“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.