ve all died off since, leaving only
me. And now I am about to die, and so I wish to make this statement
before I do so.

"But if they had thought to cut into Jess Tatum's body after he was
dead, or to probe for the bullet in him, they would have known that it
was not Dudley Stackpole who really shot him, but somebody else; and
then I suppose suspicion might have fell upon me, although I doubt it.
Because they would have found that the bullet which killed him was fired
out of a forty-five-seventy shell, and Dudley Stackpole had done all of
the shooting he done with a thirty-eight caliber pistol, which would
throw a different-size bullet. But they never thought to do so."

Question by the physician, Doctor Davis: "You mean to say that no
autopsy was performed upon the body of the deceased?"

Answer by Bledsoe: "If you mean by performing an autopsy that they
probed into him or cut in to find the bullet I will answer no, sir, they
did not. They did not seem to think to do so, because it seemed to
everybody such a plain open-and-shut case that Dudley Stackpole had
killed him."

Question by the Reverend Mr. Hewlitt: "I take it that you are making
this confession of your own free will and in order to clear the name of
an innocent party from blame and to purge your own soul?"

Answer: "In reply to that I will say yes and no. If Dudley Stackpole is
still alive, which I doubt, he is by now getting to be an old man; but
if alive yet I would like for him to know that he did not fire the shot
which killed Jess Tatum on that occasion. He was not a bloodthirsty man,
and doubtless the matter may have preyed upon his mind. So on the bare
chance of him being still alive is why I make this dying statement to
you gentlemen in the presence of witnesses. But I am not ashamed, and
never was, at having done what I did do. I killed Jess Tatum with my own
hands, and I have never regretted it. I would not regard killing him as
a crime any more than you gentlemen here would regard it as a crime
killing a rattlesnake or a moccasin snake. Only, until now, I did not
think it advisable for me to admit it; which, on Dudley Stackpole's
account solely, is the only reason why I am now making this statement."

And so on and so forth for the better part of a second column, with a
brief summary in Editor Tompkins' best style--which was a very dramatic
and moving style indeed--of the circumstances, as recalled by old
residents, of the ancient tragedy, a