but roughly,
disentangled from the intricacies of "'Possum Jim's" rope-yarn harness.
The more he protested and expostulated, the more inexorable became the
five big custodians of the outraged peace, until the last word of
remonstrance and explanation died upon his well-nigh breathless lips.
Then he tried cajoling and "connudling" and those silent, persuasive
arts so often efficacious in legislative lobbies; but there were too
many witnesses to his crime, and bribes were not in order.

When at last Wickersham, from sheer despair and physical exhaustion,
sank limp in the arms of his captors, the sergeant, on the pretext of
seeking the aiders and abettors in the riot, half carried, half led the
prisoner into Jones's resort.

A quarter of an hour later the police squad made its exit by the back
door, and less than an hour afterward Wickersham's special was bearing
him southward toward Texas.

But Field's revenge was not fully sated yet. He caused a $2 Pullman
rate-bill, making a sixty per cent. reduction, to be prepared in the
Tribune office, and secured its introduction in the legislature by the
chairman of the House committee on railways. The news was immediately
flashed East, and Wickersham came posting back to Denver with the worst
case of monopoly fright he had ever experienced. The day after his
arrival the Tribune had something to say in every department of his
nefarious mission, and every reference to him bristled with biting
irony and downright accusation. Never was a "good fellow and a
thoroughbred" so mercilessly scarified.

For the remaining six weeks of the session Wickersham did not leave
Denver, nor did he dare look at the Tribune until after breakfast.
Every member of the legislature received a Pullman annual. Champagne
flowed, not by the bottle, but by the dray-load. Wickersham begged for
quarter, but his appeals fell like music on ears that heard but heeded
not. Nor did he find out that the whole affair was a put-up job until
the bill was finally lost in the Senate committee.

One of the familiar stories of Field's rollicking life in Denver was at
the expense of Oscar Wilde, then on his widely advertised visit to
America. As the reader may remember, this was when the aesthetic craze
and the burlesques inseparable from it were at their height.
Anticipating Wilde's appearance in Denver by one day, and making
shrewdly worded announcements through the Tribune in keeping with his
project, Field secured t