Mr. Speck assured him that Mrs. S. was now
willing he should have it, and _would not shoot him if he took it_.
These gentlemen had been making money out of pocket. They had been
frightened out of their wits by a spunky woman; and forty armed men,
with a loaded cannon, had been stampeded and made to run pell-mell
into Atchison by a herd of cattle and two or three men on horseback,
riding at full gallop after an old cow.
These men had undertaken to do a wicked thing, and had been made
ridiculous in doing so; and this contributed largely to that
revolution in the public opinion of the county, which had been going
on for eighteen months, and which at the last compelled a radical
change in the policy of these "Border Ruffian" leaders. But this
again gave the chiefs of this conspiracy abundant experience that it
pays to do right, and that a good Providence had brought them
prosperity and honor by defeating their original counsels and turning
them into foolishness.
But first we must tell of the carnival of riot, ruin, and robbing that
had been going on in other parts of the Territory.
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