and gave me a considerable of a jolt in the back. I moved out of range
–I began to feel in the way.
The chief said, “That was the Colonel, likely. I’ve been expecting him
for two days. He will be up now right away.”
He was correct. The Colonel appeared in the door a moment afterward with
a dragoon revolver in his hand.
He said, “Sir, have I the honor of addressing the poltroon who edits this
mangy sheet?”
“You have. Be seated, sir. Be careful of the chair, one of its legs is
gone. I believe I have the honor of addressing the putrid liar, Colonel
Blatherskite Tecumseh?”
“Right, Sir. I have a little account to settle with you. If you are at
leisure we will begin.”
“I have an article on the ‘Encouraging Progress of Moral and Intellectual
Development in America’ to finish, but there is no hurry. Begin.”
Both pistols rang out their fierce clamor at the same instant. The chief
lost a lock of his hair, and the Colonel’s bullet ended its career in the
fleshy part of my thigh. The Colonel’s left shoulder was clipped a
little. They fired again. Both missed their men this time, but I got my
share, a shot in the arm. At the third fire both gentlemen were wounded
slightly, and I had a knuckle chipped. I then said, I believed I would
go out and take a walk, as this was a private matter, and I had a
delicacy about participating in it further. But both gentlemen begged me
to keep my seat, and assured me that I was not in the way.
They then talked about the elections and the crops while they reloaded,
and I fell to tying up my wounds. But presently they opened fire again
with animation, and every shot took effect–but it is proper to remark
that five out of the six fell to my share. The sixth one mortally
wounded the Colonel, who remarked, with fine humor, that he would have to
say good morning now, as he had business uptown. He then inquired the
way to the undertaker’s and left.
The chief turned to me and said, “I am expecting company to dinner, and
shall have to get ready. It will be a favor to me if you will read proof
and attend to the customers.”
I winced a little at the idea of attending to the customers, but I was
too bewildered by the fusillade that was still ringing in my ears to
think of anything to say.
He continued, “Jones will be here at three–cowhide him. Gillespie will
call earlier, perhaps–throw him out of the window. Ferguson will be
along about four–kill him. That is all for today, I believe. If you
have any odd time, you may write a blistering article on the police–give
the chief inspector rats. The cowhides are under the table; weapons in
the drawer–ammunition there in the corner–lint and bandages up there in
the pigeonholes. In case of accident, go to Lancet, the surgeon, down-
stairs. He advertises–we take it out in trade.”
He was gone. I shuddered. At the end of the next three hours I had been
through perils so awful that all peace of mind and all cheerfulness were
gone from me. Gillespie had called and thrown me out of the window.
Jones arrived promptly, and when I got ready to do the cowhiding he took
the job off my hands. In an encounter with a stranger, not in the bill
of fare, I had lost my scalp. Another stranger, by the name of Thompson,
left me a mere wreck and ruin of chaotic rags. And at last, at bay in
the corner, and beset by an infuriated mob of editors, blacklegs,
politicians, and desperadoes, who raved and swore and flourished their
weapons about my head till the air shimmered with glancing flashes of
steel, I was in the act of resigning my berth on the paper when the chief
arrived, and with him a rabble of charmed and enthusiastic friends. Then
ensued a scene of riot and carnage such as no human pen, or steel one
either, could describe. People were shot, probed, dismembered, blown up,