100 years ago in Spokane: Buck deer, passenger train engage in standoff

From our archives, 100 years ago

A buck deer and a Northern Pacific passenger train engaged in a 10-minute standoff at the Division Street crossing.

The train was approaching the downtown station when “the deer and the engine caught each other’s eye at about the same moment.” The deer stubbornly lowered its antlers and assumed a fighting posture. It “remained as steady as a bronze deer” and refused to step off the track.

So the engineer brought the train to a halt. The crew jumped out of the train and ran up to the deer to scare it off. Then the train crew ran right back again, at even higher speed.

Apparently, the deer had “lowered its head and feinted an uppercut,” wrote a reporter.

Finally, the trainmaster, D.W. Walker, got out and walked toward the deer. A crowd of passengers gathered to watch.

“The antlered monarch looked Mr. Walker over carefully and appeared to recognize an authority. He bounded from the track and was lost to view in the direction of Riverside Avenue.”

From the police beat: Jake Hill, a Spokane shoe dealer, ran into C.R. Huston, a man who had written him a bad check two years earlier. Huston promised to settle up, but when Hill went to Huston’s hotel to collect the money, Huston had disappeared.

Driving home, Hill saw Huston driving around town with a young woman. Hill chased Huston through the Manito and Cannon Hill neighborhoods, through downtown and on to the North Side.

At open point, Hill enlisted two policemen in the chase. They finally “bore down on Huston’s machine” and arrested him. Turns out, Huston was also wanted on bad check charges in Ellensburg, North Yakima and Colfax.