Then they took me home.

I didn't sleep any--didn't want to sleep.

I had plenty of things to think about, and less than four hours to do it in,--because five o'clock was the hour appointed for the tragedy, and I should have to use up one hour--beginning at four--in practising with the revolver and finding out which end of it to level at the adversary.

At four we went down into a little gorge, about a mile from town, and borrowed a barn door for a mark--borrowed it of a man who was over in California on a visit--and we set the barn door up and stood a fence-rail up against the middle of it, to represent Mr.Laird.But the rail was no proper representative of him, for he was longer than a rail and thinner.
Nothing would ever fetch him but a line shot, and then as like as not he would split the bullet--the worst material for duelling purposes that could be imagined.

I began on the rail.