stice Field's face and head. All
testified to the loud warning given Terry by Neagle that he was an
officer of the law, accompanied by his command that Terry should
desist. It was all the work of a few seconds. Terry's sudden attack,
the quick progress of which, from the first blow, was neither arrested
nor slackened until he was disabled by the bullet from Neagle's
pistol, could have been dealt with in no other way. It was evidently a
question of the instant whether Terry's knife or Neagle's pistol should
prevail. Says Neagle:

"He never took his eyes off me after he looked at me, or I
mine off him. I did not hear him say anything. The only thing
was he looked like an infuriated giant to me. I believed if I
waited two seconds I should have been cut to pieces. I was
within four feet of him."

Q. "What did the motion that Judge Terry made with his right
hand indicate to you?"

A. "That he would have had that knife out there within another
second and a half, and trying to cut my head off."

Terry, in action at such a time, from all accounts, was more like an
enraged wild animal than a human being. The supreme moment had arrived
to which he had been looking forward for nearly a year, when the life
of the man he hated was in his hands. He had repeatedly sworn to take
it. Not privately had he made these threats. With an insolence and an
audacity born of lawlessness and of a belief that he could hew his
way with a bowie-knife in courts as well as on the streets, he had
publicly sentenced Judge Field to death as a penalty for vindicating
the majesty of the law in his imprisonment for contempt.

It would have been the wildest folly that can be conceived of for the
murderous assault of such a man to have been met with mild persuasion,
or an attempt to arrest him. As well order a hungry tiger to desist
from springing at his prey, to sheathe his outstretched claws and
suffer himself to be bound, as to have met Terry with anything less
than the force to which he was himself appealing. Every man who knows
anything of the mode of life and of quarrelling and fighting among the
men of Terry's class knows full well that when they strike a blow they
mean to follow it up to the death, and they mean to take no chances.
The only way to prevent the execution of Terry's revengeful and openly
avowed purpose was by killing him on the spot. Only a lunatic or
an imbecile or an accomplice would have pursue