COMMITTEE OF ISTVESTIGATION, ETC. 
207 
husband had been trying to make it more comfortable by his own 
efforts, when he was driven away by these villains, under the 
cover of law. The lady had been telling me, how, amid discour¬ 
agements, this house had been erected; how she had been hoping 
to have it finished, so the rains would not beat in; and, just as 
the lumber was sawed, her husband, leaving her ill, had to flee 
out into the country. 
She said, that morning she placed the rifle in the window, and 
told a young girl in the family, if she saw Salters coming, to let 
her know, and she would shoot him before he reached the house. 
By the determination of her countenance, I have no doubt she 
would have carried the resolution into effect. Yet, naturally, she 
was not a bold woman, but one of a timid, sensitive nature, to 
w T hom the change from the refinements and ease of city life to 
pioneer privations was enough to bear. 
While I was there the husband came in, saying, as he sat down 
his rifle, and wiped the moisture from his brow, “ I will not run 
again.” 
“ But what will you do ? ” was the simultaneous query of us 
noth. 
“ I will protect myself,” was the bold, defiant reply. 
“ And resist the troops? ” 
“Yes, I will fight anybody. If I live under a government 
that does not protect me, then I will protect myself, Frank Pierce 
or no Frank Pierce.” 
This reveals the state of feeling as well as mere words can. 
It is intense, and every hour deepens it. 
No clue has been found to the intended murderer of Jones. All 
efforts in that direction have proved futile. The safety of all our 
people demands that perpetrators of such deeds should be brought 
to justice. Many feared, at first, that the act was committed by 
some free-state man, who had been goaded on to vengeance by 
wrongs unparalleled under forms of law, which leave the wrong¬ 
doer to go unwhipt of justice, and oppress innocent and peaceable 
men. The impression prevailing now, in reference to the at¬ 
tempted assassination of Jones, is, that some fellow-gambler 
sought his life, and, by making the blow upon him in Lawrence, 
