USA > Kansas > Sedgwick County > History of Wichita and Sedgwick County, Kansas, past and present, including an account of the cities, towns and villages of the county, Vol. I > Part 15
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During this examination an assertion was made that Judge Balderston was a dangerous, bold, bad man, too vitriolic to run at large in a community, with so many sky-aspiring church spires and other inspiring, Christianizing "inflooences." George met the thrust thusly :
"Does your honor, on naked assertion, without proof-mere declamation, without argument-believe these charges? I have heard your honor called 'a stinker' an hundred times-aye, a thousand times. Men have openly and boldly charged your honor with being as corrupt as hell is hot, as base as angels are pure ; in fact, as your honor knows, there is no epithet in language indi- cating human depravity, no term painting reproach, no lingual picture of vileness, that has not, at some time or other, been applied to your honor, and the sentiment has been cheered to the echo-and only your honor knows whether it is true or false. And yet, if these mere statements are to gain credence in our minds, we are bound to believe that your honor is the vilest of the vile; but I confidently assert that statements cannot change Judge Balderston's character, nor your honor's."
'Twas in this case that George grew restive under continued interruptions, during four hours of unwearied lung devotion to his client, and, turning on the opposing counsel, exclaimed : "Great God! If in my beginning you wiggle, squirm and squeal, what will you do at my close tomorrow ?"
George's defense of a "nigger" charged with chicken steal- ing, based on the "custom and usage" of niggers to thus own chickens, and on their prescriptive right to so obtain them, backed up by the constitutional provision guaranteeing life, lib- erty and the pursuit of happiness, was a great constitutional argument, but though rewarded with a verdict of "not guilty," it is hardly worthy of mention in connection with his greatest forensic effort in the case nominally presented by the "State of Kansas," but which was in reality W. C. Woodman versus J. M. Balderston.
THE FIRST DUEL IN WICHITA.
Soon after George Salisbury had made his legal "debut," and was engaged in his first case, against Judge S. M. Tucker, who for the first time in his life heard the florid style lately imported from Lynchburg, Va., and was astonished thereat. In
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reply he used the "mountain howitzer jackass yarn" for an illus- tration. George acted the part of the "jackass" in Tucker's pan- tomime, to his great disgust and to the amusement of the crowd. George was as full of rage as a sodapop bottle is of fizz, and he went down upon the street and foamed like a dog with the rabies. His wrath grew with age, and on the morrow it filled his soul to overflowing, and sprang full-orbed into a consuming fire-even unto a "rage whose heat hath this condition, that nothing could allay it but blood !"-warm, hot, human blood ..
George sought out some of his new acquaintances, and to them he "did a tale unfold" of the insult heaped upon him, and stated that if he was in Virginia he could solve the difficulty and wipe out the insult under a "code of honor" that yet obtained among the remnants of knighted chivalry in that civilized and enlightened country, formerly called "the mother of presidents." The boys said: "Challenge 'Tuck' to fight a duel, eh?" George said, "Yes." Here was a chance for fun, too rare to be neg- lected. George was at once informed that, notwithstanding the crude civilization of Kansas and the lack of refinement, there were some old and highly honored customs which, by mere acci- dent, had crossed the Missouri river and found lodgment in the hearts of many, and among them was the "code of honor," dear to the hot blood of the South, longed for by George, and revered by the early settlers of the Osage Indian diminished reserve land, in which Wichita was situate.
The advice was given that dueling was the only way in which a man who had the discernment to know when he was insulted, spirit enough to resent it, and courage sufficient to demand satis- faction, could avenge himself on an aggressor, and that he should at once personally see Tucker and demand an apology or satisfac- tion under the "code of honor." The information was furnished that Tucker was a bombastic Orlanda Furioso, a veritable Fal- staff, and that on being confronted with a master would fawn as a whipped spaniel and cower in a corner like a well drubbed slave.
George, conscious of his insult, clothed in the armor of right, and full well knowing the craven he would humiliate in the dust ere another moon shone o'er the town, sought Tucker in his office, and thus the bloody dialogue ran :
George-Judge Tucker, you insulted me on yester e'en, and
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I my bed have not sought nor wooed slumber to mine eyelids. I have come, sir, to demand an apology.
Tucker-And if I do not, sweet sir, apologize, what then ?
George-I then demand of your knightly hand that satisfac- tion and reparation which are due from one gentleman to another.
