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Show RECORD OF A TEXAS DESPERADO. the Grave of ?Iis Victims Were Scattered From Dodge City to Santa I'e. . The man who told the story between the puffs of his cigar was from Texas. "Clay Allison's life w&a a tragic ro fiaance, " he began. "Clay Allison was a desperado. He lived in the Red river country in the Panhandle. His trigger finger was busiest in the early eighties. His record was 21. He boasted of it Twenty-one dead men, whose grave were scattered from Dodge City to Santa San-ta Fel I myself saw him kill Bill Chunk, a bad man, who shot people just for tho fun of seeing them fall. The two men had no cause for quarrel. They were the prize killers of the same section sec-tion of the country. It was a spirit of rivalry which made them swear to shoot each other on sight Their friends bet on the result of their first chance rencounter. They met one night at a crossroad inn in New Mexico and sat down at tables opposite each other, with their drawn six shooters resting on their laps beneath their napkins. A plate of oysters on the shell had just been Bet before Chunk, when he dropped hia hand in careless fashion and sent a ball at Allisiqn beneath the table. Quick as a leap oi lightning Allison's gun re plied. A tiny red spot between Chunk's eyes marked where the bullet entered. The dead man rolled over on the table and was stilA, with his face downward in the dish of oysters. "Allision was a large cattle owner. He went on a drive to Kansas City once, and while there fell in love, mar. ried and took the woman to his home ii the west to iive. - A child was born to them a child whose face was as beautiful beau-tiful as the face of a cherub, but whose poor little body was horribly deformed. Allison loved the child with the great love of his passionate nature. Jji the babe's twisted and misshapen form his superstitious mind read a meaning aa significant as that of the message which the divine hand wrote on the palace of the king of old in Babylon. God, he thought, had visited a curse upon him for his sins. He quit his wild ways. He drank no more. No man ever after tho birth of hi3 child fell before hia deadly pistols. Ha was completely changed. ' " "By tne way, x idrgot toa&ic you now large is the amount of tho bond required?" re-quired?" "Fifty cents," said tho lawyer, Philadelphia Press. |