In the spring of seventy-nine, Hall returned and arrived in Sidney "broke flat." He stopped at the "Miner's Hotel," which was in the southwest corner of the block in which you will now find Hon. W. P. Miles, and the Hons. Joseph and Robert Oberfelder. three of the old timers of Sidney. In the days of the middle eighties this block contained the emporium of Mike Tobin and Harry Winters, and the Metropolitan held the position on Front Street. Nearly all the old timers stopped at the Miner's hotel in 1879, and the landlord took 'Gene in and let him stay without pay, until he secured work. Stopping at the hotel was John Graham, with whom Hall visited and talked.

Graham had drifted up the trail to Ogallala a year or two before, and while there, two of his friends, Billy Brewdon and another were killed in an affair with four other fellows. The four were said to be a rough lot, but one of them was Jack Southers, then deputy sheriff. The others were Joe Hughes, Billy Thompson and Bill Phebeus. Billy Thompson had the reputation of a really bad man, he having said to have killed the sheriff of Ellsworth, Kansas, about 1873. Phebeus was later hung by vigilantes at Pueblo, Colorado, for stealing cattle.

After the episode, Graham quit the range and took up his old trade of blacksmithing at Ogallala, waiting for the opportunity to pay them back in their own coin. He wanted to

get the four together and "clean the whole outfit" at one time. Once he had the affair almost in hand, when Frank King, who recently died at Broadwater, and who was then an officer of the law at Ogallala, got "a whiff of the wind," and took Graham's guns away from him.