Tucker-Do I understand that you challenge me to fight a duel ?
George-Aye! to mortal combat!
From proud Virginia's moss-grown tombs,
O'er which said tombs indigenous creepers have for centuries bloomed,
My ancestors' bones, in chivalric rage,
Doth right briskly rattle, pressing me to engage You to mortal combat! Deny me not !
Said ancestral bones aforesaid demand That you apologize, or die by my hand ;
Ample time shall unto you be given
To prepare to meet your God in heaven ; The said bones urge that I by chastisement
Prove my birthright ere the day be spent ;
I "wired" said bones that, ere another sun be risen,
Mine foe should quaff my blood, or I'd drink his'n. Lay on, McDuff, etc.
Tucker-By your code of honor, I have the choice of weapons, do I not ?
George-Yes, sir; our seconds will fix the time and place.
Tucker-I will select cowhide boots, do away with seconds, and commence right now and kick you downstairs.
Whereupon Tucker arose and started for George, who fled down stairs amidst cheers and jeers, and thus the "code of honor" was derided and trampled under foot by one whose finer senses had been blunted by residence in the North, and who made mockery out of things revered and sacred in the eyes of ALL gen- tlemen. This was the only duel ever fought in Wichita.
Hearing, from obscure, as well as conspicuous, sources, that these reminiscences were historically incorrect, were overdrawn, contained personalities not in "good form" (see, however, Ward Mc Allister's book, volume I, page 9, footnote 3, left-hand column,
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bottom of page, for justification), that this was simply rinsings of swinish ablutions, I deem it a pleasurable duty to explain my position, not censoriously, but with humility, but reference to a gray-haired mythological legend, which runs in my mind about as follows, to-wit :
JUPITER VS. THE BULL.
Once upon a time, while Jupiter was resting, and his daughter Minerva was practicing on some stringed instrument, the front door bell was pulled violently, and presently a card was brought in by Mars (Mars, by the way, was the putative son of his uncle and aunt), who said that one of the neighboring bulls was await- ing an audience on some matter of mighty and deep import; whereupon Jupiter ordered him admitted, and the Balaam's ass, bovine quadruped, stated, as a grievance, that one of the archi- tects had builded a house contrary to the Romanesque style-in fact, was using the Doric. On hearing this, Jupiter, who was leaning carelessly against one of the columns supporting the temple, spat on the antique floor and, deftly wiping it up with his left sandal, remarked, in that oratund accent noticeable in the plays of "Cæsar," "Virginius" and "Coriolanus": "Thou quadruped, when thou hast builded in any style of architecture, then thou mayest criticize the builder who, having worn out his own ideas, resorts to ancient Greece. Get thee hence! Be- take thee at once to thy cow harem, or, by Helios, I'll hamstring thee !""
CHAPTER IV.
THE ARREST, TRIAL AND ESCAPE OF JESSE JAMES.
Practical jokes, keen, rough and ludicrous, are essentially on the frontier order of civilization. Frontier towns are boys; civ- ilized cities are men. The young lawyer has ever been the sub- ject of practical jokes, and the following yarn illustrates the degree to which a joke can be carried before the "jokee" is aware of it.
It will hardly be necessary to state that O. C. Daisy was one of the jokers, and that he performed his part perfectly. It is not intended to give the entire cast of characters that took part
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in the burlesque legal-tragi-comedy, but only the star and prin- cipal support.
A young lawyer from New York City, a graduate of Columbia Law School, fine presence, good address, arrived one day, pro- ceeded to make an inventory of the law shops of the town, and presented his card with his name. My recollection is, the card was as follows, but I may be in error :
. ALPHONSE DUTCHER, Tourist.
Alma Mater, Columbia Law School.
Matriculated March 18, 1878.
A. B., A. A. S., A. A. S. S.
Dutcher was a lawyer, and aware of it. It was not egotism, but simply that calm self-consciousness that buoyed Lincoln and Grant during the war, when others doubted-the serenity of an able lawyer who has a hard legal fight on hand, and yet feels his education has enabled him to triumph. The boys admired his self-assertiveness, yet pitied his ignorance. But the dog pities and plays with the rat ere he kills it. The chance for fun- rich, racy and rare-was too good to be forborne, and a scheme was incubated in the front room over Hyde & Humble's old store, where the Hub clothing store is. The principal charac- ters were O. C. Daisy (our own Daisy), J. Herbert Wright (a lawyer reminding one of Sam Howe, of Howe & Mastin), who subsequently married a Canuck fortune and is now a milk farmer; Robert Lundy, a young lawyer from Springfield, over in Missouri; Major Yank Owens, who was a Kansas reminiscence since 1854 to death; Frank Todd, the sheriff, now dead; Jimmie Mohen, a policeman, now deceased; and the selected populace who were to be witnesses and jury.
