The Governor replied that he had already ordered the arrest of Hayes, and that a grand jury of Pro-slavery men had found a true bill against him, and that Hayes should be tried for his life.  But while he was yet speaking a messenger brought word that Judge Lecompte had released Hayes on bail, and that Sheriff Jones had gone on his bail bond, a man notoriously not worth a dollar; and this when the crime of murder in the first degree, for which Hayes had been indicted, was not a bailable offense.  The Governor was terribly indignant, and ordered Hayes to be re-arrested.  But while he was absent at the land sales at Fort Leavenworth, Judge Lecompte a second time set this wretch at liberty.  Mr. Geary was provoked beyond endurance, and wrote to the President that he would not remain in office and allow such a scoundrel to be kept in a position to pervert the ways of justice.  President Pierce nominated C. O. Harrison, of Kentucky, to take Lecompte’s place, but for some unexplained cause the appointment was not confirmed in the Senate, and Judge Lecompte retained his place, and in unspeakable disgust Gov.  Geary resigned, making his resignation take effect on March 20, 1857.  Thus he had spent a winter in the chamber of death of the wicked old Blue Beard, but did not lose his official head till spring.

The writer was acquainted with the family of this Charley Hayes.  They were decent sort of people; but when a young boy Charley went on the plains, where he became a brutal ruffian.  A good many years ago there was a story current in Atchison county, that when this Hayes was acting as wagon-boss on the plains, in a train owned by Russell, Majors & Waddell, that one of the teamsters having offended him he tied him up to a wheel of one of the train wagons, and, holding a pistol in one hand, he cowhided him with his black-snake whip with the other.  And this teamster was a white man.

But there are avenging furies that follow a man, even though the law does not reach him.  There is a man now living in Atchison county whose truthfulness has never been questioned, and he stated that he spent a winter in the Missouri River bottoms, sleeping in the same cabin with Charley Hayes, and that it seemed as if the devil had a mortgage on the ruffian’s soul, and tormented him in his sleep with images of the horrors that awaited him in the future world.  That it seemed as if he was wrestling in mortal struggle with the men he had maltreated and murdered, and that they were choking him to death.  Hayes afterwards died of a consumption presumably brought on by his dissipated habits and by his debaucheries.