National Affairs: Barricade

In Jefferson County, Tenn., one W. B. Johnson, prosperous farmer, once a sheriff, was walking along a lane with a revolver in his pocket. Just why he was carrying a revolver no one, afterward, could tell, or why, meeting an old woman and her daughter in the lane, he began to quarrel with them. Mr. Johnson, some said, had had a love affair with the daughter. He ended the conversation by shooting each woman in the mouth. They fell dead. He ran to his home, barricaded door and window. He had another revolver in the house and 150 rounds of ammunition. A crowd of students from Carson-Newman College gathered outside. Murderer Johnson fired into the crowd, killed a football player. With machine guns, tear bombs, automatic rifles, deputy sheriffs tried to get him out. Shooter Johnson returned their fire. Citizens talked of sending to the governor for a detachment of militia, agreed first to make one more effort. Enlisting 75 more courageous deputies, they stormed toward Mr. Johnson's death-spitting windows. Someone touched off an electric fuse—there was a splintering boom. Dynamite, laid in the night, had blown off Farmer Johnson's door. The first deputy inside fired shakily at the insane, grey figure crouching in an angle of the stairs. With a hole in his head, Mr. Johnson pitched forward. Taken to a hospital, he said he was sorry he had done so much shooting. "It gets you . . . once you start pinking people off its hard to stop. . . ."