Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1897-07-03
The STORY Teller.

bad MEN NEARLY EXTINCT
A party of westerners, including sew
eral Rocky Mountain congressman
were talking about bad men at the
Arlington cafe the other night.
1.-THE worst man I ever saw" said
an Idaho sheep raiser, "was Duke
Pritchard, oi Pocatello. Duke was al
devil. He's dead now, and if he hasn't
Joined the rest of his tribe then dom,
own an acre of sagebrush. His finish
came back in 'S3. He accomplished
it himself, too, not Intentionally, but
out of pure, rank 6endishness, in spite
of the fact that slews of men out there
thirsted for his blood without posses
sing the nerve to shed it. On the
night that Duke wound himself up fol-
the trip over the big divide he was
drunk in a saloon in Pocatello-old
Dad Beasley's shack, afterward carried
into the clouds by cyclone--wher
one of my herders walked in. He was
one of the most peaceable men 1 had
and it made me sore the way Duke
did him up.
"Cofey,' said Pritchard to my man
as soon as he caught sight of him
slook at me look at me hard. want
to know if I amt lS pounds heavier'n
nine tons of hell fire, and want te
know id quick!'
"Coffey was too fear struck to say
word. This devil Pritchard leaped al
him and disemboweled him
WITH A BOWIE KNIFE.
"There was no one else in the shack
but old Dad himself at the time, and
Dad wasn't saying word. While the
diving man was still in his death throes
on the floor Pritchard banged him on
the head with quart bottle of whisky
and finished him. Then he grabbed
another quart bottle of whisky from
the bar and bit the neck off it with
his teeth. He backed out of the sa'
loon chewing the glass, the blood from
his mouth streaming down his black
beard. Beasley, who didn't belong to
any particular Sunday school himself,
told me that Pritchard, as he reeled
backward out of the shack, with q
gun in each hand for surprises, was
the worst looking sight he ever looked
at. The same night we went after
him-about 40 of us. We did not
meet up with him for two days, and
then we found him lying dead on the
east bank of the Snake river. The
glass he had swallowed had cut bis
insides all to- ribbons. My men were
so hostile over his outwitting them by
dying like a white man that they
wouldn't give him burial they just
chucked his body into the river and
poured volley into it as it foated
down the swift current. Pritcbard
killed dozen men in Idaho and Wy
oming before
he ROUNDED HIMSELF UP
This way, and he killed 'em all with
knife, only using his guns to cover
his retreat"
"I've often heard and read yarns to
the general effect that all the bad men
are cool, silent chaps, and that there is
no such thing as genuine bad man
who busters, the blusterers being all
cowards," said a Butte mining man
"These yarns make me smile. The
regular he.devil of a bad man is pretty
nearly extinct now, but I've met sew.
eral hundred of 'em in my day, and
every man of 'em was not only wick
edly bad in fact, but also on his OWL
confession. The worst men of the
lot were the fellows who publicly
gloated over their deviltry, the brag
CARTS who not only announced with
whoops that they ate wolves, but who
were always ready to stand for any
thing they said, drunk or sober. II
was part of a professional bad mans
badness to let all hands know that he
was bad, to yelp it out between the
cracking of his guns, to roar it out in
the middle of the road whenever the
fancy struck him. Moreover, these
self-announced bad men we're never
called with the frequency that some
of these yarns would have you believe
I've always discovered on investiga-
ton that the quiet cool bad men were
fellows that shot or stabbed most oi
their victims in the back.
"THE WORST CATAMoUNT
Of a bad may 1 ever saw was Clad
Collins, of Yankton, and he was a
roarer and a whooper from away back
In the Black Hills, where bad men
were thicker than blueberries, back in
the late '70s. Collins was holy ter
ror for nearly three years, in spite OF
the fact that he was more than hall
drunk all. the time. Newcomers to
the Hills who didn't know him and his
record, and who only heard him talk,
were apt to put him down as a mere
braggart, but I noticed that not many