The Billings gazette. [volume] (Billings, Mont.) 1896-1919, 1902-02-04
COLD FACTS INTERFERE WITH
THRILLING TALE.
MYSTE2Y'S SUDDEN ENDING
Newspaper Man Loses Opportunity to
Do Some Writing of Reals
tic Kind.

A human finger, mangled, bloody
and torn.
This was the CHASTITY discovery made
by an excited, wild eyed group of men
yesterday morning in the alley in
rear of the First National bank. Of
couse, only one explanation suggested
itself for the presence Of the CORY OBJ
ject-a terrific combat had taken
men and one of them, giving way to
the ~ferocious instincts of the animal
within him, had deliberately bitten
off the member. Satiated with the
splitting of human gore, his ferocity ap-
peased by the sight of a manned and
pain-crazed victim, he had betaken
himself to some place of safety ere
outraged law could call him to &C.
count for his fiendish deed.
From hand to hand passed the
sickening looking object and various
and bitter were the comments it evok-
ed, as the beholders specialized on the
nature of a mar who could be so cruel
and brutal to thus frightfully punish
another. One member of the group
happened to be a newspaper man and
although as much affected as the
others, his professional instinct as
serted itself and he claimed the finger
and the right of holding it until such
time as the officers of the law should
make demand for it to be used as evil
dence against the perpetrator of may
hem, should he ever be captured. To
him it suggested a STORY out of the
ordinary run of fights and personal en-
counters, a "story" that nobody could
doubt, for would he not have the finger
as proof of everything he might con-
clude to write concerning the awful
ness of the combat and the ghastliness
of its ending? Just as he was prepar-
ing to walk off with the find" he was
arrested by a voice from the street
and his dream of a sensation with a
flash head filling half a galley was
rudely disturbed. ..
Say, you fellows called out the
owner of the voice, that finger was
not chawed off in a fight. 1t was
thrown out of a window upstairs by
a doctor who cut it off yesterday be-
cause it was no longer any good to
the man who owned it. l saw it cut
off. The fellow to whom it belonged
let a gun go off and the bullet struck
him in the finger and I went with
him to the doctors Office and as the
finger could not be patched up it was
amputated. If any of you want it, I
reckon there's no objection to your
keeping it."
The finger vas dropped wen more
quickly that it had been picked up and
the group dispersed. But the public
will never know what it missed in the
way of descriptive writing calculated
to raise hair on end and cause cold
chills to play tag up and down its sew
eral and respective spines.
Subsequent inquiry revealed the
fact that the finger had been indeed
amputated from the hand of Otto Lin
derman. but not before it had almost
been torn off by the accidental dis
charge of a rifle Sunday afternoon.
Linderman entered a saloon on the
south side with the gun on his should
er and in setting it on the floor did
SO hard enough to cause a cartridge
il contained to explode. His right
muzzle at the time and the bullet
struck his finger, tearing it so bad
ly that amputation was necessary.