A cool ale in a Baltimore tavern plus a Mickey Finn turned young Tubar Lane's student world into hell. Bounced out of school and disgraced, he could not return home to a strict father. He walked to the railroad yard where he met a train-hopping gunman. And that was the beginning of Tubar's long trek to wild and wooly Dodge City. It was 1872-the year of the great buffalo herds, of Indians, gunslingers, outlaws and renegades. * * * * * John Tilley was born in southern West Virginia in the sawmill community of Maben and grew up in the coal mining towns of Bud-Alpoca. He enlisted in the Air Force in 1947, and in 1948 flew from Walker Air Force Base in Roswell, New Mexico to Goosebay, Labrador in a B-29 bomber with the legendary Charles A. Lindbergh. Tilley was assigned overseas seven times, and retired in 1967 as a Master Sergeant. He is a pleasure horseman, coon hunter, fisherman and a member of the Authors Guild.