Slipping away behind the long warehouses in Front Street and moving
swiftly in and out of friendly shadows on his long journey up the
hill, Dancing started for the jail. He was hardly more than well under
way when he was aware of one following him and, turning to fell him
with his fist, he started as he found it was Bucks.
The latter confronted him coolly: "Go ahead, Bill; I am going with
you."
"Who said you could go?" exclaimed the lineman. "You can't. Go back!"
Bucks stood his ground.
"Do you want to get killed?" thundered Dancing hotly.
"Two are better than one on a job like this," returned Bucks, without
giving way. "Go on, will you?"
With a volley of grumbling objections, Dancing at length directed
Bucks to stick close to him, whatever happened, and to fight the best
he could in case they were cornered.
Ahead of them the glare of the conflagration lighted the sky and the
air was filled with the shouts of the mob surrounding the fighting
vigilantes. Only half a block away, men were hurrying up and down
Front Street, while the two clambered along the obscure and
half-opened street leading to the jail and parallel to the main
thoroughfare.
Dancing, to whom every foot of the rocky way was familiar and who
could get over obstructions in the dark as well as if it were day, led
the way with a celerity that kept his companion breathing fast. Both
had long legs, but Dancing in some mysterious way planted his feet
with marvellous certainty of effect, while Bucks slipped and
floundered over rocks and brush piles and across gullies until they
took a short cut through a residence yard and found themselves on the
heels of the mob surrounding the burning jail and in the glare of the
fire in upper Front Street.
"Stick close, sonny," muttered the lineman, "we must push through
these fellows before they reco'nize us."
He stooped as he spoke and picked up a piece of hickory--the broken
handle of a spike-maul. "Railroad property anyway," he muttered. "It
might come handy. But gum shoes for us now till we are forced. Perhaps
we can sneak all the way through."
Without further ado Dancing, with Bucks on his heels, elbowed his way
into the crowd. The outer fringe of this he knew was not dangerous,
being made up chiefly of onlookers. But in another minute the two were
in the midst of a yelling, swaying mix-up between the aggressive mob
and a thin fringe of vigilantes, who, hard-pressed, had abandoned the
jail to its fate and were trying to fight their way down town.
Dancing, like a war-horse made suddenly mad by smoke of battle,
throwing caution and strategy to the winds, suddenly released a yell
and began to lay about him. His appearance in the fray was like that
of a bombshell timed to explode in its midst. The slugging gamblers
turned in astonishment on the new fighting man, but they were not
long left in doubt as to which cause he espoused. In the next instant
they were actively dodging his flashing club, and the vigilantes
encouraged as if by an angel fought with fresh vigor.
Bucks was stunned by the suddenness of Bill's change of tactics. It
was evident that he had completely forgotten his mission and now meant
to enjoy himself in the unequal fray that he had burst in upon. The
vigilantes cried a welcome to their new ally. But one cry rose above
every other and that was from Dancing's own throat as he laid about
with his club.
Consternation seized the rioters and they were thrown for a moment
into confusion. They then recognized Dancing and a shout went up.
"Railroad men!" cried a dozen of the mob at once.
And above these cries came one wheezing but stentorian voice: "You've
got 'em now; finish 'em!"
Bucks knew that voice. It was Rebstock.
The crowd took up the cry, but the lineman, swinging right and left
with terrific strength and swiftness, opened a way ahead of him while
Bucks kept close by till Dancing had cut through to the vigilantes.
Then, turning with them as they raised their own cry of triumph,
Dancing helped to drive the discomfited rioters back.
It was only for a moment that the vigilantes held their advantage.
Outnumbering the little band, the rioters closed in on their flanks
and showered stones upon them. Bill Dancing was the centre of the
fight. A piece of rock laid open his scalp, but, though the mob was
sure of getting him, he fought like a whirlwind. They redoubled their
efforts to bring him down. One active rioter with the seam of some
other fight slashed across his forehead struck down a vigilante and
ran in on Dancing. It was Seagrue. The lineman, warned by Bucks,
turned too late to escape a blow on the head that would have dazed a
bullock. But Dancing realized the instant he received the blow that
Seagrue had delivered it.
