Bullet Missed Mark
Passed Through McGregor’s Arm — Barber Next Door Had a Narrow Escape.
Duncan McGregor’s pet bull dog almost cost his master’s life this morning at the hands of Freeman Quinn. Quinn shot at McGregor with a Winchester rifle at uncomfortably close range. The bullet that was intended for McGregor passed through the sleeve of his jacket, cutting several holes in the garment, but McGregor was uninjured.
The shooting occurred in McGregor’s saloon, at the corner of Mercury and Montana street. The place is quiet, traffic does not block the streets of the locality incidents of moment are unusual, and the bonnie Highland soldiers in the pictures that adorn the walls must have been astonished at what happened to disturb their peace and quiet and to remind them of tented field and fierce foray.
Both men are dog fanciers, and both own bull dogs of fancy breeding. Quinn has been anxious to match his dog against McGregor’s, but the Scotchman refused to allow his dog to flght. yesterday Quinn and Ed Mulvaney coaxed McGregor’s dog to Quinn’s blacksmith shop where the Quinn dog made a monkey of the McGregor dog and sent him home looking like 30 cents.
This raised McGregor’s ire. He is man of peace, however, and he went before the county attorney and caused warrants to be issued for the offenders. Quinn and Mulvaney were arrested, furnished bonds and were released.
Quinn went to his home and got his Winchester and then went to McGregor’s place. He entered the saloon at the rear door and as he did so he pushed a cartridge home. He covered McGregor and then expressed his opinion of McGregor’s action in forcible terms. McGregor grabbed the barrel of the gun and as he did so Quinn pulled the trigger, and the bullet passed up McGregor’s sleeve as described.
Officer Reininger heard the shot, and rushing into the saloon, arrested Quinn. The bullet passed through a glass case into a barber shop, north of the saloon. Had the barber been standing beside his chair it would have passed through his head. However, the barber knew his business — he had heard the row, and anticipating trouble, was lying flat on the floor.
Quinn was taken to the city jail. He was somewhat under the influence liquor, and said he had not intended to pull the trigger.
McGregor declined to discuss the incident when an Inter Mountain reporter called. The soldier pictures smiled down upon him proudly, his friends called and drank to his whole skin, the hole in the wall, where the bullet took its departure told a mute but eloquent story of what might have happened had Quinn been less drunk, and the bull dog, the cause of the trouble, limped painfully about the place in apparent dejection and downheartedness.
Daily Inter Mountain, Butte, MT, April 11, 1900