"Whether or not suspicion attached to Judge Botkin for his conduct in this matter, he himself seems to have feared revenge, for he held court with a Winchester at his hand and a brace of revolvers on the desk in front of him, his court-house always surrounded with an armed guard. He offended men in Seward county, and there was a plot made to kill him. A party lay in wait along the road to intercept Botkin on his journey from his homestead--every one in Kansas at that time had a 'claim'--but Botkin was warned by some friend. He sent out Sam Dunn, sheriff of Seward county, to discover the truth of the rumor. Dunn went on down the trail and, in a rough part of the country, was fired upon and killed, instead of Botkin. Arrests were made in this matter also, but the sham trials resulted much as had that of Brennan. The records of these trials may be seen in Seward county. It was murder for murder, anarchy for anarchy, evasion for evasion, in this portion of the frontier. Judge Botkin soon after this resigned his seat upon the bench and went to lecturing upon the virtues of the Keeley cure. Afterwards he went to the legislature--the same legislature which had once tried him on charges of impeachment as a judge! "These events all became known in time, and lawlessness proved its own inability to endure. The towns were abandoned. Where in 1889 there were perhaps 4,000 people, there remained not 100. The best of the farms were abandoned or sold for taxes, the late inhabitants of the two warring settlements wandering out over the world. The legislature, hoodwinked or cajoled heretofore, at length disorganized the county, and anarchy gave back its own to the wilderness.