Some one rushed over to the railroad office and informed Boswell of what was transpiring. Hurrying back to the hotel he concluded to go in the back way to avoid interference. Then another feature of the plot was revealed. A carriage stood backed up against the rear fence and a mob of forty friends of Kelly’s were demanding admission to the hotel, while the proprietor of the house, a courageous old man named Ramsey, stood at the head of the stairs, up which they sought to go, brandishing an old saber and defying them. Boswell’s appearance was sufficient to disperse the crowd, as his character had already become known to Kelly and his friends. Kelly was after this episode placed in jail.
Boswell feared still another effort at rescue, and took precautions to frustrate it. He employed a railroad man named Thomas McCarthy to join the mob and keep him informed of their movements. Through this means he discovered that a plot had been set on foot to wreck the train six miles out. Obstructions were placed on the track at a point where the train would have been thrown from the track before it could have been stopped. But Mr. Mead, then superintendent of the Union Pacific, sent out a flat car carrying forty armed men, who removed the obstructions and allowed the passenger train carrying Boswell and his man to pass without further molestation.
The seven or eight hundred miles across the plains to Laramie City were traversed without incident, and the desperado was lodged at last in jail—another feather in Mr. Boswell’s cap and that of the Rocky Mountain detective force.
Let it be said to the shame of the courts that after all this effort to capture Kelly, and after his terrible crime had become known throughout the West, he was allowed to go scot free, after remaining in jail a few months. He succeeded in buying off the witnesses against him and at last got off, though at a cost of not less than $37,000.
Of course, such a man would be expected to die with his boots on, and he did, having been shot dead some years ago in Texas while in a row there.
DEALING WITH STRIKERS.
CHAPTER LI.
GEN. COOK DEALS OUT JUSTICE TO BOTH THE STRIKERS AND THEIR EMPLOYERS—PREVENTS BLOODSHED AND DESTRUCTION AT LEADVILLE BY HIS UNPREJUDICED COURSE IN HANDLING THE STRIKE—STRIKERS CALL ON HIM TO SETTLE THE STRIKE—HE DOES IT IN SHORT ORDER.