A Fatal Duel Over a Horse in the Cascades
A young railway worker claims self-defense after shooting a known gambler near Nason Creek.
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.
Patrick Conley, alias 'Black Pat,' a well-known gambler and desperado formerly of Sand Point, Idaho, was shot and instantly killed on July 25 at an advance railway construction camp on the Great Northern, sixty miles west of Wenatchee on Nason Creek, by a young man named Ed Wilson. The altercation arose from a dispute over a riding horse. Wilson surrendered himself to the sheriff shortly after the shooting. To a reporter, Wilson stated: 'I killed Conley in self-defense. He took the horse without my consent. When I told him to get off, he applied hard names, threw his hand to his hip pocket as if to draw a gun, and I, knowing his desperate character, drew my own gun and fired.' Three witnesses were present at the scene. Wilson, only 20 years old, remains remarkably calm, his primary concern being that his mother does not hear of the trouble.
“I saw what he was doing, and, knowing the desperate and reckless character of the man, I thought either my time or his was come.”
This incident highlights the raw, volatile nature of the labor camps building the Great Northern Railway across the Cascades in the 1890s. The struggle over property and personal honor in a lawless frontier setting mirrors the often-tenuous nature of order in Washington's rapidly expanding industrial outposts.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.