armed himself, watched for King on Montgomery street, but he did not
conceal himself. It was King's invariable custom to leave his office in
the small one-story brick building which so long obstructed Merchant
street on the east side of Montgomery, soon after the Bulletin was
issued, walk to the cigar store on the north-west corner of Washington
and Montgomery streets, and thence out Washington street homeward. He
usually wore a talma of coarse fabric, loose and reaching to his hips.
It was sleeveless, concealing his arms and hands. As he came out of the
cigar store, Casey hailed him. The distance between the two was about
forty feet. Casey shouted to him, "Prepare yourself!" and fired. King
tottered and sunk upon the sidewalk. He had frequently made notice in
his paper that any whom he denounced in its columns had the privilege of
adopting their own mode of recourse; stated the route he usually took to
and from his office, and with the significant hint, "God help any one
who attacks me," defied that method of redress. Casey took him at his
word. King was borne to the room in Montgomery block, in which he died a
few days afterward. The ball had penetrated his body from the left side
of his breast, just below the line of the arm pit, and ranging upward
and outward to the back of the left shoulder. The surgeons pronounced it
a dangerous but not a mortal wound. Dr. Beverly R. Cole was
Surgeon-General to the Committee brigade, and a member of the Committee.
Months afterward he declared in a public statement of the case that King
died from the unskillful treatment of the surgeons, and maintained that
with proper treatment he would have recovered. Still it was the wound
which superinduced his death; and Casey had fired the ball which made
it.



Chapter IV.