At that moment, or soon after, in a stormy encounter at the Wade farm,
with witnesses that the judge took with him, began the great Wade-Stone
feud of Monterey County, Iowa. It lasted until the flood of new settlers
floated it away in a freshet of new issues during and after the great
Civil War.
I took the story to N.V. as soon as I went to town. He sat looking at
me with a mysterious grin on his face, as I told him of the loss of the
county funds.
"Well," said he, "this will make history. I venture the assertion that
the case will be compromised. I can't see this close corporation of a
county government making Stone's bondsmen pay the loss. Or Stone either.
And I can't see any one getting that amount of money out of old Wade,
whether it was in the bag when it went into his safe or not. Your
testimony on the jingle feature ain't worth a cuss. The Bunker boys had
that bag marked for their own; for we know now that they were out on a
raid that night and cleaned up several good horses. I must say, Jake,
that you are a hell of a hired man. If you had kept the main road, this
trouble which will raise blazes with things in this county till you and
I are gray-headed, never would have happened. The Bunkers would have had
that salt, and everybody else would have had an alibi. Maybe it was
Judge Stone's instinct for party harmony that made him cross at you for
dodging the Bunkers by driving down by the Hoosier settlement. He was
cross, wasn't he? Instinct is a great matter, says Falstaff.
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