The Sunday Murder
him down. It was wanton. Du Sang stood in no need of the butchery; the escape could have been made without it. His victim had pulled an engine throttle too long to show the white feather, but he was dying by the time he had dragged a revolver from his pocket. Du Sang did the killing alone. At least, Flat Nose, who alone saw all of the murder, afterward maintained that he did not draw because he had no occasion to, and that Baggs was dead before he, Karg, had finished his cigarette. With his right arm broken and two bullets through his chest, Baggs fell on his face. That, however, did not check his murderer. Rising to his knees, Baggs begged for his life. “For God’s sake! I’m helpless, gentlemen! I’m helpless. Don’t kill me like a dog!” But Du Sang, emptying his pistol, threw his rifle to his shoulder and sent bullet after bullet crashing through the shapeless form writhing and twitching before him until he had beaten it in the dust soft and flat and still.
Banks’s men came up within an hour to find the ranch-house deserted. They saw a lantern in the yard below, and near the corral gate they found the little boy in the darkness, screaming beside his father’s body. The sheriff’s men carried the old engineman to the house; others of the posse crossed the creek during the evening, and at eleven o’clock
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