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TRAGEDY AND TRIAL OF NO MAN'S LAND. BY H. B. KELLY.
ONE of the most important trials in the history of Federal courts, involving life and entailing expense upon government, occurred in the month of July, 1890, in the United States district court at Paris, for the eastern district of Texas, the culmination of a four years' strife between the towns of Hugoton and Woodsdale in Stevens, a southwestern county of Kansas. The boundary lines of the county had been established during the special session of the legislature in the winter of 1886, the site of Hugoton having been selected and settlement commenced in June of the previous year, that of Woodsdale follow ing a year later. This was at the beginning of " the boom period" in the "short grass" counties of western Kansas, during which thousands of people in comfortable circumstances, allured by the delusion of the disappearance of western arid regions, occupied the lands, and driving therefrom the herds of grazing cattle, vainly sought to convert the plains into fields of grain and homes of comfort. In June of that year С. Е. Cook resigned the postmastcrship of McPhcrson, to which he had been appointed by President Cleve land and, removing to Hugoton, became manager for the town company and the recognized leader of -the townspeople. In the spring of the same year, Sam Wood, who had been closely identified with the history and politics of Kansas from the date of his entrance into the Territory in 1854, located the town of Woodsdale, selecting a site for his town six miles north and two to the east of Hugoton. Between the towns a range of sand hills crosses the county from east to west, creating a natural division between the sections, this division tending
to the creation of adverse local interests and the stimulation of strong partisan feeling, among the settlers, for their respective towns. By early summer the population of the county was sufficient to entitle it to political organization under the laws of the State, the initiatory looking to such organization hav ing been taken by Hugoton in making enumeration, securing the appointment of the requisite temporary officials and the designation of that town as temporary county seat. The town of Woodsdale was not ready for these important preliminary movements, and Wood, its founder, at once assumed an attitude of hostility thereto, threatening delay by a move to enjoin or ganization with numerous other technicalities with which he had grown familiar in previous contests of a similar character. When the census was taken and the report completed for presentation to the governor, Wood, on his way with the purpose of ask ing the intervention of the courts, was over taken by a party from Hugoton, kidnapped and carried into a remote section of Texas, where he was detained some three weeks, during which time the work of organization went forward. The temporary organization, having been secured, was followed by an election for permanent county officers and county seat, the Hugoton people winning in the contest. This, however, did not settle the strife, but tended rather to increase the intensity of the conflict as elections in aid of railroad con struction and other matters came up. The rivalry between the towns engendered per sonal hostility between the residents thereof, this condition offering special inducement to the typical cowboy, "dead shot" tough,
