The Most Noted
Desperado in Southwest Texas Shot to Death in the Gold Front
Restaurant—Prominent State Official Successfully Defends
Himself Against the Noted Bully—Magnificent Exhibition of
Quick Gun Play.
Last night about eleven o'clock Benton Sharp, with two other
men, entered the Gold Front Restaurant and seated themselves
at a table. Sharp had been drinking, and was loud and
boisterous, as he always was when under the influence of
liquor. Five minutes after the party was seated a tall,
well-dressed, elderly gentleman entered the restaurant. Few
present recognized the Honourable Luke Standifer, the
recently appointed Commissioner of Insurance, Statistics, and
History.
Going over to the same side where Sharp was, Mr. Standifer
prepared to take a seat at the next table. In hanging his hat
upon one of the hooks along the wall he let it fall upon
Sharp's head. Sharp turned, being in an especially ugly
humour, and cursed the other roundly. Mr. Standifer
apologized calmly for the accident, but Sharp continued his
vituperations. Mr. Standifer was observed to draw near and
speak a few sentences to the desperado in so low a tone that
no one else caught the words. Sharp sprang up, wild with
rage. In the meantime Standifer had stepped some yards away,
and was standing quietly with his arms folded across the breast
of his loosely hanging coat.
With that impetuous and deadly rapidity that made Sharp so
dreaded, he reached for the gun he always carried in his hip
pocket—a movement that has preceded the death of at least a
dozen men at his hands. Quick as the motion was, the
bystanders assert that it was met by the most beautiful
exhibition of lightning gun-pulling ever witnessed in the
Southwest. As Sharp's pistol was being raised—and the act
was really quicker than the eye could follow—a glittering
.44 appeared as if by some conjuring trick in the right hand
of Mr. Standifer, who, without a perceptible movement of his
arm, shot Benton Sharp through the heart. It seems that the
new Commissioner of Insurance, Statistics, and History has
been an old-time Indian fighter and ranger for many years,
which accounts for the happy knack he has of handling a .44.
It is not believed that Mr. Standifer will be put to any
inconvenience beyond a necessary formal hearing to-day, as all
the witnesses who were present unite in declaring that the
deed was done in self-defence.
When Mrs. Sharp appeared at the office of the commissioner,
according to appointment, she found that gentleman calmly
eating a golden russet apple. He greeted her without
embarrassment and without hesitation at approaching the subject
that was the topic of the day.
"I had to do it, ma'am," he said, simply, "or get it myself.
Mr. Kauffman," he added, turning to the old clerk, "please look
up the records of the Security Life Insurance Company and see
if they are all right."
"No need to look," grunted Kauffman, who had everything in his
head. "It's all O.K. They pay all losses within ten days."
Mrs. Sharp soon rose to depart. She had arranged to remain in
town until the policy was paid. The commissioner did not detain
her. She was a woman, and he did not know just what to say to
her at present. Rest and time would bring her what she needed.
But, as she was leaving, Luke Standifer indulged himself in an
official remark:
"The Department of Insurance, Statistics, and History, ma'am,
has done the best it could with your case. 'Twas a case hard to
cover according to red tape. Statistics failed, and History
missed fire, but, if I may be permitted to say it, we came out
particularly strong on Insurance."
