The coloured foreman of the brick-layers had been
seriously ill; his place had been filled by a white man, under whom
the walls were rising rapidly. Jim Green, the foreman whom the colonel
had formerly discharged, and the two white brick-layers who had quit
at the same time, applied for reinstatement. The colonel took the two
men on again, but declined to restore Green, who had been discharged
for insubordination.
Green went away swearing vengeance. At Clay Johnson's saloon he hurled
invectives at the colonel, to all who would listen, and with anger
and bad whiskey, soon worked himself into a frame of mind that was
ripe for any mischief. Some of his utterances were reported to the
colonel, who was not without friends--the wealthy seldom are; but he
paid no particular attention to them, except to keep a watchman at the
mill at night, lest this hostility should seek an outlet in some
attempt to injure the property. The precaution was not amiss, for once
the watchman shot at a figure prowling about the mill. The lesson was
sufficient, apparently, for there was no immediate necessity to repeat
it.
The shooting of Haines, while not so sensational as that of Barclay
Fetters, had given rise to considerable feeling against Ben Dudley.
That two young men should quarrel, and exchange shots, would not
ordinarily have been a subject of extended remark. But two attempts at
assassination constituted a much graver affair. That Dudley was
responsible for this second assault was the generally accepted
opinion.
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