Accordingly, in
response to his reiterated command that I should set up the drinks, I
said, "Well, if I've got to, I've got to," and rose, looking past him.
As I rose, I struck quick and hard with my right just to one side of the
point of his jaw, hitting with my left as I straightened out, and then
again with my right. He fired the guns, but I do not know whether this
was merely a convulsive action of his hands or whether he was trying to
shoot at me. When he went down he struck the corner of the bar with his
head. It was not a case in which one could afford to take chances, and
if he had moved I was about to drop on his ribs with my knees; but he
was senseless. I took away his guns, and the other people in the room,
who were now loud in their denunciation of him, hustled him out and put
him in a shed. I got dinner as soon as possible, sitting in a corner
of the dining-room away from the windows, and then went upstairs to bed
where it was dark so that there would be no chance of any one shooting
at me from the outside. However, nothing happened. When my assailant
came to, he went down to the station and left on a freight.
As I have said, most of the men of my regiment were just such men as
those I knew in the ranch country; indeed, some of my ranch friends were
in the regiment--Fred Herrig, the forest ranger, for instance, in whose
company I shot my biggest mountain ram.
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