on--there was
no crime in the calendar of which one town did not accuse the other,
and, indeed, of which the citizens of either were not guilty.

"Wood left the two ladies sitting in the buggy, near the door, and
stepped up to the clerk's desk to look over some papers. As he went in,
he passed, leaning against the door, one Jim Brennan, a deputy of
Hugoton, who did not seem to notice him. Brennan was a friend of C. E.
Cook, then under conviction for the Hay Meadows massacre. Brennan stood
talking to Mrs. Wood and Mrs. Carpenter, smiling and apparently
pleasant. Colonel Wood turned and came down towards the door, again
passing close to Brennan but not speaking to him. He was almost upon the
point of climbing to his seat in the buggy, when Brennan, without a word
and without any sort of warning, drew a revolver and shot him in the
back. Wood wheeled around, and Brennan shot him the second time, through
the right side. Not a word had been spoken by any one. Wood now started
to run around the corner of the house. His wife, realizing now what was
happening, sprang from the buggy-seat and followed to protect him.
Brennan fired a third time, but missed. Mrs. Wood, reaching her
husband's side, threw her arms around his neck. Brennan coming close up,
fired a fourth shot, this time through Wood's head. The murdered man
fell heavily, literally in his wife's arms, and for the moment it was
thought both were killed. Brennan drew a second revolver, and so stood
over Wood's corpse, refusing to surrender to any one but the sheriff of
Morton county.

"The presiding judge at this trial was Theodosius Botkin, a figure of
peculiar eminence in Kansas at that time. Botkin gave Brennan into the
custody of the sheriff of Morton county. He was removed from the county,
and it need hardly be stated that when he was at last brought back for
trial it was found impossible to empanel a jury, and he was set free. No
one was ever punished for this cold-blooded murder.

"Colonel S. N. Wood was an Ohio man, but moved to Kansas in the early
Free Soil days. He was a friend and champion of old John Brown and a
colonel of volunteers in the civil war. He had served in the legislature
of Kansas, and was a good type of the early and adventurous pioneer.

"Whether or not suspicion attached to Judge Botkin for his conduct in
this matter, he himself seems to have feared revenge, for he held court
with a Winchester at his hand and a brace of revolvers on the des