of the Governor.  This failing, Sherrard spit in the Governor’s face; but Mr. Geary, mindful of the dignity of his office, and that it did not become the Governor of Kansas to get into a brawl with a common blackguard, walked straight on.  Afterwards Sherrard, who kept himself crazy drunk, provoked a general affray in a large company of men, in which pistols were fired in every direction; when John A, W. Jones, the young man on Gov.  Geary’s staff whom Sherrard had assaulted a few days before, shot him in the forehead.

CHAPTER XXIII.

One circumstance at last brought to a sudden close Gov.  Geary’s term of office.  When he had disbanded the three thousand “Law and Order” militia that were to attack Lawrence, that part of them known as the Kickapoo Rangers were returning home by way of Lecompton.  One of this number went into a field where “a poor, inoffensive, lame young man” named David C. Buffum was plowing, and demanded his horses.  Buffum protested against this robbery, but the wretch shot Buffum and took the horses.  The unhappy man gave the following account of the matter: 

“They asked me for my horses.  I told them I was a cripple—­a poor lame man—­that I had an aged father, a deaf and dumb brother, and two sisters, all depending on me for a living, and my horses were all I had.  One of them said I was a Abolitionist, and, taking me by the shoulder, he shot me.”

Gov.  Geary was returning to Lecompton, and hearing of what had been done, he called with Judge Cato at Buffum’s house, and by the Governor’s direction Judge Cato took the dying man’s deposition.  Gov.  Geary was terribly shocked, and said to himself, “I never witnessed a scene that filled me with so much horror.”  Mr. Geary sent a detective on the track of the Kickapoo Rangers, and found that the murderer was one Charley Hayes, living in Atchison county.  He had the horses still in his possession.  The Governor ordered his arrest, and the Grand Jury found a bill against him of murder in the first degree.  Meantime the Free State men came to the Governor making a bitter complaint of the persecutions they were suffering.  They said, “Our relatives and friends are arrested and confined for weeks and months in a filthy prison, not fit for dogs to live in, and are kept without proper food or clothing, and are not allowed to give bail even for bailable offenses; while murderers of the other party are allowed to go at large and no attention is paid to them.”  They said, “The murderers of Dow, Barber, Brown, Phillips, Hoppe and Buffum, have not even been arrested or examined.”