Page:California Inter Pocula.djvu/768

 cles, Denver published a card couched in uncourteous language. Gilbert replied and Denver retorted; Gilbert challenged and Denver accepted. Thej^ fought at sunrise with Wesson's rifles, at forty paces. The first fire was without effect. At the second fire Gilbert fell, the ball entering just above the left hip. His second immediately rushed up, when Gilbert turned his face toward him with a smile, and died without a groan.

On the 11th of December, 1852, a few days after he ceased to be governor, John McDougal met A. C. Kussell, one of the editors of the San Francisco Picayune, in an affair of honor. The cause was an offensive article in the Picayune, of which Russell was the author. They met on the San Jose road in Santa Clara county, ten paces, pistols. Russell received a bullet in the breast at the first fire, inflicting a slight wound, which ended the fight.

In sanguinary unrest, with grey eyes murderously set, W. M. Gwin and J. W. McCorkle, professional politicians, met in 1853 near the Santa Clara line, to blot out in blood some horse-race talk. After one grand shot with rifles at thirty paces, both seemed thoroughly satisfied. If the thing was continued, it might cease to be amusing; rifles were rifles, and thirty steps were not far. So the two braves smiled, and the deputation of punctilious spitfires smiled, and swore it was ail a mistake, that nobody meant anything, and that everybody else was only too glad that everybody else was glad. And so wise men and knaves all went home together. In truth, it is a wonderful phenomenon, this mixture of folly, gunpowder, and fear.

Oliver T. Baird, in 1853, at the second fire shot C. J. Wright in the neck.

The 3d of November, 1853, C. Krug, editor of the San Francisco Freie Presse, independent German paper, and Dr Loehr, editor of the Califomia Democrat, the