He—“Ain’t you got no jewelry nor nothin’?”
I—“Ain’t it bad enough to be broke without being insulted about it?”
He—“I’ve a damn notion to kill you, any how.”
I—“I am afraid you will. You don’t intend to kill me, but that pistol is pointed right at me, and you are nervous and it might go off.”
I positively saw that man move his pistol so that, had it been discharged, the bullet would have missed me by several feet. His voice quivered and I could see him tremble.
He—“Throw off that overcoat and step to one side.”
I—“When you take the coat please take the papers from the pocket and leave them in the road.”
He—“Pick up your coat and walk straight down the middle of the road; no bad breaks, now, or by —— I will kill you.”
And though I was never a Populist, I walked that night down the “middle of the road.”
One day I passed where two strange roughs were evidently critisizing some new comer who they thought was claiming honors which did not belong to him. I heard one of them say contemptuously: “Calls himself the Deadwood Kid! Why, he’s no more the Deadwood Kid than I am. Why, the Deadwood Kid has killed half a dozen men, an’ I don’t believe that ‘_moke_’ ever killed anybody!”
Early one morning I heard a saloonkeeper talking to his friend, evidently about some row he had had the day or night before. He said, “Well, no; I don’t think I was too drunk. Well, I was just about like I am now; and if he had got the best of me I wouldn’t have said a word. But my own opinion is, I would have gone through him p-r-o-p-e-r-l-y.”
The next day after the notorious ex-convict and desperado, Wesley Harden, was killed on San Antonio street by a worse man than himself, who was a constable or something, people, though not sorry at Harden’s taking off, were shocked at the manner of it, but feared to condemn the act, because no one knew who would be the next victim. I was passing along the street, and a merchant friend called to me and said, seriously and in a low tone of voice, “What do YOU think about this killing of Harden?” I placed my hand at the side of my mouth and whispered, “I’ll tell you if you say nothing about it. I have just been down to the undertakers and I saw Harden, and I think—I think he’s dead!” I believe my friend kept my secret.