Neagle slept no more that night.  The train reached Merced, an intervening station between Fresno and Lathrop, at 5:30 that morning.  Neagle there conferred with the conductor, on the platform, and referred to the threats so often made by the Terrys.  He told him that Justice Field was on the train, and that he was accompanying him.  He requested him to telegraph to Lathrop, to the constable usually in attendance there, to be at hand, and that if any trouble occurred he would assist in preventing violence.

Justice Field got up before the train reached Lathrop, and told the deputy marshal that he was going to take his breakfast in the dining-room at that place.  The following is his statement of what took place: 

“He said to me, ’Judge, you can get a good breakfast at the buffet on board.’  I did not think at the time what he was driving at, though I am now satisfied that he wanted me to take breakfast on the car and not get off.  I said I prefer to have my breakfast at this station.  I think I said I had come down from the Yosemite Valley a few days before, and got a good breakfast there, and was going there for that purpose.

“He replied:  ‘I will go with you.’  We were among the first to get off from the train.”

As soon as the train arrived, Justice Field, leaning on the arm of Neagle, because of his lameness, proceeded to the dining-room, where they took seats for breakfast.

There were in this dining-room fifteen tables, each one of which was ten feet long and four feet wide.  They were arranged in three rows of five each, the tables running lengthwise with each other, with spaces between them of four feet.  The aisles between the two rows were about seven feet apart, the rows running north and south.

Justice Field and Neagle were seated on the west side of the middle table in the middle row, the Justice being nearer the lower corner of the table, and Neagle at his left.  Very soon after—­Justice Field says “a few minutes,” while Neagle says “it may be a minute or so”—­Judge Terry and his wife entered the dining-room from the east.  They walked up the aisle, between the east and middle rows of tables, so that Justice Field and Neagle were faced towards them.  Judge Terry preceded his wife.  Justice Field saw them and called Neagle’s attention to them.  He had already seen them.

As soon as Mrs. Terry had reached a point nearly in front of Justice Field, she turned suddenly around, and scowling viciously, went in great haste out of the door at which she had come in.  This was for the purpose, as it afterwards appeared, of getting her satchel with the pistol in it, which she had left in the car.  Judge Terry apparently paid no attention to this movement, but proceeded to the next table above and seated himself at the upper end of it, facing the table at which Justice Field was seated.  Thus there were between the two men as they sat at the tables a distance equal to two table-lengths and