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Show I ' fi I .ale Gillis. ; I In his autobiography Mark Twain tolls of. Joe ' J U f Goodman's duel with Tom Fitch a"nd of the duel ' tl'k 1 be himself did not fight with Laird. When Good- ;i '' i'- man went on the grounct to fight Fitch his second 'i lla'i 5- said to him, "Goodman, I have seen a good many ;, i i ft of these affairs and a fatal termination is not ' I $ 1 I pleasant." "All right," was Goodman's reply, "I i 'i li will not shoot Fitch above the knee, that Is not j j it much above tho knee." He shot him just about HHM ' 1 ' ' IbI I two Incll0S nbove the knee. Twain does not tell HU j tho story quite right, but near enough. Neither WBM I ; iflft '! ls 110 (iult0 rignt ln tho story of how ho di(1 not UHi ! f if jKr f fight a duel. He expected to and was out prac- ' ( rlfii ticing at a target on the side hill just over the HRB' UmN ' first hill east of Virginia City. Ho was shooting HH FMH ' "mighty wild" when some heavy bird, a mud hen Hwjjl ' " r ,, probably, flew slowly over the place, Glllls drew H ; his pistol, killed the bird and at once replaced his RH - ' pist ol in his hip rocket. At the moment the sec- Hi J7?'r on of 1 a,r(1 was Hmbing the hill, heard tho pis- Hflf ', H'ffc to1 and saw t,ie 1)1 1(1 fal1, Coming UP t0 GHlis he - im- 1 snw tne rteacl 1)11(1 011 tlle groun(1' 110 pistol was in sight except Twain's. He asked Gillis who killed the bird and Gillis promptly replied, "My principal; princi-pal; lie always shoots that way." The man returned re-turned to his principal and told him it would be isuicido to fight a duel with that Missouri son-of a-gun, and the duel was off. But it was of Gillis that we started to speak. Ho came to the coast from Mississippi about 1859 and went with Long Primer Hall to Oregon and started a secessi'n newspaper. It did not last long. It stopped suddenly and to this day Gillis does not believe that the climate of Oregon Is healthy. He went to San Francisco, and in a few weeks election day came. In those days Stevie was about the most dapper dressed man on the coast. Almost everybody voted so Gillis went to vote. A big tough challenged Steve's right to vote, whereupon there was an Instant collision. The. crowd formed a ring, the fight lasted fifteen minutes, min-utes, when Gillis got up and walked away, his opponent was carried away. When Gillis finally got out of bed he declared himself a Republican and has been a staunch one over since. Whon some years later Gillis was reminded re-minded that his opponent had a right to challenge his vote, and that the challenge supplied no reason rea-son for changing his politics Gillis replied: "But the blankoty, blankety, blankety son-of-a-gun was a Democrat and drove a scavinger wagon, and 1 wouldn't belong to such a party: Ho mistook Gillis for a Republican because of his clothes. Gillis was news editor on the Enterprise for twenty years, then went to Tuolumne county, California, Cal-ifornia, and went to work on a mine. He struck it opulent at last and at last account was living modestly in clover. He is pretty eld now, in the late sixties, but if ho is not still ready to fight and is not a good shot, then time has been playing false with him, sure. |