The plan was to have O. C. Daisy arrested as Jesse James, placed in jail, and have him send for Alphonse Dutcher on account of his legal attainments, and place his defense in his hands. Daisy was arrested and apparently incarcerated. J. Her- bert Wright was the commonwealth's counsel; Major Owens was the court; Lundy was a young lawyer who, being employed by "Jesse," was to hunt able counsel to assist him, and he employed Dutcher. The warrant alleged every crime in the decalogue, and ended with the grave charge that "Jesse James" was "Jesse
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James." Dutcher obtained the warrant and immediately de- manded a continuance, which was refused. The hearing was set for that night, and took place over the storeroom now occu- pied by Mueller, the florist, on North Main street. Jesse informed Dutcher that if he was acquitted he would pay $5,000; if con- victed, Dutcher should die; and a check for $5,000 was given Lundy to deliver on acquittal.
At the hour appointed, the room was filled, and some of the crowd was "full." Judge Owens was the ideal frontier court- dignified, yet brusque. The illustrious malefactor was brought in, heavily ironed and securely manacled, and was seated by his counsel, while a cordon of bailiffs surrounded him to prevent his escape. The scene was a most impressive and solemn bur- lesque. Dutcher felt the dignity, gravity and responsibility of his position. Entrusted with the liberty, perhaps the life, of the greatest criminal in the West, he nerved himself to make a fight which would free his client, and by his success-
Send Dutcher's name "Down the aisles of fame," Through cycles of time, In syllables sublime.
The court, being the natural enemy of disorder, license and crime, bore down with a heavy cast-iron hand on the counsel for the defense, abused Dutcher, called him the Columbian Duke, and fined him for contempt for referring to the constitution of Kansas, which the court knew by heart, or any other legal author- ity not printed in Kansas. Dutcher sarcastically referred to Jeffreys and Scruggs as the court's guide. The court imme- diately claimed relationship to one of them by blood and the other by marriage. Dutcher at last forgot the respect due to the court, and roasted him. Judge Owens again imposed a fine, and ordered the lawyer's imprisonment, but, at the request of the commonwealth's counsel, delayed the punishment. The court fined Wright $10, who, to make it appear bona fide, paid it to the court. The court kept this money, and Wright consented to pay for the beer for the crowd, as the court would not disgorge on any other consideration.
The major was at his best. At last he seemed to weary of the lengthened sweetness long drawn out, became irritated at the
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nonsensical cross-examination, the purpose of which seemed to be to discredit the witnesses for the prosecution, and, rapping on the table with a revolver at least a foot long, delivered himself about as follows: "Mr. Dutchier, unless you have witnesses to establish the defendant's innocence, you may subside-simmer, as it were." Dutcher here referred again to the constitution as guaranteeing life, liberty, fair, impartial trial, etc., and to the fact that the presumption was innocence, not guilt. The refer- ence to the constitution seemed to act on the court as a red rag in front of a bob-tailed bull, and the judge maintained that THIS has no reference to non-resident defendants, but to Kansas defendants.
Here the major stood up, cocked his revolver, and, addressing himself to Jesse, said: "If you are guilty, of which I have but little doubt, and have good and sufficient reason to believe, I'll be * * * if you slip through these hands by technicalities or quibble. Of all men, you are the one I am desirous of trying my hand on. It is my intention that no man shall be robbed or killed without the consent of this court, first had and obtained and pro- vision made for its perquisites. Prisoner at the bar, stand up! What have you to say why you should not stretch hemp in the moonlight in one hour? God is merciful and just; this court is just; but in one hour from now prepare to meet your victims in purgatory. Justice shall reign !
" 'Order shall reign in Warsaw!'
"You have been the destiny of many men!
"Gaze now on your Waterloo !"
