A REAL DUEL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 11644, 4 May 1901, Page 6 (Supplement)

A REAL DUEL.

FOUGHT ON THE PLAINS. lv Count Boni and the French gentlemen of his class thirsting for each other's gore really wish to know how to fight for honour's eake let them visit Medicine Hat and hear the story of how " Bulldog" Kelly and Mahone, the stockman, fought for theirs. Mahomo -was nothing more nor less than a frontier cattleman. He met Kelly first at Calgary, where, in a dispute over cards, an enmity arose between them. Subsequently they clashed in the Medicine Hat country, «nd Mahone wrongfully accused Kelly of stealing stock. Kelly would have killed him then and there but for the interference of „ the Canadian mounted police. Subsequently one of these policemen suggested to him that the challenge Mahone to a duel, and that they have it out alone. Kelly evidently thought well of the suggestion, for a day or two later, meeting Mahone in that isolated and abused town, Medicine Hat, he quietly told him that he would meet him the next morning as the sun rose on the Tortured trail, and prove to him with a gun that he was not a thief. Mahone nodded •his head in acceptance of the defiance, and •that was all there was to the challenge. Kelly slept in a ranch house that night hut was up before dawn saddling his horse. !He carried for arms two six-shooters and a fihort-hilted bear-k life. He rode away from .•the ranch in the heavy darkness before daybreak, headed Tor the Tortured trail. He •was a six-footer, sandy-haired, heavy-jawed. •and called " Bulldog" because he had once .-pitted himself against an animal of that title and whipped him in a free fight. His •courage was extreme from the brute point of view. To illustrate this, years after this ■{.vent, when he was on trial for his life in a .murder case, he was instructed by his attorney to kill one of the witnesses against him in the courtroom if he attempted to give certain testimony. "You listen to him," said the attorney, "and if he tries to testify as to certain things let hint have it." Kelly, as a prisoner, entered the courtroom with a knife up his sleeve, and he sat through all the proceedings with his eyes on the man he was to watch. The latter grew- lestless and when he took the stand broke down completely and did not aid the prosecution at all. He divined without knowing it that if he testified as the prosecution believed he would Kelly would then and there end him. And all this took place not in a frontier.court, but in a court of the United States Government. Well. Kelly rode down the trail as gay in spirit as a man of his nature could be. Ho did not whistle, for whistling men are rarely brutal. But he abused his horse, and that was the best of evidence that he felt well. He watched the dark hang closer and closer to the plain grasses, the stars grow less brilliant until suddenly in the east it was as if a curtain was drawn up and the day came with the call of wild birds and a wind which rose from the west to meet the sun. He glanced toward Medicine Hat. and from that point, out of the black and grey of the hour, rode Mahone, armed as his opponent was. They were a mile apart when they recognised each other. Kelly reined in his horse and waited. Mahoue came on. No surgeons nor seconds were in attendance. Medicine Hat was asleep, Mahone drew nearer, moving a little to the left, as if to circle about Kelly. The latter suddenly dropped under his horse's neck and tired. His bullet just clipped the mane of Mahone's iiorse. Mahone gave a wild whoop and fired back, riding as Kelly was, Indian fashion, and looking for an opening. Both horses were slow in motion, and the shots came thick and fast. Kelly's animal went down first, screaming from a bullet through his lungs. "His rider entrenched behind him. Mahone made a charge and lost his own norse, besides getting a bullet through his left arm. He, too, entrenched. In a few moments one of his shots cut a red crease across the forehead of Kelly and filled his eyes with blood. He wiped himself off and tied a handkerchief over the mark. Each was afraid to start out from his horse, but in the course of half an hour their ammunition was exhausted, and then they threw their pistols from them and came toward each other, through the grass, with their knives out. Kelly now had two good wounds and Mahone had been shot three times. They visibly staggered as they played for the first chance to close in. At last the knives crossed, and Kelly got the first thrust and missed, for which awkwardness Mahone gave him a savage cut. They hacked and stabbed at each other until neither could move, and the small population of MedTcine Hat. getting wind of what was going on, rode out and brought them in for medical attendance. Kelly, besides bis bullet wounds, had fourteen knife cuts, and Mahone had fifteen. They were put to bed in the same room and the same doctor attended both. For days they lay almost touching each other, and neither spoke. Medicine Hat had been unable to decide •which had the better of the tight, and it seemed as if it would be resumed if both lived to recover. But one morning Mahone raised himself painfully from his mattress, and he put out his hand to Kelly and said: . " You ain't no thief. You're" game." And Kelly covered the hand with, his own and they shook, That settled their feud. They were under the doctor's care for three months, but when able to go out rode away from Medicine Hat together, the best of friends.

That was a real fight, the only kind of a fight that a real man gees into if he is going to fight at all. It was a pity that Kelly did not hold his courage afterward for better uses. He became involved in one. of the most brutal murder:; known to the Calgary region, escaped the hangman's noose by technicalities, : ml finally in Nebraska or Wyoming fell of* a boxcar one night and -was ground to pie ;es by the wheels of a transcontinental gist. ' Mahone never fought again.