Crestlands: A Centennial Story of Cane RidgeBayne, Mary Addams
History
Crestlands: A Centennial Story of Cane Ridge
Bayne, Mary Addams
Kentucky -- History -- 19th century -- Fiction
That was the last time that James Anson Drane was seen in Kentucky.
When the day set for Burr's trial in Frankfort arrived, Drane was
sought in vain. Later, when Burr, Blennerhassett, and other
conspirators, were arraigned at Natchez, and still later at Richmond,
Drane was again in demand, but he had completely disappeared; and his
exact connection with that famous episode of American history, the
Aaron Burr conspiracy, was never known. About twelve years later, a man
said to be very like him was reported as an influential and wealthy
lawyer of St. Louis.
Upon the same Thursday that Drane received at Oaklands the anonymous
warning, Abner Logan, while at work in a field near the road, received
from a passing packman a note which, the bearer said, had been given
him for Logan, by a man whose name the peddler had forgotten, but who,
as the peddler said, "lived down that way," pointing vaguely down the
road. The messenger was not Simon Smith, the packman who periodically
visited the neighborhood to sell his wares to the housewives
thereabout, but a stranger. The note which he gave Logan was worded
exactly as the one Drane had received an hour earlier at Oaklands.
Abner's first feeling upon reading this missive was bewilderment as to
the identity of the friend who had sent it; his second, indignation
that any one should think him in any way implicated in the Burr affair.
"'A sincere and disinterested friend,' indeed," he thought; "it's some
ruse to get me into this queer business."
Before receiving the anonymous communication, Logan, being desirous of
hearing Clay and Daviess speak, had partly promised Mason Rogers, who
felt a lively interest in the trial, to go with him to Frankfort. Logan
now fully determined to let nothing prevent his going; and, fearing to
alarm his wife, he resolved to say nothing of the warning he had
received.
Upon the following Tuesday evening Graham, the detective, came to
Oaklands, and spent the night there. He was able to supply to Gilcrest
at least one missing link of evidence--the fellow to the torn piece of
letter to Charles M. Brady. This, with one or two other documents of a
more or less compromising nature, Drane had overlooked in his haste to
get out of the vicinity of Frankfort; and Graham, when he searched the
apartment a few hours after Drane's escape, had found the papers in the
escritoire.
Early Wednesday morning Logan, in company of Mason Rogers, Samuel
Trabue and William Hinkson, set out on horseback for the State capital.
On the way they were overtaken by the Gilcrest coach-and-four driven by
Uncle Zeke. In the coach sat Hiram Gilcrest, a strange gentleman from
Louisville, and the pretended land agent, Graham. As the vehicle passed
the four equestrians, Gilcrest gave a distant salutation to Trabue and
Hinkson, who were riding on the left, but did not turn his head to the
right where rode his son-in-law and his former bosom friend, Mason
Rogers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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