Page:06-24-1920 -The Story of the Jones County Calf Case.pdf/6

 was pending, Bob's house was burned. Spontaneous combustion! And later, and during the pendency [sic] of the indictment, and the pendency of the motion, Bob went out one morning and found on his horse block a rope with a hangman's knot in it, and attached to the rope, which was in itself somewhat suggestive, he found a little note which read something like this: "You better withdraw your motion, and try this case here in Jones County, or take this." And this note was attached to the rope.

Now, by the way, along in here Bob had a barn burned. Another case of spontaneous combustion! And Bob concluded that he did not want to try his case in that particular county. I might say here that at that time there had been recently organized in that county an organization known as "The Iowa Branch of the North Missouri Anti-Horse Thief Association." And Bob was not a member. Now that organization wanted to try its machinery on something, and they fed Bob into it. They never used that machinery afterwards. It was ruined. Bob broke the cogs, and they never used it again.

Well, finally, we were granted a change of venue, and we went down to Cedar County to try the criminal case. The first indictment I should say had been quashed, but the court had ordered the case resubmitted to another grand jury, and there had been a second indictment returned against Bob. To make a long story short, because it is a long story, gentlemen, and the mists of forty years have obscured it largely from my memory, we tried Bob, Colonel Preston defending him with consummate ability, and Bob and I hustling the testimony and doing chore work only. We tried it down there, and the jury stood eleven to one for acquittal, and hung. We tried it again and Bob was acquitted.

Then Bob began the third case of the series; it is entitled Robert Johnson vs. E. V. Miller et al., in which Bob was the plaintiff and seven of his neighbors were defendants who had been most active in his prosecution. Bob sued them for damages. Now that is the case, that malicious prosecution damage case is the case you hear referred to ordinarily as the Jones