The Hotel Proprietress and the Revolver
A hotel owner at Bryant shoots a man after a tense confrontation over rumors.
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 Parnell was this morning summoned to Bryant, about fifteen miles out on the South Bend branch, by a telegram which stated that there had been a shooting there. The sheriff has not yet returned, but reports brought down are to the effect that the shooting was done by a woman who believed damaging reports about her were being circulated by a man named Brown. The woman's name is Mrs. Swim and she is the landlady of a hotel at Bryant. She presented a paper to Brown containing a statement that he had lied in circulating the reports and demanded that he sign it. He refused, and she drew a revolver and threatened to shoot him. He fled, closing the door behind him, and she shot through the door, seriously wounding him. He then burned the paper.
“She presented a paper to Brown containing a statement that he had lied in circulating the reports and demanded that he sign it.”
This 1893 incident captures a moment of frontier 'justice' where public reputation in a small town was defended with lethal force. Today, the town of Bryant exists primarily as a quiet residential enclave, a far cry from the rail-stop violence that once defined its local news.
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