He whirled like a wounded bear and sprang at Seagrue, taking upon his
shoulder a second blow hardly less terrific than the first. Before
Seagrue could strike again, Dancing was upon him. Tearing at each
other's throats the two men struggled, each trying to free his right
arm. Seagrue was borne steadily backward. Then the lineman's big arm
shot upward and down like a trip-hammer and Seagrue sunk limp to the
ground.
The vigilantes themselves, profiting by the momentary diversion, got
away. Bucks had seen the peril of being separated from their friends,
but he was powerless to avert it. As Dancing struck Seagrue down, his
enemies closed in behind the moving vigilantes. Bucks fought his way
to the lineman's side and in another instant the two were beset.
Dancing, hard-pressed, made a dash to break through the circle to
liberty. Half a dozen men sprang at him, and trampling Bucks
completely under foot aimed their blows at his defender.
Dancing saw Bucks fall and, clubbing his way to his side, caught Bucks
from the ground by the coat collar, and dragging him with his left
hand, swung with his right hand his deadly club. Nothing less would
have saved them. The fight, moving every instant after Dancing,
reached the broad wooden steps leading from the jail yard to the
street. Down these the lineman, stubborn and bleeding, drove a
desperate way. And Bucks, able again to handle himself, was putting up
a good fight when, to his horror, Dancing, fighting down the flight of
steps, stumbled and fell.
Half a dozen men, with a yell, jumped for him. Bucks thought the
finish had come. He sprang into the fight and, armed only with a wagon
spoke, cracked right and left wherever he could reach a head. Dancing
he had given over for dead, when to his astonishment the lineman rose
out of the heap about him, shaking off his enemies like rats.
Flames shooting up from the burning jail lighted the scene. Dancing,
bare-headed, and with only a part of his shirt hanging in ribbons from
his left arm, his hair matted in blood across his forehead and his
eyes blazing, was a formidable sight. He had lost his club but he was
at no loss for a weapon. It was said of Bill Dancing in later days
that he could lift a thirty-foot steel rail. Bucks saw him now catch
up a man scrambling in front of him and swing him by the legs like a
battering ram. With this victim, he mowed down men like corks, and,
flinging the man at last bodily into the faces of his friends, he
started like a deer up Cliff Street with Bucks at his heels.
Sure that they now had him, the rioters followed in a swarm. Cliff
Street, only a block long and only half-opened, terminated then at the
cliffs above the gorge of the Medicine River. But darkness under the
brow of the hill helped the fleeing railroad men. Dancing dodged in
and out of the undergrowth that fringed the street line and eluding
his pursuers reached the brow of the cliff unseen. The rioters,
knowing that no escape lay in that direction, beat the bushes that
fringed the half-opened street, confident that the fugitives were in
hiding among them.
For an ordinary man, indeed, there was no escape toward the river. A
wall of rock fell a hundred feet to the water's edge. The crowd,
growing every moment as the word passed that Dancing was whipped,
left the hunted man and his companion little time for decision.
Dancing, in truth, needed but little. His purpose was fixed the
instant he saw himself cut off from every other chance. He halted only
on the brink of the precipice itself. Catching Bucks's arm, he told
him hurriedly what they must do and cautioned him. "It's the last
chance, sonny," he murmured, as his iron fingers gripped the boy's
arm. "We can make it--if you do exactly as I tell you."
The gathering cries closed in behind them while they were taking off
their shoes. Creeping on his hands and knees along the brow of the
cliff, Dancing felt out his location with his fingers. And with that
sixth sense of instinct which rises to a faculty when dangers thicken
about a resolute man, the lineman found what he sought.
He caught at the root of a rock-bound cedar, swung himself over the
cliff, and called to Bucks to follow. Bucks acted wholly on faith. The
blackness below was impenetrable, and perhaps better so, since he
could not see what he was undertaking. Only the roar of the river
came up from the depths. It sounded a little ominous as Bucks,
grasping the cedar root, swung over and after an agonizing instant
felt a support for his feet. He stood on a ledge of rock so narrow
that it gave only a footing even in daylight, but Bucks was called on
to descend it in the middle of the night.
