"What do you mean, Sam?" I asked.
"Well," he said, "they killed all of the Benders just below the mouth of Onion creek, in Montgomery county, Kansas, close to the Indian Territory line."
I said, "Well, that is a new one. What will we hear next?"
"Now, John, I'll tell you that after the Independence crowd had gone over to the Bender country, dragged the creeks, and searched the country over for Dr. York's body, and when they started back after their fruitless search, that Senator York asked Kate Bender, the pretended clairvoyant, to go into a trance and tell him where his brother was. She told him there were too many men present at the time, but if he would come back the next Friday night and bring but one man along she would go into a trance and reveal to him where his brother was." Carr continued by saying that a member of the party had told him that while Kate and the Senator were talking he had occasion to go to the Bender stable; and while he was there he saw John and the old man Bender at the pig-pen and they were engaged in an animated talk, in a low tone of voice, which talk was in German; that the old man acted in an excited manner; and that he then suspected that the Benders believed or thought that they were under suspicion. "Now," said Carr, "that was only conjecture by the man that told me; but, two days later, when this man saw Kate, John, the old woman and the old man in that same wagon, drawn by that same team, that was found tied to the blackjack tree at Thayer; met them in the early morning eighteen miles from where they committed their murders, and west of the Verdigris river, going southwest with trunks and rolls of bedding in the wagon, his suspicions were thoroughly aroused, and he put in a good portion of the day gathering a party to follow and overtake them, to bring them back for a full investigation; that fifteen men did follow and overtook them about nine o'clock at night; that they were all more or less intoxicated; that they, the Benders, were encamped by the side of a large sycamore log on the bank of the Verdigris river; that when the party told them they had come to take them back, John Bender started on a run for a brush thicket close by, when they shot him. Kate grabbed up a butcher-knife, and, screaming like a maniac, started to slashing at them, and did give one man quite a bad gash in the hand. And they had to shoot her to save themselves. Then they made a clean job of it and killed the old man and the old woman, after which they sunk all the dead bodies in the Verdigris river; then they each drank considerable liquor; swore themselves to secrecy; searched the contents of the wagon; found $800 in money in the wagon; $130 was in the old man's pocket, and there was $30 in John's pockets. These men divided the money equally between themselves. They burned up most of the things in the wagon; then entered into a contract with one of their party to take the team back to Thayer and leave it where it was found. As it was not their intention at first to kill the Benders, they each and all entered into a solemn compact not to divulge the secret. And each having his share of the money, even after the graves in the Bender garden gave up their dead, they thought best to remain silent still."
I asked him, "When did you hear all this?"
He replied: "Two years ago, up in the Panhandle. The man who told me was drinking at the time. And as the old saying goes, little children and drunken men sometimes tell the truth."
The next morning he came to me and asked me not to say anything about it. I promised him if I did I would not mention his name. I asked him: "Did you know anything of the man who told you that story?"
"Yes; his word to me is as good as any man's on the range; if he had been a man whose word I doubted I would tell you who it was."
The above is the story of what became of the Benders, as told to me that night.