Criminal Justice Matters: Gamble-Graham Duel, 1911, Winn Parish, LA. Submitted by Greggory E. Davies, 120 Ted Price Lane, Winnfield, LA 71483 ********************************************** Copyright. All rights reserved. http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ********************************************** From: August 3, 1961 Winn Parish Enterprise News-American MONTGOMERY IN THE PAST TENSE by Richard Briley III The Gamble-Graham Duel Ego is the only thing, they say, that grows without nourishment. No matter how much you nurse a grudge it never gets any better! Pride falls but it is the heart that breaks! Any clash of personalities involving the ego, pride or a grudge, may alas, explode into bloody tragedy....The terrible Gamble and Graham gunfight in St. Maurice on June 23, 1911 was a fair example of this. Folks still live who witnessed this better shoot-out and heard the echoes of the shotguns and the thudding of buckshot against a human skull. This fight was something of a hangover from dueling, the old world method of avenging pride or settling a grudge which was inherited by American colonists. For it was more of a duel of the old type than a leather-slapping hammer- thumbing gunfight show on television every night. And it all began in the beautiful St. Maurice graveyard and ended in the same place, which, in this way however makes the story read like a bonanza script for a TV audience. Mr. E. J. Gamble, age 59, probably had been tippling that day thought he was not a heavy drinker. He met James J. Graham, a teen-age youth called Jay, at the depot and began to swap jokes and stories with him and others of the town crowd who usually met the daily trains. After a period of ribbing and joking Mr. Gamble began to tell ghost stories and scary tales of the night which involved frightened colored people and the noise they made getting away from such scenes. Almost everybody laughed as people do at such talk, but young Jay Graham, unimpressed, shrugged when the amusement was over, and said ghosts might frighten other people but they wouldn't bother him and he didn't see anything very funny about such exaggerated tales. Mr. Gamble retorted that it was one thing to stand there in the middle of town and take that attitude in the daytime, but quite another to go out to cemeteries and haunted places and talk the same way at night. Jay said he wasn't afraid to go out after dark and stay out, anywhere, if all he had to fear was ghosts and ha'nts and such things as that. This was all just so much "big talk" to Mr. Gamble who added: "You wouldn't even spend a night in our own graveyard, yonder..A nice open place like that." "I would, too." "Suppose you had to sit by a casket out there. You wouldn't stay long I betcha!" "Yes I would. If it was necessary." "I'll bet you $ 25 you wouldn't stay all night under any circumstance." Jay didn't have the money to copper the bet, he asserted, but if he did he would take him up. Mr. Gamble sniffed and looked doubtfully at the youth. "Tell you what I'll do. I'll GIVE you $ 25 if you will go out there, unarmed and sit by an open coffin all night. I say you can't do it." Young Jay stubbornly insisted he wasn't afraid of cemeteries or anything that frequented them day or night. If Mr. Gamble was serious about the matter he only had to bring out a coffin and arrange the scene like he wanted it and he would show him whether he could stay there or not. So, the coffin was hauled out and set up in the loneliest part of the graveyard and Jay Graham took up his strange vigil on a dark, warm spring night. No voice louder than a cricket was heard during all that time about the place, when the milky way had risen and Job's coffin was high in southern skies, some mournful sounds began to come out of the woods nearby and a white object floated up between the shade trees. Goose pimples covered young Jay and his hair stood on ends but he steadfastly remained at his post. The sounds increased in volume and the white object jetted around like a flying carpet, and the boy shivered and breathed hard, yet he remained seated at the side of the casket. Finally after much flitting about the white object which looked like a bedsheet, disappeared, and with its departure went the howling, lonesome noise. Eventually the night, which was short anyway, ended and the sun came up and young Jay Graham was still sitting in the graveyard. He had won the money. When Mr. Gamble came around after sunrise, Jay accused him of trying to scare him away with a sheet and a lot of weird noises during the nocturnal hours. The older man merely laughed at the charge and wrote out a check for $ 25 on a New Orleans bank. Handing this to the youth, Mr. Gamble and Jay separated on friendly terms and