CHAPTER 2

When I walked out of Horace Hawes's office, I felt as though I had been set free from prison. I wasn't being fired. Instead, I was being offered a grand opportunity. Hawes had decided to open a newspaper in Dodge City—the notoriously wild cow town some three hundred miles southwest of Lawrence. And he wanted me to assist.

I was to travel to Dodge City along with Hawes and one of his typesetters. We would be transporting a new Potter drum-cylinder press along with several California job cases, composing sticks, and several barrels of ink—all on the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe railroad.

Dodge City in 1879 was still a booming cow town. It was a terminu...

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