In the month of May, 1886, the writer was one of a party of buffalo-hunters bound for the Neutral Strip and the Panhandle of Texas, where a small number of buffalo still remained at that time. We traveled across the entire southwestern part of Kansas, below the Santa Fe railroad, at a time when the great land boom of 1886 and 1887 was at its height. Town-site schemes in western Kansas were at that time innumerable, and a steady stream of immigration was pouring westward by rail and wagon into the high and dry plains of the country, where at that time farming remained a doubtful experiment. In the course of our travels, we saw one morning, rising before us in the mirage of the plains, what seemed to be a series of crenelated turrets, castles peaked and bastioned. We knew this was but the mirage, and knew that it must have some physical cause. But what was a town doing in that part of the world? We drove on and in a few hours found the town--a little, raw boom town of unpainted boards and tents, which had sprung up almost overnight in that far-off region. The population was that of the typical frontier town, and the pronounced belief of all was that this settlement was to be the commercial metropolis of the Southwest. This little town was later known as Woodsdale, Kansas. It offered then no hint of the bloody scenes in which it was soon to figure; but within a few weeks it was so deeply embroiled in war with the rival town of Hugoton as to make history notable even on that turbulent frontier. Mr. Herbert M. Tonney, now a prosperous citizen of Flora, Illinois, was a resident of that portion of the country in the stirring days of the land boom, and became involved to an extent beyond his own seeking in this county seat fight. While serving as an officer of the peace, he was shot and left for dead. No story can serve so well as his personal narrative to convey a clear idea of the causes, methods and results of a typical county seat war in the West. His recountal follows: "I do not need to swear to the truthfulness of my story, for I have already done so in many courts and under the cross-examination of some of the ablest lawyers in the country. I have repeated the story on the stand in a criminal case which cost the United States government more money than it has ever expended in any similar trial, unless perhaps that having to do with the assassination of President Lincoln. I can say that I know what it is to be murdered.