This Aint no Drugstore Cowboy

Seeing nothing alarming in that stage of the fight(1), John Watson had casually wheeled his horse toward the hitch rack without however permitting a move to escape him. And in the next instant when the rider saw the fighters crash to the floor, he leaped clear of the saddle. Pitching his bridle reins to a popping eyed Negro boy to whom he snapped, “Heah boy, hold my hoss,” Watson bounded toward the store gallery. Now, if there was a “best man” in all of the wild reaches of that rough and tumbled country west of the Quelqueshoe, it was John Watson. He went always armed and seldom wore a coat. Tall and rangy as the big stallion he rode, broad of shoulder and slim of hip, with his muscles bulging the great breadth of his back with every panther like move of his perfectly synchronized body, he carried the air of being always stripped for action. And from one river to the other there was not a ten year old boy who had not heard of the quick and deadly accuracy of Watson’s heavy, single action 45. As Watson landed on the store gallery, Perkins, intoxicated with the joy of the killer, was aware of nothing but the battered blinded face beneath him and not failing to sense in full the mercilessness of the victor in his triumph, Watson saw no need for silk gloves had he owned them. Gauging his stride, he swung a kick which lifted Perkins clear of his victim and slammed him against the corner post of the gallery, and before the Redbone could even get to his knees, Watson seized him by the shoulders and hurled him sprawling into the dust of the road, half way to the hitching rack, twenty feet away. Before attempting to rise, Perkins looked dazedly about to see what gargantuan power had burst so disastrously into his hour of glory. Watson stood at ease on the edge of the gallery, but there was no mistaking his tone when he drawled, “You stay there til I tell you to git up.”

As Perkins landed in the open roadway, Joe Moore came from the store and bent over the quivering form of the still prostrate Musgrove, who lay unconscious. Moore turned to Watson; “Looks as if that hard fall had knocked the all wind out of Gordon,” he said calmly. The storekeeper then addressed Davis sharply. “Get a horse, Buck,” he said, “and go for Dr. Hamilton.” Although the whole encounter had been crowded into a period of time perhaps shorter than four minutes, every man about the mill and store had gathered to the scene as Musgrove began to draw his breath again. The dazed man staggered to his feet just as Dr. Hamilton rode up to the west door of the store. Davis had ridden to the Doctor’s home, only a short distance away, but Hamilton had been away on a call and knew nothing of the trouble until he reached the scene. Having seen Dr. Hamilton approaching, Moore and Watson went to meet the Doctor as he entered the store at the rear; for they realized that it was time for some straight thinking and for steering a steady course.

I had arranged no rendezvous with Ruth Dyal for that day, but I was determined to see her and in the hope of meeting her by prowling around the Dyal homestead, the early morning of that fateful Christmas Eve found me riding surreptitiously down the old Sugartown road toward Westport. I had decided that it would be best first to reconnoiter the store and ascertain whether old Eph were away from home. I had assumed that Dyal would be at Westport but I knew it would be good business to verify the assumption. So it happened that I reached the store just as Musgrove and Perkins opened the first act of the Westport Fight. Realizing at once the inevitability of a serious battle, and the danger of open attack, the Redbones who had been loitering about the hitch rack at the beginning of the hostitilities, vanished(2) into the woods. The opening of the long festering wound was now eminent; the Redbones must drive the “White” settlers out of the Cherry Winche country once and for all.

1 since brawling was commonplace, no intervention occurred until it was apparent that Marion would kill the defenseless Musgrove
2 the Redbones’ ambushing ways & guerilla style fighting is well documented & is the primary reason that traveling in their settlement was so endangering & why they were so formidable