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The Sunday Gazetteer
Sunday, June 8, 1890 pg. 3 OVER A WOMAN Dan Gover and Will Cassell Quarrel Over a Girl With Disastrous Consequences Burnett avenue near Gandy street was Monday night the scene of a serious shooting affray between two young men of this city. It seems that Dan Gover (sic), driver of B. N. Carter's beer wagon, and Will Cassell, a machinist at the M. K. & T. shops, had both been paying attentions to Miss Ollie Ferguson residing on Barrett avenue, and the young lady manifesting no decided preference for the society of either of the young men a spirit of rivalry has for some time existed between them. Monday evening Grover took the lady out driving and while out encountered Cassell, who also had a rig. It is claimed by Gover, and pretty well substantiated by parties who were passing in the streets, that Cassell drove several times up alongside Gover's rig swearing and abusing both Gover and the girl and even tried to bring about an accident by running into them. About 10 o'clock, at the corner of Gandy street and Burnett avenue, he drove abreast of Gover and called out to know if he was fixed. Gover said he was and immediately jumped from the buggy. Cassell sprang into the street and as he did so Gover drew a pistol and fired at him. Cassell turned and ran for his rig and as he was climbing into it Gover fired again. With a cry of "My God, I am shot," he fell over on the dashboard, and a third shot from Gover's pistol passed over him. Cassell's horse continued down Burnett avenue and near Main street its driver fell from the rig and was picked up by parties from the Thompson House who were called to the scene by his outcries. He was carried to the drug store of Bailey & Culpepper where the flow of blood from the wound was staunched and at a later hour he was removed to his home on Morgan street. The wound is from a 38-caliber pistol ball and is located near the middle of the back to the left of the spinal column. The ball did not pass entirely through its victim and still remains in his body. Cassell's chances of recovery are considered precarious. After the shooting the young lady over whom it occurred started for home on foot and Gover drove his rig back to Nolan's livery stable. A short time later he was arrested at the Carter beer barn, where he usually slept, and was lodged in jail. He states that when Cassell got out of his rig he thought he saw the gleam of a pistol in his hand, but no pistol or other weapon was found upon him. Both parties to the unpleasant affair are about 20 years of age. LATER - Cassell died of his injuries at 9:25 p.m. Wednesday and was buried in Oakwood cemetery Thursday at 3 p.m. The funeral was under the auspices of the fire department and the Locomotive Fremen, the deceased being a member of both organizations. The hook and ladder truck and other fire apparatus were draped in mourning and were driven in the procession. The attendance at the residence on Morgan street and at the grave was very large. At the inquest, held Thursday morning by Judge LaBaume, a verdict was rendered to the effect that the deceased came to his death by a gunshot wound inflicted by Daniel Gover. Gover will have his examining trail before Judge LaBaume Monday.  The Sunday Gazetteer Sunday, June 15, 1890 pg. 3 . . . Dan Cover failing to make his $4000 bond was taken to Sherman this afternoon. His counsel, I. M. Standifer, will probably get him out on a habeas corpus writ and bring the case before the district judge to have the bond reduced. The Sunday Gazetteer Sunday, July 20, 1890 pg. 1 SETTLING WITH FATE Dan Cover Pays His Debt to Destiny With a Pistol This (Saturday) morning between 4 and 5 o'clock early risers in the neighborhood of B.N. Carter's beer office at the foot of Gandy street, were startled by two pistol shots fired in quick succession, followed a second later by the spectacle of a young man clad only in a robe de nuit, running rapidly away from the office in the direction of the ice factory. The runner was Frank Pugh, a helper around the beer house, and the manner in which he got away from the scene showed that he was not running for fun. At the ice factory he encountered several men whom he asked to accompany him back to the office stating that he had been shot at by some one who was in the office. The men went back with him and found, not a burglar bent on plunder and assassination, but Dan Cover, the beer wagon driver, lying upon the floor with an upturned chair half over him, a pistol under him and the life blood streaming from a wound in the side and a frightful hold in the forehead. Marshall James was at once notified, and a little while later Judge Cook was sent for to inquest the remains. There was but little to be learned. Pugh testified that he had been sleeping near the east window in the beer office, and had been awakened by a pistol shot. He heard a second as he sprang from his cot and thinking that he was being shot at he leaped through the open window and ran. Pugh says that he saw the figure of Cover out of the chair as he went through the window but didn't recognize who it was at the time. Other witnesses testified to coming and finding the body, but that was all. A verdict of suicide was rendered and, though some have expresses suspicions of foul play, there is but little in the case to justify such a conclusion. The motive for the desperate act is supplied by legal difficulties in which the deceased was involved, by personal debts and by gambling. Cover's killing of young Cassell in this city two months ago is still fresh in the public recollection. Though out on bond and with a fair prospect of ultimately beating his case, this affair hanging over him no doubt worried him and this with his fascination for gambling, through which he was kept always in debt, no doubt led to the desperate mental condition which resulted in suicide. Mr. Carter states that he was short in his accounts to the extent of what he had collected Friday, some $20, and parties who were in the White Elephant late that night state that they saw him playing craps there all night and losing steadily. Mr. Carter has many good things to say of Cover, commending his honesty, energy and faithfulness, and expressing the deepest regret at his unfortunate end. Cover used to be a horse jockey and was raised amid sporting scenes and his taste for betting on all sorts of games is thus naturally accounted for. The mother of the deceased lives at Hiawatha, Kansas and he has a brother in Denver, Colorado. The remains were prepared for burial at Harriman & Morris' undertaking establishment, Mr. Carter assuming the expenses of burial. The Sunday Gazetteer Sunday, July 27, 1890 pg. 1 THE SUICIDE'S PISTOL Things in real life seldom turn out the way they do in the books. "The pistol of a suicide is lucky" says the author of "As In A Looking Glass," and he proceeds to illustrate the truth of the superstition by making Lena Despard take the weapon, with which a ruined player has just suicided, and having her win a fabulous sum in a few minutes at Roulette. Frank Blazer, who works for the B. N. Carter beer agency, had seen the play which Lawrence Marston has manufactured from this book, and impressed with the plausibility of the theory he undertook Sunday night to put its assumed veracity into practical experiment. He went to the drawer in which lay the fatal pistol, which on the previous morning had done such salient execution in snuffing out the earthly candle of poor Dan Cover, and putting it in his hip pocket started up town. He repaired first to the White Elephant, and having made winnings sufficient to purchase himself a five cent cigar he came down to the street and started for the "Half Acre." Wealth was not the only thing that Frank hoped to secure with his rabbit's-foot pistol. Over in the fashionable district, bounded by Austin avenue and Crawford street, there resided a fair, frail and trivelous fairy whose charms had long excited the admiration of the impressionable Francis but whose indifference had, for an equal length of time, been the source of no small amount of inward humiliation and pique. Armed with his mascot pistol, however, Mr. Blazer felt himself invincible, and he set out for his fair one's domicile with all the confidence that an implicit faith in his lucky firearm naturally inspired. He was rounding the Red Front corner with his five cent cigar aglow and his hip pocket projecting about 27 inches out behind him, when he ran between Marshal James and night watchman Lawrence. He was stopped and questioned as to what kind of a bustle he wore, and failing to give answer in a manner to suit the officers he was made to unbosom himself behind and disgorge his lucky pistol. Then in spite of many protests, he was hustled off to the lockup, and Monday morning was bound over in the sum of $100 by Justice Cook, for violating the pistol law. It seems that the suicide's pistol is only lucky in favorable seasons, and the long spell of dry hot weather that had been prevailing prior to the 21st, had warped and impaired its talismanic qualities.  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