On the night of November 2, 1916, Fred French, serving as deputy night watchman for Kingsburg, encountered Lew Cowan behaving drunkenly and disorderly in the pool hall. After French and Cowan wrestled and bystanders separated them, Cowan fled. French called Constable George Boyle, and Boyle, with U.S. Marshall S.J. Shannon, found and arrested Cowan, who also caused a disturbance and struck Boyle in the face. Taken to jail, Cowan calmed down and apologized, promising to go home and sleep if released, so Boyle took him home. Although Cowan's mother received him, she could not prevent him from taking a shotgun and shells and leaving the house. He then met Larson, who had been present in the earlier pool hall altercation, allegedly threatened him, and forced him to go along. At the railroad depot, they saw French leaning against a fence, and Cowan fired both barrels of the shotgun, hitting French in the head and killing him instantly. Cowan sent Larson home and absconded, and subsequent searches failed to find him. Pauline Peterson Mathes later recounted in Bit of Sweden in the Desert that thirteen years after French's murder, his daughter Alice met an old bearded man with a cane who asked whether it was Fred French's house; when told French had been murdered in 1916, the man wept, expressed sorrow, and walked toward the old Cowan place, leaving unresolved whether he had been Lew Cowan.