cquaint the lawyer with a plot
against his life. Mose told how he had been given thirty-five dollars to
commit the deed and a shotgun for the purpose. He also took Marcum to a
woods and showed where four Winchester rifles had been concealed by him
and his three companions. The guns, Mose said, were kept there during
the day but were carried at night so that if he or his companions met
Marcum they were prepared to kill him. The plot, so Mose declared, was
to entice Marcum to his office on some pretext or other. Mose was to
waylay him and pull the trigger. Mose went further. He told Marcum that
the county officials had promised him immunity from punishment if he
would carry out the plot and kill Marcum. When at last the election
contest furore had quieted down Marcum concluded it was safe to venture
forth to his law office and resume his practice.

On the morning of May 4th he had gone to the courthouse to file some
papers in the case. He lingered for a while in the corridor to greet
this one and that, then walked slowly through the corridor toward the
front door. From where he stood talking with a friend, Benjamin Ewen,
Marcum could see across the street Judge James Hargis and Sheriff Ed
Callahan sitting in rocking chairs in front of Hargis's store. When the
shots were fired that killed Marcum neither Hargis nor Callahan stirred.
Their view was uninterrupted when the lifeless body plunged forward.
They remained seated in their rocking chairs, looking neither to right
nor to left. They made no effort to find out who did the shooting.

"My God! they have killed me!" cried Marcum as bullets struck through
the spine and skull and he lunged forward dead.

Curt Jett, tall and angular with red hair and deep-set blue eyes, a man
of many escapades, was convicted of the murder and sent to the
penitentiary for life. The evidence of Captain B. J. Ewen, with whom
Marcum was talking when shot, disclosed that Tom White, one of the
conspirators, walked past Marcum glaring at him to attract his
attention. As he did so Curt in the rear of the hallway of the
courthouse fired the shots. Curt Jett's mother was a sister to Judge
Hargis, and Curt, though only twenty-four at the time, was a deputy
under Ed Callahan.

Nine years later on the morning of May 4, 1912, Ed Callahan, while
sitting in his store at Crockettsville, a village some twenty-five miles
from Jackson, the county seat, was killed. Callahan too was a marked man
and knew it. C