Look remembered the incident differently. He said Cahill retrieved his pistol from the money drawer of his faro table (which raises the possibility that Rennick had returned the revolver to the drawer after shooting Rayner and that the same pistol was used in two gunfights) and started back toward the front door. Look overtook him and persuaded him to sit down in a chair near the billiard tables. He gave him the same advice Earp claimed to have given him: to get out of there and avoid trouble. But while the two men were talking, Linn staggered through the front door.

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Whether Wyatt Earp tutored him or not, Cahill was ready. He moved toward Linn and called out for him to throw up his hands. Linn kept coming toward the back of the room. Cahill called out twice more for him to throw up his hands, without effect. When Linn did not respond, Cahill fired four shots in quick succession, followed by a fifth. Linn went down with the first shot. He was hit twice, once through the heart and once through the bowels and spinal column. He was dead almost instantly.

The following day, a hearing was held in the Cahill-Linn fight. The testimony of Jim Gregory, Frank Gaffenberg, Wyatt Earp, Dan Tipton, Francis Jessie Boyd and A.P. Criswell (all men who had witnessed desperate encounters before) demonstrated clearly that Cahill had defended himself from a drunk and irrational man. The young dealer was released upon payment of $10 bond and never indicted.

The Rayner-Rennick shooting still had to be sorted out, however. On April 18, the El Paso Times reported that Rayner still lingers on his death bed. At a late hour last night his temperature was 104 degrees and his pulse 150. The pain in his wounds was slight, as he had been kept under influence of opiates. Fatal inflammation seems to have begun and any hopes of recovery has been despaired of…. He yet speaks intelligently and keeps a clear head.

Rayner’s condition prompted Frank E. Hunter, the county attorney, to visit him with pen and paper to take a statement from him. Rayner was uncooperative. What do you want this for, Frank? he asked. When the attorney replied that it was his duty to take a statement in case something happened to him, Rayner replied, Why? I ain’t going to die. When Hunter persisted, Rayner told him flatly: Well, I ain’t going to give it to you. If I die, that settles it; but if I don’t die, I will tend to that little business myself.

Rayner lingered on in great pain for some weeks. A few days after the shooting, William J. Fewel met Dr. Justice on the street and asked how Rayner was doing. When Justice said that he would surely die, Fewel proclaimed: I am damned glad of it. He ought to have been killed years ago. Fewel apparently had second thoughts because when he had walked on for almost half a block, he turned and shouted back to the doctor, Oh Doc, if Bill gets well, what I said don’t go.

Friends notified Hamilton Rayner of his brother’s condition, and he and their mother arrived on the evening of April 19 by train. Rayner lasted until 7 a.m. on June 7, 1885. He died without ever making a public statement about the shooting. He was buried two days later.

The editor of the El Paso Times searched for meaning in his passing: The high social standing of the family, the reputation and historical associations thrown around him, the advantages of education, and the physical perfections which Nature endowed with him, were rare opportunities which should have pressed him forward to an honorable and worthy aim. That they did not, the Times deemed inexplicable, and blamed the tragedy on the actions of a mind diseased and wandering from his plane of reason.

To his credit, Rennick had remained in Paso Del Norte throughout the long weeks of Rayner’s fight for life. A day or so after the shooting, Rennick had sent for George Look, who met him on the acequia bridge in front of an old brewery opposite the Mexican Central Depot. Look recalled that Rennick came out of the cane brakes, on the acequia banks at that place. I told him to come back over the river, which he did, and he was placed under $10 bond.

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