Although one version of the events recorded herein appeared as, Part One, ‘The Futility of War’, The Fastest Gun in Texas (please do not blame us for the title; it was arbitrarily selected without reference to us by the editor of Wagon Wheel Westerns when first published in 1963), we did not at that time have access to the full details. These have now been made available to us by Alvin Dustine ‘Cap’ Fog, along with permission to reproduce them.
We realize that, in our present ‘permissive’ society, we could include the actual profanities used by various people who appear in this volume. However, we do not concede a spurious desire to produce ‘realism’ is a valid reason for doing so.
As we do not pander to the current ‘trendy’ employment of the metric system, unless we are referring to calibers appropriate to various weapons—e.g., Luger 9mm—we will continue to write in miles, yards, feet, inches, pounds and ounces when referring to measurements and weights.
Lastly, to save our ‘old hands’ from repetition and for the benefit of new readers, we are giving details of the family backgrounds and careers of Belle ‘the Rebel Spy’ Boyd and Captain Dustine Edward Marsden ‘Dusty’ Fog, C.S.A., also such special terms of references to specific events about which we are frequently questioned in the form of Appendices.
J. T. Edson