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Joel Martin/Columbia Basin Herald
Eight-year-old Natasha Nelson gets the feel of a butter churn in the general store at the Grant County Museum’s Pioneer Day Saturday.

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Shootout at the museum
September 25, 2017 3 a.m.

Shootout at the museum

EPHRATA — It was a fairly peaceful Saturday afternoon in the old West town. The dusty gravel street had a few people meandering about between the print shop, the general store and the doctor’s office. Others stood idly on the wooden sidewalks. Suddenly off near the saloon, a couple of drunks began shouting and waving their guns between swigs from the whiskey bottle they’d been passing back and forth. A sheriff’s deputy tried to reason with them a little, but everybody knew what was going to happen. One sot took aim at the deputy, and a few bangs later, both lay dead in the street, the bottle leaking next to the bodies.