There is but one explanation--the statements in the petition to Acting Governor Barber had been presented to him as the truth, and he had been deceived by senatorial representatives into believing them. It was the influence of the old Cheyenne cattlemen’s ring permeating official ranks from the policeman on his beat up through all the gradations to the White House at Washington. It is said that our senators denied any knowledge of this proclamation until it appeared. This may be true, but the public is slow to accept it as a truth. How did the president gain the information upon which to base his statements? Certainly, he would not accept such grave charges as true without an investigation. Should he investigate, where would he begin? Manifestly with the senators from the state implicated. Were the statements filed by the governor, no sane man, sitting in the presidential chair, would act on them without consultation, when there were two senators to whom he could apply for confirmation or denial of the charges. There is no escape from a division of the responsibility of the president’s defamatory proclamation between the acting governor and the two senators representing Wyoming at that time, and the public will so hold. CHAPTER XII. ATTEMPTS TO MUZZLE THE PRESS A few weeks after the arrival of the invaders at Fort Russell it was determined by them and their friends to regulate, or muzzle the press of the state. It had been claimed that all of “the best citizens” approved the raid with its red-handed murders. There were some newspapers, however, that dissented from this view, and that did not hesitate to call murder and arson by their proper names. To be held up to public gaze as guilty of cold-blooded murder did not suit the sensitive natures of the men who had merely killed two of their fellow citizens in one day and burned the body of one of them while they sat around the camp fire meal and joked about the incense that rose from the burning pile. This sort of talk must be stopped.