Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1893-1920, 1899-02-14
Two AGAINST A MOB.
AN OLD TIME MISSISSIPPI RIVER
SHOOTING SCRAPE.


| Men Were slain.
Zone of the worst shooting scrapes
chat ever happened along the Missis.
! sippi river began the man at the
! wheel, relaxing. his4hold on the ,til]er,
I which had been hard down, and per-
| mitting it TO spin around with the
| velocity of top" took place ont there,
just above. thes mouth of the bayou,
about 80 years ago, when they burned
| the old postoffice and the warehouse.
| You can See where they stood by the
| piles of bricks there on the bank.
/ All admitted the ruins Were plainly
visible, When he changed to the op-
posite side of the wheel, and after
! spirited effort made to counterfeit the
| effects of an impinging current that
! bad caused the boat to swerve from her
/ oonrse he continued otahin .o'i
''The boat that 1 was ON had got
caught in the fog, and we tied up I'M
| der the point there about o'clock in
/ the afternoon, and lot of us went on
! shore to take a little exercise. " 1t was
on = Saturday, and a good many people
| had come in from the country TO do
| their trading and get their mail. Some
| of them were pitching quoits and others
shooting at a mark when we first land
| ed, but they quit when they saw the
man carry the mail bag we had brought
and went in and stood around waiting
| for the letters TO be sorted. They had
all been drinking and were pretty noisy.
When the postmaster said there were
only two letters and that they were
both for Bud johnson, a colored man,
a murmur of disapproval went around,
| and several of them insisted ON new
deal.
You can look for yourselves said
the postmaster, tossing them the bag,
but after searching and finding it empty
they were in a worse frame of mind
than ever. Presently one of the num-
Der, local politician, got up and made
a speech derogatory to the administra-
tion. He insisted that the government
was prejudiced against white folks, and
that he had no use for the Office any
how. Several of the others present ex-
pressed their approval of this senti-
ment, and general smashing up of ev-
erything at once followed. During the
row the coal oil lamp was broken the
house set on fire and everything burned
up. %.
Colonel Bunch, who owned the
property, noticing the fire, came up
from his plantation below and de-
nounced the perpetrators of the outrage
as vandals. The colonel was a high
spirited man and didn't stand any fool
ishness, but was getting along in years
now and couldn't do much but talk. SO
that when one of the men declared he
could whip any Bunch OH earth he
looked like he felt himself in pretty
close place, but the colonel stood his
ground until at last, when the contend
ing parties were about to come to blows,
his son appeared upon the scene, and,
learning the cause of the trouble, sprang
between the two, and, drawing his re-
vdlver, said, My name is Bunch, and
when my father gets to be too old to
defend himself can stand in his tracks
and take his part.
-v !'"At this juncture the shooting COM
menced, and | made for the boat Ev-
cry body seemed to take sides against
the Bunches, and you would have
thought them band of guerrillas from
the way they kept the fight up. Pres
emily 1 noticed the colonel roll down
the bank and stop just at the edge Of
the water, and then his son came stag
gering down, too, and fell near his side.
They We're both dead, We wanted to
leave. but the men were afraid to go on
shore to unite the lines, for the infuri-
ated crowd was still calling for more
Bunches and the colored man who had
got the letters, but he had climbed a
tree, and they didn't know where he
was. An hour or so later, when the
crowd had dispersed, he slid down from
his hiding place, came aboard the boat
and we had him in the kold until we
got away and he was over his fright.
He said there were five men lying on
the bank that the Bunches had killed
before they fell.
The boat at this juncture showing a
disposition to become fractions, the
pilot gave his undivided attention for
moment to the wheel, when he went on:
But there is not much shooting
along the river now, and you hardly
ever hear of feud. When there were
only about three families in county,
two of them were usually engaged in
an effort to exterminate the other on
account of some imaginary wrong, or
maybe prompted by jealousy. Since the
country has been settled up they are all
right. used to think myself, :" he went
Oh to say after a brief tussle with the
tiller, THAT what a man wanted was
room, but 1 have found out my mis-
take. What he stands most in need of |
is plenty of good neighbors and 1 find |
that tho thicker you put people the bet |
ter they get along. 1t makes them more |
human, and besides they come to know |
which is not the case when |
they live alone. have learned good |
deal myself by travelling around and |
seeing what is in the world, for l usu-
ally go east every summer to swap |
st Louis Democrat.