My first meeting with him occurred one evening in Dodge when I was making the rounds delivering the newspaper. Three Texas drovers spotted me as I made my way along Front Street and decided to have some fun. First they ripped the canvas bag in which I was carrying my papers from my shoulder and began shoving me like a beanbag between them.
One of them had just knocked me down with a punch that missed my chin and hit my shoulder. That was when Charley Higgins stepped in.
"Don't seem right three of you pickin' on just one like this," he said. He was the only one of the group who was armed, but he didn't need to yank his hog leg. Instead, he had produced a Kansas neck blister—or what folks today call a Bowie knife—and was waving it at the three drovers.
"I 'spect this evens things up a bit
