THE MURDERED SAWYER. 339 



having been shot directly through the heart a fact imme- 

 diately verified by the doctor. The examination of several 

 witnesses went to prove that the wife or nominal wife 

 of the murdered man had forsaken him to live with the 

 man who had brought the information to camp, and 

 who alleged that being afraid of some violence on this 

 account, with which he was continually threatened, and had 

 been so on the day before this occurrence took place, he 

 always kept a loaded pistol in his tent, and that on this night, 

 at a late hour, he observed the deceased creeping about the 

 tent, with evidently hostile intentions; that he knelt down 

 on one knee near an opening in the canvas, and having 

 hailed him, and warned him not to approach nearer, without 

 receiving any answer, fired his pistol in the direction of his 

 adversary, who fell to the shot, and that having been 

 frightened at what he had done, without waiting to see the 

 result, he had immediately come up to the camp, and made 

 the report he had to the authorities. 



All this seemed probable enough in the then wild and 

 unsettled state of the diggings and country, and when fire- 

 arms were always carried, and used upon the least alarm ; 

 but it occurred to me, after he had minutely described the 

 manner and position in which he had fired at his victim, to 

 request the doctor to probe the wound in the breast again, 

 and ascertain the exact direction in which the ball had 

 entered, as from the witness's description of his proceedings, 

 it must have entered from, beneath and penetrated upwards. 

 Upon this being done, we found the bullet had taken a pre- 

 cisely opposite course, having entered from above and 

 penetrated below, leaving a very fair presumption that the 

 murderer, who was a much taller man than the deceased, had 

 put the pistol to his breast, and shot him through the heart ; 

 at all events, completely contradicting his own version of the 

 matter. 



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