The pounding hooves, the rocking and rattling of the stagecoach and the blowing dust all combined to give Jim Dailey a terrible headache. He reached up and massaged his temples with fingers that possessed clean and trimmed fingernails, a rarity in the West of 1883.

Across from Dailey sat the only other passenger in the stagecoach, a scruffy-looking and sweaty individual who had introduced himself as “Big Tom” Branson. Occasionally he leaned over and spat a brown stream of tobacco juice out the open window of the stage, and Dailey would close his eyes in distaste. But when he opened them, he could still see Branson’s grinning, tobacco-stained mouth.

As Dailey patted his brow with a pale-yellow silk kerchief, there was a slowing in the speed of the stage, and the coarse voice of the driver called down, “Pullin’ into San Melas, boys! Wake up, iffen yer a’sleepin’!”