On April 30, 1891 the Old West came to Appalachia, in the form of a gun fight in Roanoke, Virginia.
That evening C. L. Ross and a friend, Lew Sanger, left Rice’s billiard parlor a few minutes before 6, headed toward Marshall’s Café. On the way Ross was told to steer clear of Marshall’s because an acquaintance of Ross, Nick Flood, was looking to kill him. Both men were gamblers and there was some bad blood between the two over a gambling debt.
Ross ignored the warning and proceeded down to the café, stating he would go there even if he did happen to be killed. When Sanger and Ross arrived, they sat down at a booth near the window in the front. Then C. L. got up to go into the café barroom, where he encountered Nick Flood. The two had words and Flood drew his pistol and fired at Ross, with Ross returning fire. C. L. Ross got off two shots before he fell to the floor, mortally wounded. As he lay there he fired two more shots at Nick Flood, who ducked out of the café and onto the street, ending up at a barber shop just across Salem Avenue, where he, too, collapsed.
Ross was killed by a shot to his chest. Flood was seriously wounded by a shot to his right breast and to his chin, but wasn’t killed.
This wasn’t Nick Flood’s first use of violence. A few months previously he had nearly stabbed a man named Martin O’Meara to death, and he also had assaulted a man named Payne with a pool cue after an argument.
