“My God!” Wheeler said. “Look at them go! They’re going right on in!”
The miners advanced steadily toward the six who opposed them: the two deputies, Pike Skinner, Peter Bacon, Tim French, and Chick Hasty. Three of them had shotguns, Bacon a rifle, Gannon and Hasty only handguns. The miners in the front rank began swinging their torches and sending up great arcs of sparks.
Finally they halted and Schroeder’s voice was heard: “First one across this rail gets shot!”
“Tromp them down!” the miners cried. “Morgan! We want Morgan!”
“Give him up, Schroeder! We’ll tramp you down!”
Mosbie said to Wheeler, “By Christ, it looks to be two hundred of them there!”
“Where the hell’s Blaisedell?” a man near them said. “He had better damn well hurry!”
“He’ll be along and back them off,” said another.
“Hell he will,” a third said, with a snicker. “He is soaking it over at Miss Jessie’s. She’ll keep him there, being for those stinking jacks—” He cried out as someone hit him in the mouth.
Mosbie struggled to free himself from those who pressed around him, and flung himself at the man who had spoken; they went down in a cursing pile. Others tried to separate them. “Foul-mouthed son of a bitch!” Mosbie yelled.
On the far corner a miner was haranguing Schroeder. He tried to climb over the rail and Schroeder swung the shotgun barrel down on him. Instantly a wave of miners poured forward over the tie rail. “Moss!” Wheeler shouted. “There they go!”
The boardwalk before the jail was a mass of fighting men. A shotgun was discharged; there was a scream, and the blue-clad figures fled back into the street, leaving one crumpled and shrieking on the boardwalk, with Carl Schroeder standing over him.
“Shot one, by God!” Wheeler said, as Mosbie rejoined him, panting. “Best thing for it, too.”
“Who did it?”
“Carl, looked like.”
“Hey, Carl shot one!”
The miners began to roar with one voice, and the tightly packed mass of them in the street weaved and swayed, the torches waving wildly above them. “Kill them! Kill them! Hang them with Morgan!”
“Boys, they have killed Benny Connors!”
Mosbie leaned against one of the posts that held up the arcade, with Wheeler pressed tightly against him by the men around them. “Oh, Jesus!” a man near them said, over and over, like a prayer. The weaving, uncertain movement of the mob changed, section by section, into a single forward thrust forcing the men in the front rank against the railing. One of the deputies raised his six-shooter and discharged it with a flat shock of sound; still the miners pressed forward, almost in silence now.
“Here he comes!”
“It’s Blaisedell, all right. Here he comes!”
“Thank the good Lord!” Wheeler said.
“Look at the buggy!” someone said, but no one paid any attention to him.
Mosbie clambered up on the tie rail and clung to the post. “You ought to see him!” he called down to Wheeler.
Blaisedell came down the center of Main Street, with the townsmen moving quickly aside before him. He came at a swift, certain, long-legged stride, with his black hat showing above the heads of the men he passed. He did not pause as he came to the edge of the mob of miners, forging straight ahead through them like a knife splitting its way through a pine board. Torchlight gleamed on the barrel of his Colt as he knocked a miner aside with it.
“Kill him too!” someone among the miners cried suddenly. “Don’t let him get up there, boys!”
But Blaisedell went on, unhindered, and finally he stood before the jail among the deputies, taller than any of them. His voice was sudden and loud. “Back off, boys. There’ll be no hanging tonight.”
“I believe he could stand off the U. S. Cavalry,” Wheeler said. The miners in the street remained silent.
“You had better get this one to Doc Wagner,” Blaisedell said, motioning to the miner still groaning on the boardwalk.
Still there was silence. The torches flared and smoked. The front rank had drawn back from the rail.
Then someone shouted, “He won’t shoot!”
Others took it up. “He won’t shoot to save that murdering high-roller! He’s bluffing! Run him down!”
The yelling mass began swaying forward once more, compressing those who tried to hold back away from the rail. Then the railing went down and miners leaped and crowded onto the boardwalk. Blaisedell and the deputies were swamped by the blue-clad bodies in a melee of flailing arms and gun barrels. There were two shots, two furry spurts of flame reaching upward. Again the miners retreated. Gannon and Schroeder appeared, and Blaisedell with his hat gone. One of the deputies was down; Pike Skinner and Tim French helped him inside the jail.
“Who was that, Moss?” Wheeler cried.
“Chick Hasty.”
“He won’t shoot!” the same voice shouted again, and again the miners took up the cry.
“They are going to run him,” Mosbie said hoarsely.
Blaisedell stood before the jail door with a lock of hair fallen over one eye, his chest heaving, and both his Colts out. Schroeder, shouting unheard, stood on one side of him, Gannon on the other. Skinner and French came out of the jail again and took up their posts. Once more the torches began to swing, and sparks flew upward in the wind.
“They are going to bust over him,” Mosbie said.
“There they go again!”
The miners flung themselves forward and Blaisedell and the deputies were thrown back before them. Blaisedell went down; there was a yell as the watchers saw it, and a groan; the other deputies went down. One retreated inside the jail, dragging another with him, and slammed the door. The miners crashed against it, drew back, and crashed against it again.
“Look at that! Look!” cried the man beside Mosbie on the railing.
But no one noticed him as the jail door broke and the miners streamed inside, yelling in triumph. Almost immediately they began thrusting themselves back out again, while others still fought to enter. The deputies began to appear among them.
“What the hell happened?” Wheeler demanded.
“Look! It’s Miss Jessie!”
A buggy was coming out of Southend Street. Miss Jessie Marlow was in it, and there was a man on the seat beside her. She was trying to turn the bay horse that drew the buggy east into Main Street and the horse was scaring in the crowd. Miss Jessie sat very straight with a bonnet on, and a white frilled blouse with a black necktie. The man lounging on the seat beside her was Morgan.
“It’s Morgan with her!”
“It is Morgan, for Christ’s sake!”
Miss Jessie flicked the buggy whip down once, and the bay pranced ahead. Men moved out of the way. The lighted tip of a cigar glowed in Morgan’s hand. The two of them looked as though they had been out for a pleasant ride.
“She took him out of the back!” a man cried. “I saw that buggy turning in the alley there a while ago. Look at that, will you?”
“She won’t get away with it,” Mosbie said, in the hoarse voice.
“Hurry up!” Wheeler whispered, hitting his fist against the tie rail. “Hurry up, ma’am! Bust that bay again!”
The buggy continued its slow progress through the men in the street. The miners had fallen silent, and now the main traffic was away from the jail. Some of them appeared out of the alley in Southend. “He’s gone!” a miner shouted. “Got out the back!”
“There he is! In the buggy!”
Miners surged around the buggy, the whole mass of them changing direction now, and pressing back up Main Street. But the miners who surrounded the buggy began to drop away from it. Others ran after it, looked in, and dropped back too. Mosbie began to laugh.