one space of four feet, making about twenty-four feet.  Terry had been seated but a very short time—­Justice Field thought it a moment or two, Neagle thought it three or four minutes—­when he arose and moved down towards the door, this time walking through the aisle behind Justice Field, instead of the one in front of him as before.  Justice Field supposed, when he arose, that he was going out to meet his wife, as she had not returned, and went on with his breakfast; but when Terry had reached a point behind him, and a little to the right, within two or three feet of him, he halted.  Justice Field was not aware of this, nor did he know that Terry had stopped, until he was struck by him a violent blow in the face from behind, followed instantaneously by another blow at the back of his head.  Neagle had seen Terry stop and turn.  Between this and Terry’s assault there was a pause of four or five seconds.  Instantaneously upon Terry’s dealing a blow, Neagle leaped from his chair and interposed his diminutive form between Justice Field and the enraged and powerful man, who now sought to execute his long-announced and murderous purpose.  Terry gave Justice Field no warning of his presence except a blow from behind with his right hand.

As Neagle rose, he shouted:  “Stop, stop, I am an officer.”  Judge Terry had drawn back his right arm for a third blow at Justice Field, and with clinched fist was about to strike, when his attention was thus arrested by Neagle, and looking at him he evidently recognized in him the man who had drawn the knife from his hand in the corridor before the marshal’s office on the third of September of the preceding year, while he was attempting to cut his way into the marshal’s office.  Neagle put his right hand up as he ordered Terry to stop, when Terry carried his right hand at once to his breast, evidently to seize the knife which he had told the Alameda county jailer he “always carried.”  Says Neagle: 

    “This hand came right to his breast.  It went a good deal
    quicker than I can explain it.  He continued looking at me in a
    desperate manner and his hand got there.”

The expression of Terry’s face at that time was described by Neagle in these words: 

    “The most desperate expression that I ever saw on a man’s
    face, and I have seen a good many in my time.  It meant life or
    death to me or him.”

Having thus for a moment diverted the blow aimed at Justice Field and engaged Terry himself, Neagle did not wait to be butchered with the latter’s ready knife, which he was now attempting to draw, but raised his six-shooter with his left hand (he is left-handed) and holding the barrel of it with his right hand, to prevent the pistol from being knocked out of his hands, he shot twice; the first shot into Terry’s body and the second at his head.  Terry immediately commenced sinking very slowly.  Knowing by experience that men mortally wounded have been often known to kill those with whom they were engaged in such an encounter, Neagle fired the second shot to defend himself and Justice Field against such a possibility.