During this homily, Dutcher's face was a study. Impotent rage, abortive malice, chagrin, disappointment, indignation and astonishment-all were there, each striving for supremacy. He felt that he was undone, disgraced, whipped; yet he bore up with it as though it was but the fate of legal war, instead of the mur- der of his first-born. Jesse asked for a conference with his coun- sel, and asked him what he thought the chances were. Dutcher told him, none; informed him that immediate death was now upon him ; that the interposition of the Almighty alone would save him. "What!" said Jesse, "must I die-be hurled into Pluto's dread domain, with all my sins clinging to my trousers? Oh, ye gods, this is 'tough'; in fact, it is simply *
* *. I will never be hung. I will fight to death. I'll kill the court and Wright, and escape or die."
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The court ended the tete-a-tete of Jesse and his counsel, and the argument was had. Dutcher made a thrilling, eloquent, log- ical argument, broken into fragments by the continual cross-fired interruptions of the court and state's attorney, and closed with an assertion that if this man was hanged in disregard of law, that the court would be a murderer and the state's attorney an acces- sory to the crime. He denounced the proceedings as more damna- ble than the trial of Sir Walter Raleigh; more disgraceful than any trial chronicled in the annals of legal butchery since the dawn of civilization. Through it all, Dutcher was unconscious of the part he was playing in a burlesque. He believed it was simply frontier law practice. When he quit, every man pitied and respected him, yet the roaring farce went on to its tragic and calculated conclusion. The grand tableau was yet to come, and even to those in the secret it was a blood-curdling surprise.
Jesse, manacled, sat with bowed head, as if lost in deep ab- straction, "wrapped in the solitude of his own original turpi- tude," friendless and powerless, apparently, to free himself from the meshes of the law. Dutcher alone knew that Jesse was a baited lion surrounded by hungry hounds, contemplating murder ere he surrendered to death. The conduct of the court left no room for hope, no avenue for escape. Death's chasm seemed almost to open to joyously embrace the heroic and nonpareil felon of the nineteenth century. Dutcher was pale as washed snow; beads of sweat fell from his graven forehead. There was a stillness in the room-that momentary calmness that pervades space ere the tempest breaks in all its fury.
All at once "Jesse" sprang to his feet. A miracle had been wrought. His manacles had been loosened, his fetters had fallen. In his hands were revolvers, in his eye vengeance, fury, rage and defiance. He proclaimed that he was Jesse James; that he was once more an uncaged lion. "Woe to the sons and daughters of men ! Woe to all when I roam again !" that the insults of the day were to be wiped out and credited in full at once. Tears were for babes; bloody revenge only for men. He hurled "chunks" of carefully accented, well rounded and emphatic profanity at the court.
In a moment all was confusion.
Mischief was afoot.
The lamps went out, tables were overturned, chairs tipped over, all as if by a magician. Jesse shot Wright, who fell upon
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Dutcher; Mohen was shot, and fell on both of them. The court shouted : "My God, my God, I am killed !" In the darkness all were niggers. Jesse shouted to his imaginary rescuers "to kill, rob, burn." Shots were fired as if by battalion. Oaths, groans, yells and agonizing shrieks commingled with dread, and the deaf- ening roar of the infant artillery, and above all was heard the voice of Jesse James, urging his men to do their bloody duty with honor to themselves and families. At last the door was opened, and the living, who expected in death to shortly lie, reached the stairway, shouting : "Jesse James has escaped ! Jesse James has killed the court, his guard and the state's attorney! Run for your lives !"
Jesse's counsel found the door and stairway and landed at the bottom on some one's back, bareheaded and breathless. He ran across the street, exulting in the prowess of his client, and yet fearful that he might be shot by accident or hanged by a mob seeking to find some object on which to rest its resentment and discharge its fury. He reached his boarding-house, bathed in perspiration, weak from fear and excitement, and to the inmates thereof he did "a tale unfold" which, ordinarily, would have made "each particular hair stand on end" like the quills of a fretful porcupine. In truth, a devil unchained was roaming o'er the town, seeking not to escape, but to destroy.
From his report, delivered in unction and in fragments, be- tween gasps, one would have supposed that the Plutonian realm had vomited forth its crowned inmates to revel on earth a spell; that the cabinet of hell, including the prime minister thereof, attended by Rhadamanthus, its dread judge, and all under the escort of Cerberus, the three-headed hell hound, had arrived in Wichita on a business tour to close the equity of soul mortgage redemption and obtain some fuel from flesh to inspire the then flame-fed, fattened, famished fires.
