“They found a man shot by the Upper Bend this morning,” remarks one to his neighbour.
“That so? Who was he?” asks the other.
“Don’t know. Didn’t hear,” is the reply.
The barroom or street killings, which averaged in number at least two or three a week, while furnishing more excitement, aroused very little more real interest. Open and above-board homicides of that sort were always the 300 result of differences of opinion. If the victim had a friend, the latter might go gunning for his pal’s slayer; but nobody had enough personal friends to elevate any such row to the proportions of a general feud.
All inquests were set aside until Sunday. A rough and ready public meeting invariably brought in the same verdict–“justifiable self-defence.” At these times, too, popular justice was dispensed, but carelessly and not at all in the spirit of the court presided over by John Semple at Hangman’s Gulch. A general air of levity characterized these occasions, which might strike as swift and deadly a blow as a shaft of lightning, or might puff away as harmlessly as a summer zephyr. Many a time, until I learned philosophically to stay away, did my blood boil over the haphazard way these men had of disposing of some poor creature’s destinies.
“Here’s a Mex thief,” observed the chair. “What do you want done with him?”
“Move we cut off his ears!” yelled a voice from the back of the crowd.
“Make it fifty lashes!” shouted another.
A wrangle at once started between the advocates of cropping and the whip. The crowd wearied of it.
“Let the ─ ─ ─ go!” suggested someone.