You will wonder how I came to be invited.  Well, it was this way.  I called on Judge Stone at the new court-house, the building of which created such a scandal.  He was county treasurer.  He had been elected the fall before.  I wanted to see him about a cattle deal.  He was talking with Henderson L. Burns when I went in.

“I don’t see how I can go,” said he.  “I’ve got to watch the county’s money.  If there was a safe in this county-seat any stronger than a cheese box, I’d lock it up and go; but I guess my bondsmen are sitting up nights worrying about their responsibility now.  I’ll have to decline, I reckon.”

“Oh, darn the money!” said Henderson L.  “You can’t be expected to set up with it like it had typhoid fever, can you?  Take it with you, and put it in Wade’s big safe.”

“I might do that,” said Judge Stone, “if I had a body-guard.”

“I’d make a good guard,” said Henderson L.  “Let me take care of it.”

“I’d have to win it back in a euchre game if I ever saw it again,” said the judge.  “I hate to miss that party.  There’ll be some medicine made there.  I might go with a body-guard, eh?”

“So if the Bunker gang gets after you,” suggested H. L., “there’d be somebody paid to take the load of buckshot.  Well, here’s Jake.  He’s our local desperado.  Ask Dick McGill, eh, Jake?  He dared the shotgun the night they run that claim-jumper off.  I know a feller that was there, and seen it—­when he wa’n’t seared blind.  Take Jake.”

2

The Bunker gang was a group of bandits that had their headquarters in the timber along the Iowa River near Eldora.  They were afterward caught—­some of them—­and treated very badly by the officers who started to Iowa City with them.  The officers, making quite a little posse, stopped at a tavern down in Tama County, I think it was at Fifteen Mile Grove, and took a drink or two too much.  They had Old Man Bunker and one of the boys in the wagon tied or handcuffed, I never knew which; and while the posse was in the tavern getting their drinks the boy worked himself loose, and lay there under the buffalo robe when the men came back to take them on their journey to jail.

When they had got well started again, it was decided by the sheriff or deputy in charge that they would make Old Man Bunker tell who the other members were of their gang.  So they took him out of the wagon and hung him to a tree to make him confess.  When they let him down he stuck it out and refused.  They strung him up again, and just as they got him hauled up they noticed that the boy—­he wasn’t over my age—­was running away.  They ran after the boy and, numbed as he was lying in the wagon in the winter’s cold, he could not run fast, and they caught him.  Then they remembered that they had left Old Man Bunker hanging when they chased off after the boy; and when they cut him down he was dead.

They were scared, drunk as they were, and after holding a council of war, they decided that they would make a clean sweep and hang the boy too—­I forgot this boy’s name.  This they did, and came back telling the story that the prisoners had escaped, or been shot while escaping.  I do not recall which.  It was kind of pitiful; but nothing was ever done about it, though the story leaked out—­being too horrible to stay a secret.