THE MOST NOTED DESPERADO IN SOUTHWEST TEXAS SHOT TO
DEATH IN THE GOLD FRONT RESTAURANT--PROMINENT STATE
OFFICIAL SUCCESSFULLY DEFENDS HIMSELF AGAINST THE
NOTED BULLY--MAGNIFICENT EXHIBITION OF QUICK GUN PLAY.
Last night about eleven o'clock Benton Sharp, with two
other men, entered the Gold Front Restaurant and seated
themselves at a table. Sharp had been drinking, and was
loud and boisterous, as he always was when under the
influence of liquor. Five minutes after the party was
seated a tall, well-dressed, elderly gentleman entered
the restaurant. Few present recognized the Honourable
Luke Standifer, the recently appointed Commissioner of
Insurance, Statistics, and History.
Going over to the same side where Sharp was, Mr.
Standifer prepared to take a seat at the next table. In
hanging his hat upon one of the hooks along the wall he
let it fall upon Sharp's head. Sharp turned, being in an
especially ugly humour, and cursed the other roundly.
Mr. Standifer apologized calmly for the accident, but
Sharp continued his vituperations. Mr. Standifer was
observed to draw near and speak a few sentences to the
desperado in so low a tone that no one else caught the
words. Sharp sprang up, wild with rage. In the meantime
Standifer had stepped some yards away, and was standing
quietly with his arms folded across the breast of his
loosely hanging coat.
With that impetuous and deadly rapidity that made Sharp
so dreaded, he reached for the gun he always carried in
his hip pocket--a movement that has preceded the death
of at least a dozen men at his hands. Quick as the motion
was, the bystanders assert that it was met by the most
beautiful exhibition of lightning gun-pulling ever
witnessed in the Southwest. As Sharp's pistol was being
raised--and the act was really quicker than the eye could
follow--a glittering .44 appeared as if by some conjuring
trick in the right hand of Mr. Standifer, who, without
a perceptible movement of his arm, shot Benton Sharp
through the heart. It seems that the new Commissioner of
Insurance, Statistics, and History has been an old-time
Indian fighter and ranger for many years, which accounts
for the happy knack he has of handling a .44.
It is not believed that Mr. Standifer will be put to any
inconvenience beyond a necessary formal hearing to-day,
as all the witnesses who were present unite in declaring
that the deed was done in self-defence.
When Mrs. Sharp appeared at the office of the commissioner,
according to appointment, she found that gentleman calmly eating
a golden russet apple. He greeted her without embarrassment and
without hesitation at approaching the subject that was the topic
of the day.
"I had to do it, ma'am," he said, simply, "or get it myself. Mr.
Kauffman," he added, turning to the old clerk, "please look up the
records of the Security Life Insurance Company and see if they are
all right."
"No need to look," grunted Kauffman, who had everything in his head.
"It's all O.K. They pay all losses within ten days."
Mrs. Sharp soon rose to depart. She had arranged to remain in town
until the policy was paid. The commissioner did not detain her. She
was a woman, and he did not know just what to say to her at present.
Rest and time would bring her what she needed.
But, as she was leaving, Luke Standifer indulged himself in an
official remark:
"The Department of Insurance, Statistics, and History, ma'am, has
done the best it could with your case. 'Twas a case hard to cover
according to red tape. Statistics failed, and History missed fire,
but, if I may be permitted to say it, we came out particularly
strong on Insurance."