The West from a car window

by Richard Harding Davis

MOUNT OF THE HOLY CROSS

“Here,” he said, “that’ll help take you home. You’re too damned tough for Texas!”

The other Englishmen in San Antonio filled out the sum and sent him back to England. His people are well known in London; his father is a colonel in the Guards.

The most notable Englishman who ever came to Texas was Ben Thompson; but he arrived there at so early an age, and became so thoroughly Western in his mode of life, that Texans claim him as their own. I imagine, however, he always retained some of the traditions of his birthplace, as there is a story of his standing with his hat off to talk to an English nobleman, when Thompson at the time was the most feared and best known man in all Texas. The stories of his recklessness and ignorance of fear, and utter disregard of the value of others’ lives as well as his own, are innumerable. A few of them are interesting and worth keeping, as they show the typical bad man of the highest degree in his different humors, and also as I have not dared to say half as much about bad men as I should have liked to do. Thompson killed eighteen men in different parts of Texas, and was for this made marshal of Austin, on the principle that if he must kill somebody, it was better to give him authority to kill other desperadoes than reputable citizens. As marshal it was his pleasure to pull up his buggy across the railroad track just as the daily express train was about to start, and covering the engineer with his revolver, bid him hold the train until he was ready to move on. He would then call some trembling acquaintance from the crowd on the platform and talk with him leisurely, until he thought he had successfully awed the engineer and established his authority. Then he would pick up his reins and drive on, saying to the engineer, “You needn’t think, sir, any corporation can hurry me.” The position of the unfortunate man to whom he talked must have been most trying, with a locomotive on one side and a revolver on the other.

One day a cowboy, who was a well-known bully and a would-be desperado, shot several bullet-holes through the high hat of an Eastern traveller who was standing at the bar of an Austin hotel. Thompson heard of this, and, purchasing a high hat, entered the bar-room.

“I hear,” he said, facing the cowboy, “that you are shooting plug-hats here to-day; perhaps you would like to take a shot at mine.” He then raised his revolver and shot away the cowboy’s ear. “I meant,” he said, “to hit your ear; did I do it?” The bully showed proof that he had. “Well, then,” said the marshal, “get out of here;” and catching the man by his cartridge-belt, he threw him out into the street, and so put an end to his reputation as a desperate character forever.

Thompson was naturally unpopular with a certain class in the community. Two barkeepers who had a personal grudge against him, with no doubt excellent reason, lay in ambush for him behind the two bars of the saloon, which stretched along either wall. Thompson entered the room from the street in ignorance of any plot against him until the two men halted him with shot-guns. They had him so surely at their pleasure that he made no effort to reach his revolver, but stood looking from one to the other, and smiling grimly. But his reputation was so great, and their fear of him so actual, that both men missed him, although not twenty feet away, and with shot-guns in their hands. Then Thompson took out his pistol deliberately and killed them.

A few years ago he became involved in San Antonio with “Jack” Harris, the keeper of a gambling-house and variety theatre. Harris lay in wait for Thompson behind the swinging doors of his saloon, but Thompson, as he crossed the Military Plaza, was warned of Harris’s hiding-place, and shot him through the door. He was tried for the murder, and acquitted on the ground of self-defence; and on his return to Austin was met at the station by a brass band and all the fire companies. Perhaps inspired by this, he returned to San Antonio, and going to Harris’s theatre, then in the hands of his partner, Joe Foster, called from the gallery for Foster to come up and speak to him. Thompson had with him a desperado named King Fisher, and against him every man of his class in San Antonio, for Harris had been very popular. Foster sent his assistant, a very young man named Bill Sims, to ask Thompson to leave the place, as he did not want trouble.

“I have come to have a reconciliation,” said Thompson. “I want to shake hands with my old friend, Joe Foster. Tell him I won’t leave till I see him, and I won’t make a row.”