Dutcher's eyes, protruding 'neath his alabaster forehead, seemed as the ghastly light emitted from some tongueless, cav- ernous skull, when lighted upon "hallowe'en" by the stolen can- dle filched from some thrifty housewife's kitchen. Jesse James to him seemed an army, awfully arrayed and armed, boldly besieging Wichita, creating consternation, dealing death and destruction and devastation in its bloody track. Almost in his recital you could hear :
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"The roar of cannons, whose deadly peals, In repeating echoes, through the valley ring, Starting and affrighting Midnight on her throne. Feel the jar of bursting booms and falling beams ; Hear the dying groan, agonizing shriek and the shout Of maddened men, inebriate with rage."
At last, pale, exhausted and worn out, Dutcher sought his couch, and dreamed, no doubt, that he was "hair-hung and breeze-shaken" over the Calvinistic resort of sinners, and that "Jesse James" was tickling his toes to make him snap the slen- der thread that separated him from immortality.
When the morrow's sun had peeped o'er College Hill, Dutcher arose and went to town to hear the denouncement of the bloody scene, but some one took him aside and brutally broke the enchantment that bound him. His heart was broken. He fled to his room and a few hours later the north-bound Santa Fe had one passenger, at least.
Dutcher reached New York by the limited express, subse- quently removed to California, and was, in 1887, an attorney in San Francisco, with a good practice. To prove that he had ability and only needed to have the sap dried in him, Mr. H. C. Gager, one of our retired "boomers," now in Galveston, was in San Francisco in 1887, and at a hotel was in the act of turning away from the register, when a fine-looking man spoke to him and asked him if he was from Wichita. Gager replied that he was, whereupon the gentleman said : "Do you know O. C. Daisy ?"
"Who in Wichita doesn't know Daisy ?"
The gentleman then related this arrest, trial and escape, his humiliation and flight, and ended by saying: "Daisy ran me out of the State of Kansas. I owe him a debt of gratitude I can never repay. He cut my eye teeth and made me rich. Daisy can get rich playing Jesse James in New York City. You tell him that if he ever comes out here, to come and see me, and I will 'put up' his hotel bill for a year. I have seen a good deal of 'plays' in the East and West, but of all of 'em, I remember this Jesse James act best. The court was bluff, rough and tough, and though after I left Wichita, and before I settled in San Francisco, I witnessed some frontier justice proceedings, all were but a feeble copy of the presiding justice in the 'Jesse James' tragic comedy, wherein I played as an unconscious sucker to a full house."
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Recollections of those days in the early seventies crowd upon my memory. George Reeves, at that date clerk of the district court, was an autocrat in his own right, and at times felt that he was first assistant to the judge, and invested with judicial dis- cretion, as well as ministerial functions, as witness the occasion when, while somewhat in "budge," he continued court, and the other occasion, when an injunction was wanted, he had chartered the card room of a saloon where the Hub clothing store is, and refused to grant any writ of injunction until 9 a. m. of the next day, and the judge had to help the litigant out by issuing an order.
A writ of injunction, in so far as the speed is concerned, is somewhat like the speed required of a doctor on interesting occa- sions in the home of a married man, or, like a pistol desire in Texas, it is needed at once or never.
During a session of court, when the present office of the Occi- dental Hotel was the court room, some of the foreign element desired to be naturalized, and appeared in the court room, where George was engrossed with business and worn down with "budge," and being somewhat annoyed at the intrusion, was not as amiable as might be desired. After George had made out the oath and had it signed, one of the new-born Americans expressed a desire to know what George wanted him to do next, and George gratified him, to the amazement of the voter and merriment of the court room, by saying :
"Hold up your right hand, keep your mouth shut and stand still. * * *. "
During the year 1875, a long, lank, lean, cadaverous, sallow- complexioned, and jaundiced in disposition, heavy-jawed, her- ring-gutted, web-footed, sad-eyed and melancholy "Patience on a monument, smiling at grief" kind of human proved to be the most litigious cuss in the realm. His general appearance brought to mind the "roundhead cavaliers," and had he lived in Crom- well's day, he would have had a command. He was an involun- tary "false pretense," as no one could be as sorrowful as he looked. He was a hybrid 'twixt an Arkansian and a Missourian, and he dressed in the garb of the Ozark mountains, and "chawed" the dog-leg of the Bald Knob region. He commenced law suits by the dozen and score, gave no bond for costs, and his signature was sufficient on a poverty affidavit, without the formality of an oath. He infested the clerk's office, and on divers and sundry
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