Soon after the above incident, I went one night about 9 o’clock to call for my wife, who was visiting some friends near McGoffin’s place. As I walked unarmed and with my overcoat thrown over my shoulder, I heard and saw a man walking suspiciously behind me, and determined to watch him, but as he followed a different street at a junction I dismissed him from my mind. Suddenly he sprang from the bushes about fifteen feet from the road, with a very large pistol directed at me, and the following dialogue ensued:

He—“Halt! Your money or your life.”

I—“My friend, I haven’t a damn cent.”

He—“Er, er. Hold up your hands.”

I did as requested.

He—“Ain’t you got no jewelry nor nothin’?”

I—“I told you no.”

He—“I believe you are a d—n liar.”

I—“Ain’t it bad enough to be broke without being insulted about it?”

He—“I’ve a damn notion to kill you, any how.”

I—“I am afraid you will. You don’t intend to kill me, but that pistol is pointed right at me, and you are nervous and it might go off.”

I positively saw that man move his pistol so that, had it been discharged, the bullet would have missed me by several feet. His voice quivered and I could see him tremble.

He—“Throw off that overcoat and step to one side.”

I complied.

I—“When you take the coat please take the papers from the pocket and leave them in the road.”

More conversation, and then:

He—“Pick up your coat and walk straight down the middle of the road; no bad breaks, now, or by —— I will kill you.”

And though I was never a Populist, I walked that night down the “middle of the road.”

One day I passed where two strange roughs were evidently critisizing some new comer who they thought was claiming honors which did not belong to him. I heard one of them say contemptuously: “Calls himself the Deadwood Kid! Why, he’s no more the Deadwood Kid than I am. Why, the Deadwood Kid has killed half a dozen men, an’ I don’t believe that ‘moke’ ever killed anybody!”

Early one morning I heard a saloonkeeper talking to his friend, evidently about some row he had had the day or night before. He said, “Well, no; I don’t think I was too drunk. Well, I was just about like I am now; and if he had got the best of me I wouldn’t have said a word. But my own opinion is, I would have gone through him p-r-o-p-e-r-l-y.”

The next day after the notorious ex-convict and desperado, Wesley Harden, was killed on San Antonio street by a worse man than himself, who was a constable or something, people, though not sorry at Harden’s taking off, were shocked at the manner of it, but feared to condemn the act, because no one knew who would be the next victim. I was passing along the street, and a merchant friend called to me and said, seriously and in a low tone of voice, “What do YOU think about this killing of Harden?” I placed my hand at the side of my mouth and whispered, “I’ll tell you if you say nothing about it. I have just been down to the undertakers and I saw Harden, and I think—I think he’s dead!” I believe my friend kept my secret.

Some years ago my friend, Mr. Park Pitman, now (1900) the efficient clerk of El Paso County, was a candidate for a county office on the Democratic ticket, and was the only candidate of his party defeated—possibly because he was the best man on that ticket. Soon thereafter, I was a candidate for a city office on the Republican ticket, and was the only Republican defeated (whether we voted for each other or not is nobody’s business). Soon after my defeat, I met Pitman with a party of friends, and I said to him: “Let us mingle our tears.” He replied, “I am writing a book which is to be entitled, ‘Bleeding Inwardly,’ I will compliment you with a copy.”

On my return from Washington City, in 1897, my friend, Zack White, congratulated me upon my appointment as United States Consul at Chihuahua, Mexico, and I told him I had been surprised at receiving so many congratulations and that I believed most of them sincere. He replied, “They are all sincere. It’s like this; half of the people of this town are your friends, and, like me, they are glad of your success, and the other half are glad because you are going away. It’s unanimous.”

I think a man who makes an “even break” among the people of El Paso does fairly well, and I “let it go at that.”