Sheriff and Editor Clash in Spokane
An intoxicated Sheriff and a local editor settle a long-standing journalistic feud with revolvers in downtown Spokane.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Sheriff Harden, of Stevens county, and Eber C. Smith, a lawyer and editor of the Stevens County Standard, published at Colville, met in front of the Rookery building on Riverside avenue this evening. Sheriff Harden was intoxicated, and knocked Smith down twice. Smith then retaliated by clubbing him with a revolver and inflicting a long, ragged scalp wound on the side of Harden's head. Chief Mertz and Officer Davenport arrested the fighters. The quarrel was the result of an old feud intensified lately by caustic personalities regarding Harden, which appeared in Smith's paper.
“Sheriff Harden was intoxicated, and knocked Smith down twice. Smith then retaliated by clubbing with a revolver.”
Public figures settling disputes with violence in the streets of Spokane highlights the rugged, often volatile nature of frontier civic life where personal reputation and the printing press frequently collided.
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