Overland journeys to the Pacific; West (U.S.) -- Description and travel
He reached back for his pistol, and some one--a jury of twelve
intelligent citizens decided it was not young Bill Sims--shot him
three times in the forehead. They say you could have covered the three
bullet-holes with a half-dollar. But so great was the desperate courage
of this ruffian that even as he fell he fired, holding his revolver
at his hip, and killing Foster, and then, as he lay on his back, with
every nerve jerking in agony, he emptied his revolver into the floor,
ripping great gashes in the boards about him. And so he died, as he
would have elected to die, with his boots on, and with the report of
his pistol the last sound to ring in his ears. King Fisher was killed
at the same moment; and the _Express_ spoke of it the next morning as
“A Good Night’s Work.”
I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Sims at the gambling palace, which
was once Harris’s, then Foster’s, and which is now his, and found him a
jolly, bright-eyed young man of about thirty, with very fine teeth, and
a most contagious laugh. He was just back from Dwight, and told us of
a man who had been cured there, and who had gone away with his mother
leaning on his arm, and what this man had said to them of his hopes
for the future when he left; and as he told it the tears came to his
eyes, and he coughed, and began to laugh over a less serious story. I
tried all the time to imagine him, somewhat profanely, I am afraid, as
a young David standing up before this English giant, who had sent
twoscore of other men out of the world, and to picture the glaring,
crowded gallery, with the hot air and smoke, and the voice of the
comic singer rising from the stage below, and this boy and the marshal
of Austin facing one another with drawn revolvers; but it was quite
impossible.
[Illustration: PIKE’S PEAK FROM COLORADO SPRINGS]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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