thousand dollars. The only result of this offer was to lead Jesse
to redouble his precautions, for he argued that the situation must
indeed be acute when such an offer could be deemed worth while.
Thereafter it was obvious that the revelry of Dodge and his
companions was on the increase. Accordingly Jesse added to his
force of assistants.

On December 2, 1904, Nathaniel Cohen, another member of the firm of
Howe and Hummel, arrived at Houston, and the next day the Supreme
Court at Washington decided the appeal in the habeas corpus against
the prisoner, who was at once ordered by Judge Burns into the
custody of United States Marshall William M. Hansen.

Things looked black indeed for Dodge and blacker still for Hummel.
How the little attorney, eating his midday lunch four thousand
miles away, at Pontin's restaurant on Franklin Street, must have
trembled in his patent leather boots! His last emissary, Cohen, at
once procured an assistant by the name of Brookman and with him
proceeded to Wharton County, Texas, where they secured a new writ
of habeas corpus and induced the local sheriff, one Rich, to swear
in a posse comitatus of one hundred men for the purpose of coming
to Houston to take the prisoner by force of arms out of the hands
of the United States Marshal.

This was one of the most daring and desperate attempts made in
recent years to frustrate the law. Jesse believes that the real
object of this posse was to precipitate a fight between themselves
and the Federal authorities. It is not inconceivable that in such
an event Dodge might either have escaped or been killed. The men
composing the posse were of the most desperate character, and