Goldrush duels were not always the meeting of good and bad in the street at high noon. In fact, many of them turned out to be fairly ridiculous affairs.

Take the duel between two fellows, named Tompkins and Curley, that erupted on the streets of Nevada City on July 12, 1861.

An argument - it always starts with an argument, usually fueled by an abundance of whiskey - reached the point where honor had been offended and a duel was called for. The man challenged, as was the tradition, had a choice of weapons. His choice: water hoses.

Each man had a 25-foot hose and nozzle connected to a fire hydrant on a Nevada City street. The range of the "weapons" was 150 feet. The hydrants were opened and the duel began. A crowd of onlookers had gathered and they were the first victims of the duel, getting soaked and splashed with mud churned up from the street by the streams of water. A great deal of fun was being had by all when one of the hoses burst, ending the duel.

While history does not record the aftermath of this, perhaps the world's first hydraulic duel, it can be presumed that more whiskey was involved.

A bit earlier in Nevada City's history, a duel that involved real bullets claimed a victim. It was fall of 1853 and an election had just ended. Elections caused as much strife as whiskey and this one was no exception. Billy Mason was the Democratic candidate for the state Assembly. The rest of his party's ticket won election but Mason did not. He immediately blamed one H.C. Gardiner, who had worked to defeat Mason at the polls. Mason got madder and madder at Gardiner until he confronted the man with a pistol in a Nevada City hotel bar. He was accompanied by the editor of the Young America newspaper, who could tell a story when it happened to him.

Showing that he was armed only with a pen knife, Gardiner was hit in the face by Mason. Several times.

At about nine the next morning Gardiner borrowed a Navy revolver from the express office and set out to revenge his honor.

Mason and the newspaper editor were up early, too, and headed for the newspaper office, which stood where the National Hotel is today. They walked through and out the back door, circling around and down the alley back toward Broad Street.

Gardiner had followed them, but finding the newspaper office empty, he headed back out the front door, to be greeted by bullets from the alley. He took a bullet in the calf of his leg and soon gave Mason a similar wound.

When the pistols were empty the crowd that had shown up to see the gunfight fell on the two men and subdued them. The final toll showed one dead bystander. Apparently a pig had tried to cross the street between the two duelists and a bullet from Mason's gun had turned him to breakfast bacon.

In 1866 as fall was in full swing two Frenchmen, Souchet and Picard were their names, came to an impasse of honor at North Bloomfield.

Their seconds conspired to give them Colt pistols with which to duel, having caps and balls, but no powder. The misfires did nothing to calm the situation. The men fired - so to speak - their seconds, loaded their own pistols, and advanced on one another, firing. No one was hit. Finally Souchet, using his empty pistol as a club, badly beat Picard. the next day both men were arrested and did a month each in jail.

Gary Cooper this was not.

---------

Copyright Don Baumgart, 2007