went to their respective homes. Things were "plumb peaceful" then. They didn't stay that way long however. Next afternoon, Mr. John J. Graham, 61, father of Jay, rode into town in a most jovial mood. His humor was so good, indeed, he smiled to himself all the way in and when he saw his friend, Gamble, on the street, he began to laugh out loud hilariously. Hitching his pony, presently Mr. Graham went over to Gamble and continued to laugh and jibe at him because of the happening the previous night at the graveyard. "Easiest money the boy ever made," laughed Graham. "Reckon that ought to be a lesson to some people around this town!" Mr. Gamble's humor wasn't so good. He resented his friend's every word and insinuation . He swore at Graham and turned and went to the depot where he wired the bank to stop payment on the check he had given earlier to young Jay. That would answer the old man. Let him smirk and laugh about that..... A few days later when the unpaid check was returned Mr. Graham came to town again. His mood this time was not so good. IN fact, his smiles had been replaced by a deep, angry scowl. Sighting Mr. Gamble at the depot he walked over and began to talk roughly to him, accusing him of welching on a gambling debt. Gamble cursed him back and moved menacingly toward him. Mr. Graham was a big, florid man, with hair and long beard as red as Esau's pottage. He was a fierce man capable of terrible wrath. As he moved toward Mr. Gamble, who was a shorter man, the latter drew a revolver and punched it towards his belly. "Keep back," he said sharply. "I'll kill you. I'm not able to fight." "Oh it's guns, hey?" cried Graham. "Very well. Guns it shall be. I'll go home and get ME a weapon. I'll be back. We'll settle this today." "Suit yourself. I'll meet you up the road yonder, beyond the stores. We don't want to hurt anybody else." Arming himself with a double barrel shotgun and chilled buckshot, Mr. Gamble walked up a footpath that paralleled the main highway out of town and sat down in the shade to wait near the home of Dr. Nat M. Brian. The path at this point was a hundred yards from the road which ran the same way. And he figured Graham would hitch his horse on the hill above and come back on foot by the trail to seek such protection as the timber along there would afford. An hour passed and nothing happened. Nobody but Dr. Brian, a courageous man himself, appeared on the scene. Another hour was well on its way when the doctor who was talking to Gamble looked around and said in some astonishment: "Yonder he is. He's coming up behind you." He pointed toward town. Turning swiftly Gamble saw Graham with gun in hand, coming around Kimbrell's old store, moving up the red clay highway. Instead of riding back along the main road, as he had intimated, Graham had circled southward through Negro quarters and come up quietly behind his waiting opponent. But even so he had gained no particular advantage by this maneuver. He was now 150 yards away and between him and Gamble was a branch or gully and to try to approach him in this opening, over this rough terrain, would be suicidal. On seeing Gamble leave Dr. Brian and run toward a large oak, Graham seems to have lost his head and fired a random shot in the air. He was using a shot gun but no shot of any kind came near the man he was shooting at. Indeed, Gamble hearing no shot or slug strike around him, concluded Mr. Graham was using a rifle and the bullet had passed above him without making any noise. Fearing a rifle, Gamble raced wildly toward Graham trying to get in gunshot of him, keeping the body of a big oak tree between them....As he reached the oak, Graham stepped behind a shade tree across the branch 110 yards away, and began to reload his shotgun. As he unbreeched the gun he stuck one knee out into the open; and Gamble seeing this knee sticking around the side of the tree opened fire. Even at that distance a buckshot cracked into Graham's knee bone. Losing the support of his leg, he bent over and his head, with his read hair and beard blowing in the wind, came into sight. Quickly Gamble fired again...As the shotgun echoed wickedly up and down the little valley, Mr. Graham, a buckshot in his brain, pitched forward and began to kick in the dust.... The great duel was over Brian ran on to Graham's side but death had already done its work and departed...A couple of days later, at the consumation of this folly, Mr. Graham was laid to rest in the center of the cemetery where the ridiculous affair had its beginning. A noble man brought to his grave by the hand of an outstanding citizen. Vanity of vanities. All is vanity where ego or a grudge is concerned. Truly pride did fall that day, but it was a heart that broke...The heart of kindly Mrs. Graham.