said
the judge. "I hate to miss that party. There'll be some medicine made
there. I might go with a body-guard, eh?"

"So if the Bunker gang gets after you," suggested H. L., "there'd be
somebody paid to take the load of buckshot. Well, here's Jake. He's our
local desperado. Ask Dick McGill, eh, Jake? He dared the shotgun the
night they run that claim-jumper off. I know a feller that was there,
and seen it--when he wa'n't seared blind. Take Jake."

2

The Bunker gang was a group of bandits that had their headquarters in
the timber along the Iowa River near Eldora. They were afterward
caught--some of them--and treated very badly by the officers who started
to Iowa City with them. The officers, making quite a little posse,
stopped at a tavern down in Tama County, I think it was at Fifteen Mile
Grove, and took a drink or two too much. They had Old Man Bunker and one
of the boys in the wagon tied or handcuffed, I never knew which; and
while the posse was in the tavern getting their drinks the boy worked
himself loose, and lay there under the buffalo robe when the men came
back to take them on their journey to jail.

When they had got well started again, it was decided by the sheriff or
deputy in charge that they would make Old Man Bunker tell who the other
members were of their gang. So they took him out of the wagon and hung
him to a tree to make him confess. When they let him down he stuck it
out and refused. They strung him up again, and just as they got him
hauled up they noticed that the boy--he wasn't over my age--was running
away. They ran after the boy and, numbed as he was lying in the wagon in
the winter's cold, he could not run fast, and they caught him. Then they
remembered that they had left Old Man Bunker hanging when they chased
off after the boy; and when they cut him down he was dead.

They were scared, drunk as they were, and after holding a council of
war, they decided that they would make a clean sweep and hang the boy
too--I forgot this boy's name. This they did, and came back telling the
story that the prisoners had escaped, or been shot while escaping. I do
not recall which. It was kind of pitiful; but nothing was ever done
about it, though the story leaked out--being too horrible to stay
a secret.

There was a great deal of sympathy with the Bunkers all over the
country, I know where one of the men who did the deed lives now, out in
Western Iowa, near Cherokee. He was always looked upon as a m