he Secretary of State, who was a mountain man, was among the first to
fall under accusation, and had the city's police officers been able to
seize the Governor, he too would doubtless have been thrown into a cell.
But the Governor still held the disputed credentials of office, and he
sat at his desk, haggard of feature, yet at bay and momentarily secure
behind a circle of bayonets.

Just wrath would not, and could not, long remain only righteous
indignation. Out of its inflammation would spring a hundred injustices,
and so in opposition to the mounting clamour for extreme penalties arose
thundering the counter-voice of protest against a swift and ruthless
sacrifice of conspicuous scapegoats.

To the aid of those first caught in the drag-net of vengeful accusation,
came a handful of volunteer defence attorneys, and among them was
Colonel Wallifarro.

The leader with the bullet-pierced breast was dying, and in the
legislature the contest must be settled, if at all, while there was yet
strength enough in his ebbing life currents to take the oath of office.

His last fight was in keeping with his life--the persistence of sheer
resolution that held death in abeyance and refused surrender.

But when the Democratic majority of the assembly gathered at their
chambers, they encountered muskets; when, casting dignity to the snowy
winds, they raced toward an opera house, the soldiers raced with them,
and arrived first. When they doubled like pursued hares toward the Odd
Fellows' Hall, they found its door likewise barred by blade and muzzle.

Among the first men thrown into jail were Saul Fulton and his friend
Hollins of Clay County. Their connection with the arrival of the
mountaineers was not difficult to establish--and for the officers
charged with ferreting out the ugly responsibility, it made a plausible
beginning.

Meanwhile, the majority legislature, thwarted of open meeting, caucussed
in hotel bedrooms, and gave decision for the dying candidate. A hectic
and grotesque rumour even whispered that Mr. Goebel's gallant hold on
life had slipped before the credentials could be placed in his weakened
hand--and that the oath was solemnly administered to a dead body.

Boone had gone back to Saul's farm house, and on the way he had tossed
the cartridges into a brook that flowed along the road, but his brain
was in a swirl of perplexity and in his blood was an inoculation. He
would never know content again unless, in the theat