In this festering crime-stained town, where hired assassination brewed under contract by day, and was returnable at night with its toll of blood, a murder was not a sensational episode, but a real murder trial was. Here the chief conspirators, who had made the Judge and the Prosecutor and the Sheriff, had the law by the throat; and they dumped the offal of their deeds into subservient arms of the law, and burdened and shackled it with collusions it dare not drop. Wherefore, the law winked and connived with these murder lords in brazen malfeasance inflicted upon the commonwealth, and trials assumed all the aspects of a hurried laugh-provoking comedy, despite the grim fact that its elements involved human life. The swearing out of warrants had long since fallen obsolete. In times past, charges had been made and warrants issued, but when the day of trial arrived, there were no witnesses at hand, and the prosecuting witness was usually the farthest distant. Thus, it transpired that the trial which opened the circuit court at Junction City on this May day was to the denizens a memorable one. Although the trial itself, which was never finished, was not a factor in what followed, still, this trial was remembered as having opened a day that ended with a scrambled, tragic event which ground the McGill-Eversole combination to a pulp, and marked an era of new political and social ethics in Junction City. Three months since a young German named Daum, and hailing from below, made his optimistic appearance in the town. After alighting upon a four-room shack that seemingly suited his wife, he cast about to locate the landlord. As there was only one landlord in Junction City, Daum found his way into old Hank Eversole's store. Daum was even more than loquacious--he was effervescent, and in no time old Hank had pumped him dry. Daum claimed that he would receive ten thousand dollars from Germany six months hence,--that he wished to fish and hunt and live as cheaply as possible until his money arrived. Old Eversole finally decided that the newcomer was simply a harmless, dumb Dutchman, and before Daum left the store, old Hank had given him a receipt for six months' rent paid in advance. The German paid cash for his groceries at Eversole's store, and hunted and fished to his heart's content, while his young, round-faced wife made baby clothes on the porch. Withal, Daum was not an undesirable citizen until the end of the first month, when apparently tiring of fishing and looking at the hills and in response to his native thrift, he took to himself a quick notion to make some money. A week after this economic inspiration the energetic German had converted the front room of his shack into a general store.