A second and more serious disturbance followed close on the fight at
the railroad station. A passenger alighting in the evening from a
westbound train was set upon, robbed, and beaten into insensibility
within ten feet of the train platform. A dozen other passengers
hastened to his assistance. They joined in repulsing his assailants
and were beating them off when other thugs, reinforcing their fellows,
attacked the passengers and those railroad men that had hurried up to
drive off the miscreants.
In the melee, a brakeman was shot through the head and a second
passenger wounded. But the railroad men rallied and, returning the
pistol fire, drove off the outlaws.
The train was hurried out of town and measures were taken at once to
defend the railroad property for the night. Guards were set in the
yards, and a patrol established about the roundhouse, the railroad
hotel and the eating-house and freight-houses.
Stanley, with his car attached to the night passenger train, was on
his way to Casement's camp when the fight occurred, and had taken
Bucks with him. The despatch detailing the disturbance reached him at
a small station east of Point of Rocks, where he was awakened and the
message was read to him advising the manager of the murder of the
brakeman.
A freight-train, eastbound, stood on the passing track. Stanley roused
Bucks and, notifying the despatchers, ordered the engine cut off from
the freight-train, swung up into the cab, and started for Medicine
Bend. As they pulled out, light, Stanley asked for every notch of
speed the lumbering engine could stand, and Oliver Sollers, the
engineman, urged the big machine to its limit.
The new track, laid hastily and only freshly ballasted, was as rough
as corduroy, and the lurching of the big diamond stack made the cab
topple at every rail joint. But Sollers was not the runner to lose
nerve under difficulties and did not lessen the pressure on the
pistons. If Stanley, determined and silent, his lips set and hanging
on for dear life as the cab jumped and swung under him, felt any
qualms at the dangerous pace he had asked for, he betrayed none. With
Bucks, open-eyed with surprise, hanging on in front of him, Stanley
gave no heed to the bouncing, and the freight-engine pounded through
the mountains like a steam-roller with a touch of crushed-stone
delirium. Hour after hour the wild pace was kept up through the Sleepy
Cat Mountains and across the Sweet Grass Plains. There was no easing
up until the frantic machine struck the gorge of the Medicine River
and whistled for the long yards above the roundhouse.
Things had so quieted down by the time Stanley, springing up the
stairs two steps at a time, reached the despatchers' office, that they
were sorry they had sent in such haste for him. Stanley himself had no
regrets. He knew better than those about him the temper of the crowd
he had to deal with and felt that he needed every minute to prepare
for what he had to do. Bucks was sent to bring in Dancing, Bob Scott,
and the more resolute among the railroad men. A brief consultation was
held, and the attitude of the gamblers carefully discussed.
Scott, who had been up town since the murder, had collected sufficient
proof that the chief outlaw, Levake, had done the shooting, and
Stanley now sent Scott to Brush, the sheriff, with a verbal message
demanding Levake's arrest.
Every man that heard the order given knew what it meant. Every one
that listened realized it was the beginning of a fight in which there
could be no retreat for Stanley; that it would be a fight to a finish,
and that no man could say where it would end.
Bob Scott hitched his trousers at the word from his sandy-haired
chief. For Bob, orders meant orders and the terror of Levake's name in
Medicine Bend had no effect on him.
"You might as well ask a jack-rabbit to tackle a mountain lion as to
try to get Brush to arrest Levake," declared Dave Hawk cynically.
But Stanley's hand struck the table like a hammer: "We are going to
have a show-down here. We will go through the forms; this is the
beginning--and I am going to follow it to the end. Either Levake has
got to quit the town or I have."
Dave Hawk looked around with a new idea. He bent his eyes on Bob:
"Better get Brush to deputize _you_ to make the arrest."
"That is it!" exclaimed Stanley. "Get him to deputize you, Bob, and we
will clean up this town as it hasn't been cleaned since the flood."
Scott shook his head: "I don't believe Brush has the sand for that. We
will see."
Up Front Street, through the various groups of men still discussing
the events of the evening, Scott, followed only by Bill Dancing, made
his way, nodding and patiently or pleasantly grinning as the greetings
or ridicule of the crowd were thrown at him. He went to the rooms of
the sheriff only to find them locked, and made his way down town again
looking through the resorts in a search for Brush.
