"Wood left the two ladies sitting in the buggy, near the door, and stepped up to the clerk's desk to look over some papers. As he went in, he passed, leaning against the door, one Jim Brennan, a deputy of Hugoton, who did not seem to notice him. Brennan was a friend of C. E. Cook, then under conviction for the Hay Meadows massacre. Brennan stood talking to Mrs. Wood and Mrs. Carpenter, smiling and apparently pleasant. Colonel Wood turned and came down towards the door, again passing close to Brennan but not speaking to him. He was almost upon the point of climbing to his seat in the buggy, when Brennan, without a word and without any sort of warning, drew a revolver and shot him in the back. Wood wheeled around, and Brennan shot him the second time, through the right side. Not a word had been spoken by any one. Wood now started to run around the corner of the house. His wife, realizing now what was happening, sprang from the buggy-seat and followed to protect him. Brennan fired a third time, but missed. Mrs. Wood, reaching her husband's side, threw her arms around his neck. Brennan coming close up, fired a fourth shot, this time through Wood's head. The murdered man fell heavily, literally in his wife's arms, and for the moment it was thought both were killed. Brennan drew a second revolver, and so stood over Wood's corpse, refusing to surrender to any one but the sheriff of Morton county. "The presiding judge at this trial was Theodosius Botkin, a figure of peculiar eminence in Kansas at that time. Botkin gave Brennan into the custody of the sheriff of Morton county. He was removed from the county, and it need hardly be stated that when he was at last brought back for trial it was found impossible to empanel a jury, and he was set free. No one was ever punished for this cold-blooded murder. "Colonel S. N. Wood was an Ohio man, but moved to Kansas in the early Free Soil days. He was a friend and champion of old John Brown and a colonel of volunteers in the civil war. He had served in the legislature of Kansas, and was a good type of the early and adventurous pioneer.