[4V50 Gary]

Continued from the previous post

"Surround the house and give him no quarter!' yelled McCadlas. When I heard that I felt as quiet and cool as if going to church. I looked around the room and saw a rifle hanging over the bed. 'Is that loaded?' said I to Mrs. Waltman. 'Yes' she answered in a whisper, for the poor thing was so frightened she could scarcely speak above a whisper. I leaped upon the bed and caught it from the hooks, although my eyes did not leave the door. Just then McCandlas looked in at the door, but fell back when he saw me with the rifle in my hands. 'Come in here, you cowardly dog,' I shouted; come in here and fight me! McCandlas was no coward if he was bully ; for he rushed into the room with his gun leveled to shoot, but he was not quick enough. My rifle ball went through his heart and he fell back outside the house, where he was found the next day holding tight to his rifle.

"His demise was followed by a yell from his gang and there was a dead silence. I put down the rifle and took the revolver and I said to myself, 'Only six shots, and nine men to kill. Save your powder Bill, for the grim monster is looking hard at you.' There was a few seconds of that awful stillness, and then the ruffians closed in on me from both doors. How wild they looked with their red, bloated faces and inflamed, drunken eyes, shouting and cursing. but I never aimed more deliberately in my life. One-two-three-four; and four men sank to the floor dead. Bt that did not stop the rest. two of them fired their bird guns at me. And then I felt a sort of sting' sensation run over me. The room was full of smoke. Two of them closed in on me. One I knocked down with my fist. 'You are out of the way for a while,' I thought. The second I shot dead. The other three clutched me and crowed me onto the bed. I fought hard. I broke with my hand one man's arm. He had his fingers around my throat. Before I could regain my feet I was struck across the breast with the stock of a rifle, and I felt the blood running from my nose and mouth.

Then I got ugly, and I remember that I got hold of a knife, and then it was all cloudly like, and I was wild, (it was at this fight that he gained the world 'wild' to his name) and I struck savage blows, following the devils up from one side to the other of the room and into the corners, until I knew that every one of them was dead. All of a sudden it seemed as if my heart were on fire. I was bleeding everywhere. I rushed out to the well and drank from the bucket, and then tumbled down in a faint."

"You must have been very badly hurt," remarked a bystander.

"Yes; There were eleven buckshot in my body. I carry some of them now. I was cut in thirteen places, all of them bad enough to have let out the life of a man, but that good old Dr. Mills pulled me safely through it, after a bad siege of many a long week."

Disclaimer: I've never read a book about Wild Bill and cannot attest to the veracity of this incident. It is from the black powder era and I thought it would be interest to members and nonmembers alike.