ast political
'pull' was exercised at Topeka and Washington. After the sentence had
been passed, the case was taken up to the United States Supreme Court,
on the ground that the Texas court had no jurisdiction in the premises,
and on the further grounds of errors in the trial. The United States
Supreme Court, in 1891, reversed the Texas court, on an error on the
admission of evidence, and remanded the cases. The men were never put on
trial again, except that, in 1898, Sam Robinson, meantime pardoned out
of the penitentiary in Colorado, where he had been sent for robbing the
United States mails at Florissant, Colorado, returned to Texas, and was
arrested on the old charge. The men convicted were C. E. Cook, Orrin
Cook, Cyrus C. Freese, John Lawrence and John Jackson.

"The Illinois legislature petitioned Congress to extend United States
jurisdiction over No Man's Land, and so did the state of Indiana; and it
was attached to the East District of Texas for the purposes of
jurisdiction. Congressman Springer held up this bill for a time, using
it as a club for the passage of a measure of his own upon which he was
intent. Thus, it may be seen that the tawdry little tragedy in that
land which indeed was 'No Man's Land' in time attained a national
prominence.

"The collecting of the witnesses for this trial cost the United States
government over one hundred thousand dollars. The trial was long and
bitterly fought. It resulted, as did every attempt to convict those
concerned in the bloody doings of Stevens county, in an absolute failure
of the ends of justice. Of all the murders committed in that bitter
fighting, not one murderer has ever been punished! Never was greater
political or judicial mockery.

"I had the singular experience, once in my life, of eating dinner at the
same table with the man who brutally shot me down and left me for dead.
J. B. Chamberlain, the man who shot me, and who thought he had killed
me, came in with a friend and sat down at the same table in a
Leavenworth, Kansas, restaurant, where I was eating. My opportunity for
revenge was there. I did not take it. Chamberlain and his friend did not
know who I was. I left the matter to the law, with what results the
records of the law's failure in these matters has shown.

"Of those who were tried for these murders, J. B. Chamberlain is now
dead. C. E. Cook, who was much alarmed lest the cases might be
reinstated in the year 1898, claims Quincy, Illinois, as