Blood and Bullets in Colville
A railroad worker's lethal temper leads to a dramatic manhunt near Colville as a suspect flees on horseback after a double shooting.
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.
A special messenger brought information this afternoon of a shooting affray between railroad construction hands at Colville, ninety miles north of this city, in which two men were shot, one fatally. The origin of the quarrel could not be learned, but it is said that Fred Adams shot John Mahoney through the abdomen and wounded Charles Gopher on the arm. Adams then made his escape on a fleet horse and was followed half an hour by Sheriff H. Ide, who also sent a messenger to the place to notify the officers in this section to intercept Adams if possible. A request was also sent here for surgical aid, there being no surgeon within fifty miles of Colville. Mahoney's injuries are necessarily fatal.
“Adams then made his escape on a fleet horse and was followed half an hour by Sheriff H. Ide.”
The volatile and often dangerous conditions of the Pacific Northwest's 19th-century railroad expansion underscore how labor development was built on a foundation of intense instability. Today, the town of Colville remains a regional hub, but the frontier-style frontier lawlessness of 1889 has long since given way to established municipal governance.
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