For any man to have attempted the feat seemed to him, the next
morning, sheer insanity. Dancing, however, knew the treacherous face
of the river wall. To his gigantic size and strength he united the
sureness of a cat in climbing up or down a mountain arete. Often he
had crept with a telegraph wire, unaided, where his best men hung back
even in harness. There was, in fact, no time now for halting. The
rioters, eager on the trail, were calling for torches, and, if
discovered before they reached the water, the lives of the two men
would be snuffed out by dropping rocks on their heads.
Flattening himself as he had been bidden to do and with his cheek laid
to the face of the sheer rock, clasping from time to time with his
outstretched left hand such slight uneven surfaces as he could feel,
Bucks moved to the right after Dancing, who gripped his extended right
hand and led him foot by foot down the perilous way. Not a word was
spoken, hardly a breath drawn, as the lineman felt for his slippery
foothold with the deftness of a gorilla, and, pressing Bucks's hand as
the signal to take a follow step, he made a slow but steady descent.
The roar of the river already sounded in Bucks's ears like a cataract,
but the shock of extreme danger had numbed his apprehension. Chips of
the sharp granite cut his feet like knives, and he knew that the
sticky feeling upon his bare soles was blood oozing through the broken
skin. He had already given up expectation of ever leaving the gorge
alive and merely responded to his companion's will. The one thought
that came to his mind was curiosity as to what Dancing ever expected
to do if they reached the bottom without accident.
Suddenly above the roar of the river he heard the muffled crack of
fire-arms coming as if out of another world. He wondered whether they
themselves were already being fired at, but experienced nothing more
than curiosity in the thought. Only the pressure of the big hand that
gripped his own impressed itself powerfully upon his consciousness,
and at each squeeze he put his foot forward mechanically, intent on a
dull resolve to obey orders.
He presently felt a new signal from the long fingers that wound around
his own. He tried to answer by stepping, but Dancing whose face was
turned away, restrained him. Then it flashed on Bucks that the lineman
was signalling Morse to him, and that the dot-and-dash squeezes meant:
"Half-way down. Half-way down."
Bucks answered with one word: "Hurrah!" But he squeezed it along the
nerves and muscles like lightning.
He could hear the labored breathing of his companion as he strained at
intervals every particle of his strength to reach a new footing of
safety. Every vine and scrubby bush down the cliff wall was tested for
its strength and root, and Dancing held Bucks's hand so that he could
instantly release it if he himself should plunge to death.
Bucks had already been told that if this happened he must hang as long
as he could without moving and if he could hold on till daylight he
would be rescued by railroad men. All this was going through his head
when, responding to a signal to step down, and, unable to catch some
word that Dancing whispered, he stretched his leg so far that he lost
his balance. He struggled to recover. Dancing called again sharply to
him, but he was too wrought up to understand. Dizziness seized him,
and resigning himself, with an exclamation, to death, he felt himself
dropping into space.
In the next instant he was caught in Dancing's arms:
"Gosh darn it, why didn't you jump, as I told you?" exclaimed the
lineman, setting him up on his feet. "You pretty near clean upset us
both."
"Where are we, Bill?" muttered Bucks, swallowing his shock.
"Right here at the water, and them fellows up there beating the bush
for us. There's shooting down town, too. Some new deviltry. How good a
swimmer are you, Bucks? By gum, I forgot to ask you before you
started."
"I can swim better than I can climb, Bill."
"We've only a quarter of a mile and downstream at that. And the
current here would float a keg of nails."
"How about rocks, Bill?" asked Bucks, peering dubiously toward the
roar of the rushing river.
"All up-stream from here," returned Dancing, edging down the shelving
table toward the water. "Lock arms with me so I don't lose you, sonny.
What in Sam Hill is that?"
Far down the river the two saw a tongue of flame leaping into the sky.
They watched it for a moment. Dancing was the first to locate the
conflagration, which grew now, even as they looked, by leaps and
bounds. The two stood ready to plunge into the river when a fire of
musketry echoed up the gorge. The lineman clutched Bucks's arm.
"There's fighting going on down there now. What's that smokestack? By
Jing, the roundhouse is on fire!"