Then started the arrests. It was declared that the fatal shot came from
the window of the office of the pale, dark young secretary of state,
and that young mountaineer was taken--with a pardon from the governor
in his pocket; his brother, a captain of the State guard, the
ex-secretary of state, also a mountain man, and still another
mountaineer were indicted as accessories before the fact and those
indictments charged complicity to the Pennyroyal governor himself. And
three other men who were found in the executive building were indicted
for murder along with Steve and Jason Hawn. Indeed, the Democrats were
busy unearthing, as they claimed, a gigantic Republican conspiracy. No
less than one hundred thousand dollars was offered as a reward for the
conviction of the murderers, and the Republican cry was that with such
a sum it was possible to convict even the innocent. In turn, Liberty
Leagues were even formed throughout the State to protect the innocent,
and lives and property were pledged to that end, but the ex-secretary
of state fled for refuge across the Ohio, and the governor over there
refused to give him up.
The Democrats held forth at the Capitol Hotel--the Republicans at the
executive building. The governor sent arms from the State arsenal to
his mountain capital. Two speakers were always on hand in the Senate,
and war talk once again became rife. There was a heavy guard of
soldiers at every point in the Capitol Square, there were sentries at
the governor's mansion, and the rumor was that the militia would try to
arrest the lieutenant-governor who now was successor to the autocrat.
So, to guard him, special police were sworn in--police around the
hotel, police in the lobby, police patrolling the streets day and
night; a system of signals was formed to report suspicious movements of
troops, and more men were stationed at convenient windows and in dark
alleyways, armed with pistols, but with rifles and shot-guns close at
hand, while the police station was full of arms and ammunition. To the
courts it was at last agreed that the whole matter should go, and there
was panting peace for a while.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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