the inevitable, though possibly long-deferred, end. This skill with
weapons was a natural gift in the case of nearly every man who attained
great reputation whether as killer of victims or as killer of killers.
Practice assisted in proficiency, but a Wild Bill or a Slade or a Billy
the Kid was born and not made.

Quickness in nerve action is usually backed with good digestion, and
hard life in the open is good medicine for the latter. This, however,
does not wholly cover the case. A slow man also might be a brave man.
Sooner or later, if he went into the desperado business on either side
of the game, he would fall before the man who was brave as himself and a
fraction faster with the gun.

There were unknown numbers of potential bad men who died mute and
inglorious after a life spent at a desk or a plow. They might have been
bad if matters had shaped right for that. Each war brings out its own
heroes from unsuspected places; each sudden emergency summons its own
fit man. Say that a man took to the use of weapons, and found himself
arbiter of life and death with lesser animals, and able to grant them
either at a distance. He went on, pleased with his growing skill with
firearms. He discovered that as the sword had in one age of the world
lengthened the human arm, so did the six-shooter--that epochal
instrument, invented at precisely that time of the American life when
the human arm needed lengthening--extend and strengthen his arm, and
make him and all men equal. The user of weapons felt his powers
increased. So now, in time, there came to him a moment of danger. There
was his enemy. There was the affront, the challenge. Perhaps it was male
against male, a matter of sex, prolific always in bloodshed. It might be
a matter of property, or perhaps it was some taunt as to his own
personal courage. Perhaps alcohol came into the question, as was often
the case. For one reason or the other, it came to the ordeal of combat.
It was the undelegated right of one individual against that of another.
The law was not invoked--the law would not serve. Even as the quicker
set of nerves flashed into action, the arm shot forward, and there
smote the point of flame as did once the p