When the wires gave to the world the appalling climax of that savagely acrimonious campaign, a breathlessness of shock settled upon the State where passion had run its inflammatory course. The reiteration of Cassandra's prediction had failed to discount the staggering reality, and for a brief moment animosities were silenced.
But that was not for long. Yesterday the lieutenants of an iron-strong leader had bowed to his dominant will. Today they stood dedicated to reprisal behind a martyr—exalted by his mortal hurt.
It appeared certain that the rifle had barked from a window of the executive building itself—and when police and posses hastily summoned had hurried to its doors, a grimly unyielding cordon of mountaineers had spelled, in human type, the words "no admission."
The Secretary of State, who was a mountain man, was among the first to fall under accusation, and had the city's police officers been able to seize the Governor, he too would doubtless have been thrown into a cell. But the Governor still held the disputed credentials of office, and he sat at his desk, haggard of feature, yet at bay and momentarily secure behind a circle of bayonets.
Just wrath would not, and could not, long remain only righteous indignation. Out of its inflammation would spring a hundred injustices, and so in opposition to the mounting clamour for extreme penalties arose thundering the counter-voice of protest against a swift and ruthless sacrifice of conspicuous scapegoats.
To the aid of those first caught in the drag-net of vengeful accusation, came a handful of volunteer defence attorneys, and among them was Colonel Wallifarro.
The leader with the bullet-pierced breast was dying, and in the legislature the contest must be settled, if at all, while there was yet strength enough in his ebbing life currents to take the oath of office.
His last fight was in keeping with his life—the persistence of sheer resolution that held death in abeyance and refused surrender.
But when the Democratic majority of the assembly gathered at their chambers, they encountered muskets; when, casting dignity to the snowy winds, they raced toward an opera house, the soldiers raced with them, and arrived first. When they doubled like pursued hares toward the Odd Fellows' Hall, they found its door likewise barred by blade and muzzle.
Among the first men thrown into jail were Saul Fulton and his friend Hollins of Clay County. Their connection with the arrival of the mountaineers was not difficult to establish—and for the officers charged with ferreting out the ugly responsibility, it made a plausible beginning.