A Frontier Shooting at Martin Creek
A local woman, intoxicated and armed, wounds a bartender in a bizarre altercation.
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.
Deputy W. S. Bowers, of Martin Creek, arrived in town yesterday having in charge N. Wilson, a woman, charged with shooting Charles H. Perry, a bartender, on October 20. According to her story, she was drunk and picked up Perry's revolver and fired at him. The bullet hit the fleshy part of his arm and slit his lower jaw, knocking out his teeth. She was arraigned in Justice Von Tobel's court and held to be bound over to the superior court for trial.
“According to her story, she was drunk, and picked up Perry's revolver and fired at him.”
This incident reflects the raw, volatile nature of turn-of-the-century frontier justice and the prevalence of firearms in everyday disputes. While Martin Creek is now an obscure geographic footnote, the narrative of the 'intoxicated' assailant and the local bartender remains a recurring trope in the early legal reporting of Washington territory.
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