After one of Wickersham’s calls, Field determined that the sobriety and severe morality of Denver were being scandalized by these periodical visitations, and he issued orders to the Tribune staff that when next the “good fellow and thoroughbred” appeared on the scene he should be given a wide berth, or, as Field put it, should be left to “play a lone hand in his game.”  So when Wickersham next swung around the legislative circle to Denver, not a man about the editorial rooms would go out with him, listen to his stories, accept a cigar at his hands, or associate with him in any of the ways that had been their cheerful wont.  The coldness and loneliness of the situation excited Wickersham’s thirst for revenge and also for what is known as the wine of Kentucky.  Having succeeded in getting up a full head of steam, he started out for an explanation or a counter demonstration.  Arriving at the Tribune office, when the desks were vacated at the evening dinner-hour, he interpreted it as a further affront and challenge, which he proceeded to answer by destroying every last scrap of copy in sight for the morrow’s paper.  He then converted himself into a small cyclone, and went through every desk, strewed their litter on the floor, broke all the pens and pencils, and, in the language of an eye-witness, “ended by toning the picture of editorial desolation with the violet contents of all the ink bottles he could find.”

Then he retired in hilarious satisfaction from the scene of devastation he had made.  Consternation reigned in that office until Field returned, when he quickly dispelled the gloom with a promise of revenge, and set the staff at work to patch up the ruin the envious Wickersham had made.  But they were not permitted to do this in peace, for their enemy, returning in the dark of night, bombarded the windows of the editorial rooms with the staves of old ash-barrels he had found conveniently by.

While Wickersham was engaged in this second assault, with windows smashing to right of them and to left of them, with glass falling all around them, and the staves of old ash-barrels playing a devil’s tattoo about them, the devoted band of editors, reporters, and copy-readers worked nobly on.  They had confidence in their leader that their hour would come.  Their first duty was to get out the paper.  After that they looked for the deluge.

When Wickersham had expended his last stave and fiercest epithet on the shattered windows he retired in bad order to his apartments at the St. James Hotel.

Now began Field’s revenge, planned with due deliberation and executed with malicious thoroughness.  He first sent for “’Possum Jim,” an aged and very serious colored man, who worshipped “Mistah Fiel’” because of the sympathy Eugene never withheld from the dark-skinned children of the race. “’Possum Jim” spent most of his existence on the same street corner, waiting for a job, which invariably had to come to him.  His outfit consisted of an express wagon strung together with telegraph wire, and a nondescript four-footed creature that once bore the similitude of a horse.  Whenever Field had an odd job to be done about his household he would go out of his way to let “old ’Possum Jim” earn the quarter—­partly to do an act of kindness to “Jim,” but chiefly to tease Mrs. Field by the appearance of the broken-down equipage lingering in front of their dwelling.