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AS EVERY SENSIBLE person knows, there is pretty much no such thing as being \u201ccruel to be kind.\u201d Sometimes it does work the other way around, though. Every now and then you run across a story in which someone did something that was intended as a kindness, but turned out to be anything but.\n\nSuch a case happened in the office of Oregon Governor Oswald West, sometime in 1912. It had to do with a little shooting scrape that Z.H. Stroud, an acquaintance of West\u2019s, had gotten into in the little frontier town of Harney City, where he was the town marshal.\n\nReading between the lines of the story, it\u2019s clear that the governor\u2019s well-intentioned intervention was probably the worst thing that could have happened to Marshal Stroud, and precipitated the closest thing Oregon history has to Arizona\u2019s famous O.K. Corral gunfight. Which, as I\u2019m sure you\u2019ve gathered, the lawman lost.... (Harney City, Harney County; 1910s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/24-04a.1107e_os-west-pardons-gunfighter-marshal.html)