Jack Slade

Enjoying reading Ron Chernow's Mark Twain, including this excerpt:

"In Roughing It, he [Sam Clemens] would tell how he was intrigued by colorful legends about Jack Slade, a stagecoach agent in the Rocky Mountains, reputed to be a homicidal maniac. He wrote that Slade liked to postpone murderous vengeance against enemies 'just as a school-boy saves up a cake, and made the pleasure go as far as it would by gloating over the anticipation.' Since rumor had it that Slade had killed twenty-six people, Twain allegedly sought him out on the ninth day of his journey west, but found a quiet, affable man, not a monster. When the coffee was running out, Slade offered to refill Sam's cup instead of his own, but Sam 'politely declined. I was afraid he had not killed anybody that morning, and might be needing a diversion.'" (Chernow, p. 74)