Of all the bad men and desperadoes produced by Texas, not one of them,
not even John Wesley Hardin himself, was more feared than Ben Thompson. Sheriffs avoided serving warrants of arrest on him. It is recorded that once, when the county court was in session with a charge against him on the docket, Thompson rode into the room on a mustang. He bowed pleasantly to the judge and court officials.
"Here I am, gents, and I'll lay all I'm worth that there's no charge
against me. Am I right? Speak up, gents. I'm a little deaf."
There was a dead silence until at last the clerk of the court murmured, "No charge."
A story is told that on one occasion Ben Thompson met his match in the person of a young English remittance man playing cards with him. The remittance man thought he caught Thompson cheating and indiscreetly said so. Instantly Thompson's .44 covered him. For some unknown reason the gambler gave the lad a chance to retract.
"Take it back--and quick," he said grimly.
Every game in the house was suspended while all eyes turned on the dare-devil boy and the hard-faced desperado. The remittance man went white, half rose from his seat, and shoved his head across the table toward the revolver.
"Shoot and be damned. I say you cheat," he cried hoarsely.
Thompson hesitated, laughed, shoved the revolver back into its holster, and ordered the youngster out of the house.
Perhaps the most amazing escape on record is that when Thompson, fired at by Mark Wilson at a distance of ten feet from a double-barrelled shotgun loaded with buckshot, whirled instantly, killed him, and an instant later shot through the forehead Wilson's friend Mathews, though the latter had ducked behind the bar to get away. The second shot was guesswork plus quick thinking and accurate aim. Ben was killed a little later, in company with his friend King Fisher, another bad man, at the Palace Theatre. A score of shots were poured into them by a dozen men waiting in ambush. Both men had become so dangerous that their enemies could not afford to let them live.
(The above excerpt is from: DODGE, A Story of the Old Hell-raising Trail's End Where the Colt Was King, By William MacLeod Raine, published about 1925.)
