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278
HELL IN NEBRASKA
 

were drawn and the place appeared to be deserted. The posse entered and found a note written by Gray, that read: "We have taken your neighbor for a hostage. If you do not follow us or report the matter, he will not be harmed." It was afterwards learned that the murderers, arrived at the Blunt home about eleven o'clock and demanded breakfast. Mrs. Blunt, the two-month bride of the young farmer, invited them to sit down and wait while she went to the chicken coop for some eggs. She stepped out the back door, going toward the chicken coop, but turned and ran towards the nearest farm a mile away and phoned the alarm. It was when she failed to return that the fugitives realized that they were in danger. They ordered Mr. Blunt to hitch up the team and drive them to Albright. Dowd and Morley went with him to the barn to assist in getting the wagon ready, while Gray remained in the house to write the note. The trio laid down in the bottom of the wagon and with the young farmer in the seat high

 
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above the party started towards the north. They were soon overtaken by the posse and now a running fight began. The posse led by Fire Commissioner Trouton, Chief of Police Briggs of South Omaha and Sheriffs Hyers of Lancaster, and Case of Sarpy Counties, kept shooting at the murderers. They kept on returning the fire. Suddenly the team came to a standstill and Morley jumped from the wagon with both hands up in the air. Chief Briggs rode up to the wagon and looked into it. It is all off" said the chief, "they are dead."

The tragic feature of the running fight was the killing of the young farmer, Roy Blunt. A bullet hole an inch below the endgate of the wagon showed the course of the bullet which had embedded itself in his heart. The young farmer's friends took the body in charge and laid it tenderly in the bottom of the wagon, a horse blanket serving as his shroud. The wagon slowly drove back to his farm home, the friends on horseback following it quietly and full of grief.


280
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CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
HOW THE GUNS GOT IN

Heavy chains and handcuffs were put on Morley. He told the posse that Blunt was the first man to lose his life, and that Shorty Gray was the second man killed. Their death left Dowd and Morley alive in the wagon, with the team without a driver, racing down the road. Morley kept on firing at the posse, but Dowd, realizing that the fight was a hopeless one, placed his gun at his right temple and killed himself. It was when Morley looked around and saw that Dowd was dead that he jumped out of the wagon, and with both hands high in the air, surrendered. He was uninjured, having come through the fusilade (sic) without being struck even once. With him handcuffed, and the bodies of Shorty Gray and Dowd, the posse drove to Gretna and waited for a special train that had been ordered from Lincoln. Before the train pulled out Sheriff Hyers

 
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told the crowd that he would show them the captured man and also the dead bodies. Morley closely guarded was taken to the rear platform, where he stood for a while looking at the crowd. The Sheriff asked him to say something. Morley said: "I am sorry that Roy Blunt was killed." Then the bodies of Gray and Dowd, ghastly, bleeding and awful to look upon, were held limply up to the morbid gaze of the crowd. Sheriff Hyers told the crowd that it was he who killed Gray, and received the cheers of the crowd with a pleased smile.

News of the capture spread quickly, and large crowds gathered at Ashland and Waverly, where the bodies were again exhibited. Two stops were made at Havelock, one at the station and one at the shops, and the crowd looked upon the bodies. It became known that a very large crowd was at the Lincoln depot, and it was ordered to run the train through without stopping to the penitentiary. There it stopped at the cross