Herbert Watrous slept on, undisturbed by the noise, while Nick Ribsam stood in the background, viewing the scene, which impressed him as the most extraordinary he had ever witnessed.
“Let me see,” said Lattin reflectively, “it’s several months since we last met: do you remember where it was?”
“I think,” replied Rickard, looking thoughtfully at the stars, as if busy with memory, “that it was in Laredo, at Brown’s place.”
“You’re right,” struck in the cowboy; “we had a shooting scrap, and I came near passing in my checks.”
“Yes,” laughed Bell, “I thought I had you that time, but I fired too quick; the lights went out, and then the room was full of smoke and bullets. When things cleared up, you wasn’t there.”
“No,” said Lattin, “you folks were too thick for me, and I lit out; I swum the Rio Grande, just as Ben Thompson did when he got catched in the same place and in the same way. He got off without a scratch, as he did hundreds of times before, only to catch it at Santone at last, as he was bound to do sooner or later.”
“BEN and me done travelled a good deal together,” said Rickard, with a faint sigh; “he was the quickest chap on the shoot I ever met; I never knowed him to miss when he had any show at all, and he was the luckiest fellow that ever walked. Do you know what Ben’s rule was?” asked Rickard, turning toward the cowboys, as if about to impart a piece of delightful news.
“It was to shoot whenever he had the slightest excuse,” replied Strubell, who evidently had little respect for one of the most famous characters that Texas ever brought to the surface.
“Whenever he got into a shooting scrap he always let the other chap fire first; for then, when _he_ let fly, he had a good case of self-defence. He always done that, as he told me himself.”
I may be allowed to say that this remark about Ben Thompson, once City Marshal of Austin, was true. He informed me that he had followed the rule for years, and it doubtless helped to secure his acquittal in a large number of the cases where he was tried for slaying others, though the shameful admiration shown him by all classes had much to do with his immunity from legal punishment. As has been hinted, however, there came a time when Ben’s rule failed to work satisfactorily for himself. It was down in San Antonio, the scene of more than one of his crimes, that a half dozen men worked in a volley from their Winchesters ahead of Ben’s revolver, and he died with his boots on, the last shot which he fired before breathing his last causing the death of one of his assailants.