One day, when I was messenger for half a gross of cigarette papers and a couple of wagon tires, I saw the alleged Beverly Travers in a yellow-wheeled buggy with Ella Baynes, driving about town as ostentatiously as the black, waxy mud would permit.  I knew that this information would bring no balm of Gilead to Sam’s soul, so I refrained from including it in the news of the city that I retailed on my return.  But on the next afternoon an elongated ex-cowboy of the name of Simmons, an old-time pal of Sam’s, who kept a feed store in Kingfisher, rode out to the ranch and rolled and burned many cigarettes before he would talk.  When he did make oration, his words were these: 

“Say, Sam, there’s been a description of a galoot miscallin’ himself Bevel-edged Travels impairing the atmospheric air of Kingfisher for the past two weeks.  You know who he was?  He was not otherwise than Ben Tatum, from the Creek Nation, son of old Gopher Tatum that your Uncle Newt shot last February.  You know what he done this morning?  He killed your brother Lester—­shot him in the co’t-house yard.”

I wondered if Sam had heard.  He pulled a twig from a mesquite bush, chewed it gravely, and said: 

“He did, did he?  He killed Lester?”

“The same,” said Simmons.  “And he did more.  He run away with your girl, the same as to say Miss Ella Baynes.  I thought you might like to know, so I rode out to impart the information.”

“I am much obliged, Jim,” said Sam, taking the chewed twig from his mouth.  “Yes, I’m glad you rode Out.  Yes, I’m right glad.”

“Well, I’ll be ridin’ back, I reckon.  That boy I left in the feed store don’t know hay from oats.  He shot Lester in the back.”

“Shot him in the back?”

“Yes, while he was hitchin’ his hoss.”

“I’m much obliged, Jim.”

“I kind of thought you’d like to know as soon as you could.”

“Come in and have some coffee before you ride back, Jim?”

“Why, no, I reckon not; I must get back to the store.”

“And you say—­”

“Yes, Sam.  Everybody seen ’em drive away together in a buckboard, with a big bundle, like clothes, tied up in the back of it.  He was drivin’ the team he brought over with him from Muscogee.  They’ll be hard to overtake right away.”

“And which—­”

“I was goin’ on to tell you.  They left on the Guthrie road; but there’s no tellin’ which forks they’ll take—­you know that.”

“All right, Jim; much obliged.”

“You’re welcome, Sam.”

Simmons rolled a cigarette and stabbed his pony with both heels.  Twenty yards away he reined up and called back: 

“You don’t want no—­assistance, as you might say?”

“Not any, thanks.”

“I didn’t think you would.  Well, so long!”

Sam took out and opened a bone-handled pocket-knife and scraped a dried piece of mud from his left boot.  I thought at first he was going to swear a vendetta on the blade of it, or recite “The Gipsy’s Curse.”  The few feuds I had ever seen or read about usually opened that way.  This one seemed to be presented with a new treatment.  Thus offered on the stage, it would have been hissed off, and one of Belasco’s thrilling melodramas demanded instead.