k in
front of him, his court-house always surrounded with an armed guard. He
offended men in Seward county, and there was a plot made to kill him. A
party lay in wait along the road to intercept Botkin on his journey from
his homestead--every one in Kansas at that time had a 'claim'--but
Botkin was warned by some friend. He sent out Sam Dunn, sheriff of
Seward county, to discover the truth of the rumor. Dunn went on down the
trail and, in a rough part of the country, was fired upon and killed,
instead of Botkin. Arrests were made in this matter also, but the sham
trials resulted much as had that of Brennan. The records of these trials
may be seen in Seward county. It was murder for murder, anarchy for
anarchy, evasion for evasion, in this portion of the frontier. Judge
Botkin soon after this resigned his seat upon the bench and went to
lecturing upon the virtues of the Keeley cure. Afterwards he went to the
legislature--the same legislature which had once tried him on charges of
impeachment as a judge!

"These events all became known in time, and lawlessness proved its own
inability to endure. The towns were abandoned. Where in 1889 there were
perhaps 4,000 people, there remained not 100. The best of the farms were
abandoned or sold for taxes, the late inhabitants of the two warring
settlements wandering out over the world. The legislature, hoodwinked or
cajoled heretofore, at length disorganized the county, and anarchy gave
back its own to the wilderness.

"I have indicated that the trial of the men guilty of assassinating my
friends and of attempting to kill myself in the Hay Meadow butchery was
one which reached a considerable importance at the time. The crimes were
committed in that strange portion of the country called No Man's Land or
the Neutral Strip. The accused were tried in the United States court at
Paris, Texas. I myself drew the indictments against them. There were
tried the Cooks, Chamberlain, Robinson and others of the Hugoton party,
and of these six were convicted and sentenced to be hung. These men were
defended by Colonel George R. Peck, later chief counsel of the Chicago,
Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway. With him were associated Judge John F.
Dillon, of New York; W. H. Rossington, of St. Louis; Senator Manderson,
of Nebraska; Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll, and others. The Knights of
Pythias raised a fund to defend the prisoners, and spent perhaps a
hundred thousand dollars in all in this undertaking. A v