"There can be competition in the town-site business, however. At Mead Center, Kansas, there resided an old-time Kansas man, Colonel S. N. Wood, who also wanted a town site in the new county. Wood's partner, Captain I. C. Price, went down on July 3 to look over the situation. He was not known to the Hugoton men, and he was invited by Calvert, the census taker, to register his name as a citizen. He protested that he was only a visitor, but was informed that this made no possible difference; whereupon, Price proceeded to register his own name, that of his partner, those of many of his friends, and many purely imaginary persons. He also registered the families of these persons, and finally--in a burst of good American humor--went so far as to credit certain single men of his acquaintance with large families, including twenty or thirty pairs of twins! This cheerful imagination on his part caused trouble afterwards; but certain it is that these fictitious names, twins and all, went into the sworn records of Hugoton--an unborn population of a defunct town, whose own conception was in iniquity!
"Price located a section of government land on the north side of the sand hills, eight miles from Hugoton, and this was duly platted for a town site. Corner lots were selling at Hugoton for $1,000 apiece, and people were flocking to that town. The new town was called Woodsdale, and Colonel Wood offered lots free to any who would come and build upon them. Settlers now streamed to Woodsdale. Tents, white-topped wagons and frail shanties sprung up as though by magic. The Woodsdale boom attracted even homesteaders who had cast in their lot with Hugoton. Many of these forgot their oaths in the land office, pulled up and filed on new quarter sections nearer to Woodsdale. The latter town was jubilant. Colonel Wood and Captain Price, in the month of August, held a big ratification meeting, taunting the men of Hugoton with those thirty pairs of twins that never were on land or sea. A great deal of bad blood was engendered at this time.
"Soon after this Wood and Price started together for Garden City. They were followed by a band of Hugoton men and captured in a dugout on the Cimarron river. Brought back to Hugoton, a mock trial was held upon them and they were released on a mock bond, being later taken out of town under guard. A report was printed in the Hugoton paper that certain gentlemen of that town had gone south with Colonel Wood and Captain Price, 'for the purpose of a friendly buffalo hunt.' It was the intention to take these two prisoners into the wild and lawless region of No Man's Land, or the Panhandle of Texas, there to kill them, and to bring back the report that they were accidentally killed in the buffalo chase. This strange hunting party did go south, across No Man's Land and into the desert region lying around the headwaters of the Beaver. The prisoners knew what they were to expect, but, as it chanced, their captors did not dare kill them. Meantime, Woodsdale had organized a 'posse' of twenty-four men, under Captain S. O. Aubrey, the noted frontier trailer, formerly an Indian scout. This band, taking up the trail below Hugoton, followed and rescued Wood and Price, and took prisoners the entire Hugoton 'posse.' The latter were taken to Garden City, and here the law was in turn set at defiance by the Woodsdale men, the horses, wagons, arms, etc., of the Hugoton party being put up and sold in the court to pay the board of the teams, expenses of publication, etc. Colonel Wood bought these effects in at public auction.