Show WENT IN A HURRY I I MAN LITERALLY ROLLED OUT OF TROUBLE OldTlmer of Tough Experience In a Western Texas Town Where the Country Was Wide Open Tho passing of gnmbllriR In Texas brought out reminiscences of tho early tluys when tho games were rim wide open In many of the towns of the state Jess Pry of San Antonio who was in tho front during tho construc tion of tho Southern Pacific through the western part of Texas tells this story In 1884 I was railroad and express agent at a new station which was then the end of the line of tho Southern South-ern Pacific This experience of mine happened on a monthly pay day Every workingman In camp had money Most of them had the gam Ming fever and leeches from all over tho west were on hand to get their share of the dlnero On this particular day the most notorious of the professional gamblers In camp was Iko Winters who had come over from Tombstone Ariz Along In the evening Winters and a few others started a poker game In a tent which was pitched Just at the edge of a steep hill When 1 got through with my duties as agent 1 went up to take a look at the game I was Invited to take a hand and that being about the only way to pass away the time I sat In The other players were sitting upon empty powder pow-der kegs and boxes and I went to the commissary tent near by and got an empty flour barrel which I used for a scat The game progressed without Incident In-cident for an hour or two and then there occurred the biggest rumpus 1 was ever In There were five or six players besides Winters Among them was a halfbreed Mexican who had come over from Mexico with a reputation as a killer I He was like Winters a professional profession-al gambler Winters was unacquainted unacquaint-ed with this halfbreed Mexican He took him to be a foreman of a construction con-struction gang probably Had he known his desperate character I dont believe he would have been so quick to precipitate the trouble The pot was a large one The half breed Mexican and Winters caught match hands Both men claimed the pot Each stalled to reach for It about the same Instant each drawIng draw-Ing his gun with his right hand They fired at each other simultaneously That was only the beginning of the melee The light was knocked out and In the darkness the flash of pis tom could be seen I am old enough now to admit that I was scared The first thought that occurred tome to-me was that I must seek some place of safety Why not crawl Into the empty flour barrel I got Into the barren bar-ren all right and was lying there trembling when one of the gamblers gave the barrel a kick to get It out of his way and sent It beneath the flap of the tent and away it went rolling down that steep hill with me inside of it That hill was neatly half a mile long and the barrel went tumbling down it bumping over stones and crushing through tho desert vegeta lion Toward tho end of the decllv ity It was going at a terrific speed I suffered untold agony during that terrible ride I could not get out I was rolled over and over at the ate of a bundled times a second It I seemed to me It happened that there vest no nails piotrmllng through the barrel Had there been I would have been punctured full of holes The barrel finally came to a standstill stand-still and I crawled out I was bruised all over but managed to pull myself up tho steep hill to tho railroad sta lion I had escaped from the scene ot tho shooting but I felt thai I would probably have fared better had I remained re-mained there The shooting affray resulted In the killing of Winters the lmalf breed Mexican Mex-ican and another garnblerN Y Sun |