After much trouble, he found him at a gaming-table, inclined to appear
sceptical as to the story that Levake had killed an unoffending
brakeman. When Scott repeated Stanley's demand that Levake be
arrested, the sheriff slammed down his cards and declared he would not
be made a cat's-paw for any man; that the brakeman, according to
accounts reaching him, had been killed in a fair fight and he would
hear no more of it. Then, as if his game had been unreasonably
interfered with and his peace of mind injured, he rose from the table
to relieve his annoyance.
Meantime Bill Dancing slipped into his vacated seat, picked up the
discarded hand of cards and announced it was too good to throw away.
"Will anybody," Bill asked dryly, "play the hand with me while Brush
is arresting Levake?" The laugh of Brush's own companions at this
proposal stung him as an imputation of his cowardice, and he made an
additional display of rage to counteract the unconcealed contempt in
which his cronies held him.
He turned on Scott angrily. "Go arrest the man yourself, if you want
him," he thundered.
Scott snapped up the suggestion. He pointed a lean finger at the
shifty peace officer. "Deputize me to do it, if you dare, Brush!" he
softly exclaimed, fixing his brown eyes on the flushed face of the
coward.
Not a man in the room moved or spoke. Brush saw himself trapped.
Scott's finger called for an answer and the sheriff found no escape.
"I knew you hadn't the nerve to give me a deputy's badge," laughed
Scott, to spur the man's lagging courage; "you are too afraid of
Levake."
The taunt had its effect. Brush raved about his courage, and Bill
Dancing, slapping him ferociously on the back, convinced him that he
really was a brave man. Taken volubly in tow by the two railroad
emissaries, who were far from being as simple as they seemed, Brush
returned to his lodgings at the jail to issue the coveted paper
authorizing Scott to serve any warrants in his stead.
Before the ink was dry on the certificate the word had gone down Front
Street, and the town knew that Levake's arrest was in prospect. As
Dancing and Scott left the jail and walked down to the station, they
were surrounded by a curious throng of men watching for further
developments in the approaching crisis of the struggle with outlawry
in the railroad town.
The night was far advanced, but a third element was now to make itself
felt in the situation. The decent business men had already seen the
approach of the storm and resolved on protecting their own interests,
which they realized were on the side of law and order. Word had been
passed from one to another of a proposed meeting. It was held toward
daybreak in a secret place. One and all present were pledged to act
together under a leadership then and there agreed upon, and after so
organizing, with a resolute merchant named Atkinson at their head, and
with a quiet that foreboded no good to the gamblers and outlaws, the
men who had gone to the rendezvous as business men left it as
vigilantes, banded together to defend their rights and property
against the lawless element that had terrorized legitimate business.
In the morning secret word was brought by Atkinson to Stanley of the
resolve of the new allies to stand by him in his efforts to rid
the town of its undesirables for good and all. It was welcome
intelligence, and the railroad chief assured the plucky merchant
of his hearty cooperation in the designs of the newly constituted
law-and-order committee.
"When the machinery of the law has miserably failed to protect our
lives and property," he said concisely, "we have nothing left for it
but to protect them ourselves." Arms had been telegraphed for and
every effort made to secure troops in the emergency. But the Indian
uprising had taken every available infantryman and trooper into the
north and there was not now sufficient time to get them together for
action. The railroad men, Stanley knew, must depend on themselves and
upon such assistance as the decent element in the town could render.
Meantime the outlaws were not idle. They spent the day whipping the
gamblers and their hangers-on into line, upon the prediction that if
they themselves were dispersed scant quarter would be shown their
disorderly associates.
Scott spent the day leisurely. Stanley had asked him not to move
until his own arrangements for a defensive fight were completed. That
the outlaws had secret sources of information even in the railroad
circles, came out startlingly. A special train--an express car pulled
by an engine--entered the railroad yard at dusk that evening, when a
party of men running out from the cover of the freight warehouse
attempted to rush it for arms and ammunition.
They were met at the car doors by six of the best men that could be
picked up along the line during the day run of the special across the
plains. Stanley had wired instructions to head-quarters to send him
six men that feared neither smoke nor powder, and six stalwarts taken
on at Grand Island, North Platte, and Julesburg guarded the car and
tumbled like cats out of a bag upon the surprised raiders.
The encounter was spirited, but it took only a moment to convince the
assaulting party that they had made a mistake. Clubbing their heavy
revolvers, the guards, any one of whom in close quarters could account
for two ordinary men, threw themselves from the car step directly
into the crowd and struck right and left. There was no regard for
persons, and in the half-dark the Medicine Bend ruffians, surprised
and confused, were soon fighting one another.
