Raymond S. Spears

“ No bushwhacker, acting the coward, could shoot as well as the brave man who faced his enemy in the open. When, at a church one night, two enemies met, one, who had the advantage of being in the shadow cast by the moon, sprang forth into the bright light before he drew his gun and thus, all fair and square and in the open, the two fought—and the man who would not shoot even from a shadow was killed. ”

“ From Missouri, probably, came the best marksmen of the West, from Kit Carson's boyhood onward. Kentuckians salted the Missouri wilderness with their own skill.
In that particular district, the one covered by the Bald Knobber clan, the shooting was with meticulous accuracy. Two men fought; one put his bullet through the other's head, and followed that bullet with two others so close together that a dollar covered them; this, while the victim was falling.
Courage was at the base of the accuracy. They never shot from ambush. ”