effort to bring in Kansas as a Free Soil state."

Up to this point the crowd had been so dumfounded by his temerity that
they kept an astonished silence. Now the storm broke. The rumble of
angry voices swelled into a roar of fury. An angry mob surrounded the
speaker. Several desperadoes leaped forward with deadly intent, and one,
Charles Dunn by name, drove his knife to the hilt into the body of the
brave man who dared thus openly to avow his principles.

As father fell, Will sprang to him, and turning to the murderous
assailant, cried out in boyhood's fury:

"You have killed my father! When I'm a man I'll kill you!"

The crowd slunk away, believing father dead. The deed appalled them;
they were not yet hardened to the lawlessness that was so soon to put
the state to blush.

Mr. Hathaway and Will then carried father to a hiding-place in the long
grass by the wayside. The crowd dispersed so slowly that dusk came on
before the coast was clear. At length, supported by Will, father dragged
his way homeward, marking his tortured progress with a trail of blood.

This path was afterward referred to in the early history of Kansas as
"The Cody Bloody Trail."

It was such wild scenes as these that left their impress on the youth
and fashioned the Cody of later years--cool in emergency, fertile in
resource, swift in decision, dashing and intrepid when the time for
action came.

Our troubles were but begun. Father's convalescence was long and
tedious; he never recovered fully. His enemies believed him dead, and
for a while we kept the secret guarded; but as soon as he was able to be
about persecution began.

About a month after the tragedy at Rively's, Will ran in one evening
with the warning that a band of horsemen were approaching. Suspecting
trouble, mother put some of her own clothes about father, gave him a
pail, and bade him hide in the cornfield. He walked boldly from the
house, and sheltered by the gathering dusk, succeeded in passing the
horsemen unchallenged. The latter rode up to the house and dismounted.

"Where's Cody?" asked the leader. He was informed that father was not at
home.

"Lucky for him!" was the frankly brutal rejoinder. "We'll make sure work
of the killing next time."

Disappointed in their main intention, the marauders revenged themselves
in their own peculiar way by looting the house of every article that
took their fancy; then they sat down with the announced purpose of
waiting the return