One night a few weeks ago I was wakened from sleep by the crash of a .44 and a terrible cry that marked the end of one of the town's toughest characters...This was a freak-shot, in a way; it was fired at close range, and it seems as if it should have torn the whole top of the victim's head off, but the bullet, crashing through the rim of the temple, rolled around the inner curve of the skull, cracking it like an egg, and lodged in the back part of the head. The man lived some fourteen or fifteen hours afterwards, with his brains oozing out, but of course he never recovered anything like consciousness -- only his incredible vitality kept him alive that long.