"You're a liar!" was retorted, with an oath.
The two men were up over the card-table in a twinkling, looking at each other, and both very white.
"Apologize!" demanded Foster, still quiet, but with a terrible earnestness in his voice.
"I don't do that sort of business, you white-livered coward!" shouted Phillips.
Without another look or word, the two parted, one passing out one door and the other out of another, while the crowd in the hotel canvassed the matter as coolly as though there had been no difficulty worth mentioning, while a few quietly laid wagers on who would get the first shot.
In about fifteen minutes more, Foster was seen returning with a double-barreled shot-gun, and Phillips, who had a wooden leg, came stumping up another street, with an immense navy revolver in his hand. It was noticeable that the space between the advancing men was made very clear, so that nothing should interfere with their sociability. In a moment more, Phillips had fired at Foster, and evidently hit him; for, as he was bringing his gun to his shoulder, his aim had been badly disturbed, and before he had time to fire, Phillips had fired again and wounded his man the second time. Foster now leaned against a porch column, desperately resolved to get a good aim,—his antagonist, all the while advancing, attempted to fire again, but missed this time, the cap refusing to communicate the deadly flash to the chamber of the revolver,—then there was a blinding flash from Foster's gun, accompanied by a thunderous report, and the two men fell almost instantaneously.
Foster had discharged both barrels of his weapon, heavily loaded with buck-shot, at Phillips, the entire charge having entered his wooden leg, and sent him spinning to the ground, like the sudden jerk and whirl of a nearly spent top, the recoil of the gun also "kicking" Foster flat as a Tennessee "poor white's" corn pone.
The "gentlemen" who had been looking on and quietly criticising the little by-play, now rushed forward and surrounded the combatants, the anxiety of each of whom was to be assured of the other's death; or, in case of his being alive, to have some one to be the immediate bearer of tender regards and profuse expressions of friendship; thus terminating satisfactorily to all parties what the chivalrous inhabitants of Victoria informed my detectives was called a "stag duel," the most common and effective method known for settling the little difficulties liable at any time to occur among gentlemen, the only conditions imposed by custom being that neither party shall offer to shoot in a crowded room, or be allowed to fire at his opponent unless he is also prepared, when other citizens who may be using the streets at those times withdraw from them as rapidly as consistent with the proprieties, when the occasion is immediately made interesting to the participants, who advance and fire upon each other as rapidly as a liberal practice in this and other "codes" of taking human life will permit.
As the next sensation to a "stag duel" in Victoria was the arrival of the "train" from Lavaca, in the shape of the hand-car manned by four burly negroes, who with the original superintendent of the road had formed a soulless corporation with which nothing could compete, it was not long before the detectives had secured seats with four other passengers, making ten persons in all, to be conveyed twenty-eight miles on a broken-down hand-car over probably the most villainous excuse for a railroad ever known.
The fare was six dollars in gold for each passenger, which might seem to have a shade of exorbitance about it when it was considered that the accommodations consisted of two very insecure seats, constructed over the wheels, upon each of which three persons might cling with a constant expectation of being jolted off by the unevenness of the road, or of falling off from sheer fatigue in endeavor to cling to the ramshackle boards beneath them.