What are the facts? For years the stockmen had dominated the north--its hills, valleys and plains were overrun with their lowing herds. As time wore on the hardy pioneer came to dispute with them the occupancy of the rich lands and to build homes where before was seen only the dashing cowboy and the long-horned steer. This was an innovation not to be tolerated. A few cattle were stolen--as is the case in all communities--but no act of violence was committed. Exasperated at the situation and realizing that no serious charges could be successfully preferred against the settlers--the series of cold-blooded murders heretofore mentioned in these pages was perpetrated at the hands of the cattle barons. Still no overt act was done by the settlers. Then the raid was undertaken for the purpose of terrorizing the country. This failed of its purpose, though 48 men crimsoned their hands with the blood of their fellow citizens. Still no blood stains were upon the hands of the settler. They rose up in their honor and their might to defend their homes and their lives against the swoop of the assassins, but they committed no crime. Baffled at every turn, what more natural to a band of men who had done murder, arson and body burning, than to order the death of one of their trusted aiders if, by so doing, they believed that they could fasten the crime of assassination upon the innocent settler and use the circumstance as a lever to force the declaration of martial law in the country they were trying to conquer? With Wellman dead, and the crime of his murder laid upon the settler, it was believed that the governor could be induced to place Northern Wyoming virtually in the control of the then defeated cattlemen, through the agency of the marshals who would supersede the civil authorities in the event of martial law being proclaimed. With martial law in force in Johnson, Converse, Natrona and Weston counties, as was contemplated by the above recorded petitioners, the defeat at TA ranch would be turned into a great victory. To accomplish this by the loss of one of their friends would be, from their standpoint, gaining much for a little. They would not stop to consider the matter in the light of the infamy that should attach to an act of such base treachery, for would it not save many of their own lives by accomplishing what it would require another raid into the county to as successfully do? And with the aroused feeling everywhere prevalent was it not almost a certainty that some one of the faithful would be called upon to pay the final debt of nature? The chain of circumstances is very damaging to the professed innocence of the cattlemen’s ring.