MAN SHOOTS FOOTE

ust after daybreak on Sunday, Sept. 8, 1895, Nevada hard cases Phil Foote, Jack Longstreet and William Moyer emerged with several other hired men from the small wooden bunkhouse at the Chispa Mine in southwest Nevada. Part of the Montgomery Mining District, the Chispa was on a hardscrabble scratch of land. Still, over the past several years the mine had yielded ore rich in gold, and the owners, a group of Utah capitalists, had installed a new 10-stamp mill and made other improvements. But for much of 1894, a tough economic year, the owners had all but abandoned the diggings. By law mine owners needed to at least do assessment work to maintain title. Seizing on that technicality, former Chispa foreman Angus McArthur had hired the three gunmen and