Personal reminiscences of early days in California, with other sketches

by Stephen J. Field; George C. Gorham

Judge Terry had fallen very near the place where he first stopped, near the seat occupied by Justice Field at the table.

Neagle testified that if Justice Field had had a weapon, and been active in using it, he was at such a disadvantage, seated as he was, with Terry standing over him, that he would have been unable to raise his hand in his own defense.

A large number of witnesses were examined, all of whom agreed upon the main facts as above stated. Some of them distinctly heard the blows administered by Terry upon Justice Field's face and head. All testified to the loud warning given Terry by Neagle that he was an officer of the law, accompanied by his command that Terry should desist. It was all the work of a few seconds. Terry's sudden attack, the quick progress of which, from the first blow, was neither arrested nor slackened until he was disabled by the bullet from Neagle's pistol, could have been dealt with in no other way. It was evidently a question of the instant whether Terry's knife or Neagle's pistol should prevail. Says Neagle:

"He never took his eyes off me after he looked at me, or I mine off him. I did not hear him say anything. The only thing was he looked like an infuriated giant to me. I believed if I waited two seconds I should have been cut to pieces. I was within four feet of him."

Q. "What did the motion that Judge Terry made with his right
hand indicate to you?"

A. "That he would have had that knife out there within another
second and a half, and trying to cut my head off."

Terry, in action at such a time, from all accounts, was more like an enraged wild animal than a human being. The supreme moment had arrived to which he had been looking forward for nearly a year, when the life of the man he hated was in his hands. He had repeatedly sworn to take it. Not privately had he made these threats. With an insolence and an audacity born of lawlessness and of a belief that he could hew his way with a bowie-knife in courts as well as on the streets, he had publicly sentenced Judge Field to death as a penalty for vindicating the majesty of the law in his imprisonment for contempt.

It would have been the wildest folly that can be conceived of for the murderous assault of such a man to have been met with mild persuasion, or an attempt to arrest him. As well order a hungry tiger to desist from springing at his prey, to sheathe his outstretched claws and suffer himself to be bound, as to have met Terry with anything less than the force to which he was himself appealing. Every man who knows anything of the mode of life and of quarrelling and fighting among the men of Terry's class knows full well that when they strike a blow they mean to follow it up to the death, and they mean to take no chances. The only way to prevent the execution of Terry's revengeful and openly avowed purpose was by killing him on the spot. Only a lunatic or an imbecile or an accomplice would have pursued any other course in Neagle's place than the one he pursued, always supposing he had Neagle's nerve and cool self-possession to guide him in such a crisis.

While this tragedy was being enacted Mrs. Terry was absent, having returned to the car for the satchel containing her pistol. Before she returned, the shot had been fired that defeated the conspiracy between her and her husband against the life of a judge for the performance of his official duties. She returned to the hotel with her satchel in her hand just as her husband met his death. The manager of the hotel stopped her at the door she was entering, and seized her satchel. She did not relinquish it, but both struggled for its possession. A witness testified that she screamed out while so struggling: "Let me get at it; I will fix him." Many witnesses testified to her frantic endeavor to get the pistol. She called upon the crowd to hang the man that killed Judge Terry, and cried out, "Lynch Judge Field." Again and again she made frantic appeals to those present to lynch Judge Field. She tried to enter the car where he was, but was not permitted to do so. She cried out, "If I had my pistol I would fix him."

The testimony subsequently taken left no room to doubt that Terry had his deadly knife in its place in his breast at the time he made the attack on Justice Field. As the crowd were all engaged in breakfasting, his movements attracted little attention, and his motion toward his breast for the knife escaped the notice of all but Neagle and one other witness. Neagle rushed between Terry and Justice Field, and the latter had not a complete view of his assailant at the moment when the blow intended for him was changed into a movement for the knife with which Judge Terry intended to dispose of the alert little man, with whom he had had a former experience, and who now stood between him and the object of his greater wrath.