But one-sided as the contest was, it did not go fast enough to suit
the guards, who, seizing the clubs thrown away by the rabble, charged
them in a line and drove them up the street. Railroad men who came
running from the station to help were too late. The flurry was over
and they found nothing to do but to cheer their new aids.
Nor were the gamblers asleep. Word had gone out both east and west of
the approaching crisis between the disorderly and the law-and-order
elements, and every passenger train into Medicine Bend brought
mysterious men from towns and railroad camps who were openly or
secretly allied in one or another vicious calling to the classes that
were now making a stand for the rule or ruin of the railroad town.
A mob of sympathizers gathered in Front Street to protect from
further punishment the party that had tried to capture the express
car. But the railroad men had no idea of pursuing the raiders beyond
the yard limits, and indeed were restrained by strict orders from
doing so. Stanley sent word immediately to the sheriff, demanding the
arrest of the new peace-disturbers, but the sheriff no longer made a
pretence of arresting law-breakers. In Front Street, the mob,
emboldened by their apparent control of the situation and increasing
in clamor and numbers, were now in a humor for anything that promised
pillage or vengeance. There were still among them a few cool-headed
criminals who counselled caution, but these were hooted down by men
who had never tasted the rigor of vigilante rule.
Out of a dozen wild schemes broached by as many wild heads of the
excited crowd, in which were now lined up for any lawlessness all the
idlers, floaters, the improvident, and the reckless elements of a
frontier gambling town, one caught the popular fancy. Some one
proposed a jail delivery to release Rebstock and Seagrue, persecuted
by the railroad company. The idea spread like wildfire, and a score of
men, reinforced by more at every door as they proceeded up Front
Street, made their way to the jail.
Fast as they came, time was given for word to the sheriff, who
conveniently got out of the way, and, led by half a dozen men with
crowbars and spike-mauls, the outlaws surrounded and overran the jail
yard and without a show of resistance from any one began smashing in
the entrance and battering down the cell doors.
The first suggestion included only the delivery of the two men. But
this was effected so easily that more was undertaken. The jail at
Medicine Bend, being the only one within many miles in any direction,
harbored the criminals of the whole mountain region, and these now
cried to friendly ears for their own freedom. Cell after cell was
battered open and the released criminals, snatching tools from the
mob, led in the fight to free their fellows. In less than half an hour
every cell had been emptied and a score of hardened malefactors had
been added to the mob, which now proposed to celebrate the success of
its undertaking by setting fire to the jail itself.
The vigilantes down town, though taking the alarm, had moved too
slowly. A jail delivery meant, they knew, that their stores would be
looted, and, under the leadership of Atkinson, they attempted to avert
the mischief impending.
Gathering twenty-five determined men, they started with a shout for
the hill, only to see the sky already lighting with the flames of the
burning building. The mob, not understanding at first, welcomed the
new-comers with a roar of approval.
But they were soon undeceived. The vigilantes began to try to save the
jail and their efforts brought about the first clash of a night
destined long to be remembered in Medicine Bend. The brawlers in the
crowd stayed to fight the vigilantes. The thieves and night-birds fell
away in the darkness, and like black cats scurried down town to
pillage the stores and warehouses of the fire-fighters on the hill.
The few clerks and watchmen defending the stores, these knaves made
short work of. Dancing and Scott, with Stanley, Bucks, and a party of
railroad men, uneasy at the reports from the jail and now able to see
the sky reddening with the flames, moved in and out of the gloom of
side streets to keep track of the alarming situation and were the
earliest to discover the looting movement.
A convenient general store at Front and Hill Streets was the first to
be pillaged. Dancing wanted to lead a party against the looters, but
Stanley pointed out the folly of half a dozen men trying to police the
whole street.
"We can do nothing here, Bill. Those vigilantes have no business on
the hill. Get word to them, if you can, that the stores are being
robbed. They can't save the jail; they ought to come back and save
their own property. I can't bring men up from the roundhouse. We've
got to protect our own property first. If we could get word to
them--but a man never could get through that mob to the jail."
"I reckon I can, colonel," said Bill Dancing, throwing off his coat.
"They will kill you, Bill," predicted Stanley.
"No," growled the lineman, rolling up his shirt sleeves. "Not me. I
wouldn't stand for it."