In the early eighties, in the quiet, sleepy, bloody old town of San Antonio, there was a dance hall, gambling resort and vaudeville theater, in which the main proprietor was one Jack Harris, commonly known as Pegleg Harris. Thompson frequently patronized this place on his visits to San Antonio, and received treatment which left him with a grudge against Harris, whom he resolved to kill. He followed his man into the bar-room one day and killed Harris as he stood in the semi-darkness. It was only another case of "self-defense" for Thompson, who was well used to being cleared of criminal charges or left unaccused altogether; and no doubt Harris would have killed him if he could. After killing Harris, Thompson declared that he proposed to kill Harris' partners, Foster and Simms. He had an especial grudge against Billy Simms, then a young man not yet nineteen years of age, because, so it is stated, he fancied that Simms supplanted him in the affections of a woman in Austin; and he carried also his grudge against the gambling house, where Simms now was the manager. Every time Thompson got drunk, he declared his intention of killing Billy Simms, and as the latter was young and inexperienced, he trembled in his boots at this talk which seemed surely to spell his doom. Simms, to escape Thompson's wrath, removed to Chicago, and remained there for a time, but before long was summoned home to Austin, where his mother was very ill. Thompson knew of his presence in Austin, but with magnanimity declined to kill Simms while he was visiting his sick mother. "Wait till he goes over to Santone," he said, "then I'll step over and kill the little ----." Simms, presently called to San Antonio to settle some debt of Jack Harris' estate, of which as friend and partner of the widow he had been appointed administrator, went to the latter city with a heavy heart, supposing that he would never leave it alive. He was told there that Thompson had been threatening him many times; and Simms received many telegrams to that effect. Some say that Thompson himself telegraphed Simms that he was coming down that day to kill him. Certainly a friend of Simms on the same day wired him warning: "Party who wants to destroy you on train this day bound for San Antonio."