The men in the barricade were lined up for orders. Ammunition was
passed and volunteers were called to form a charging party. The
vigilantes formed in the glare of the burning shops.
From the head-quarters of the rioters in Front Street came scattering
shots and cries as a huge volume of sparks shot up into the black sky.
Ten men under Hawk and ten under Dancing made the supporting party for
the vigilantes, who asked only that a line of retreat be kept
open. This Stanley had undertaken to provide. Atkinson, making a
wide detour back of the station, led his men down the railroad
tracks and, reaching a point where concealment was no longer
possible, double-quicked up Fort Street and charged with his party
across the little park.
They had already been seen. A line of men, posted behind the places
that line Front Street at that point, opened fire. It was the worst
possible answer to make to men in the temper of the scattered line
that swept up the street in the glare of the burning buildings.
Wounded men dropped out of the charge, but those that went on carried
with them a more implacable determination. Re-forming their line under
cover of the cedars at the corner of Fort Street, they directed an
effective fire into the dance halls adjoining, and the rioters hiding
within scurried from them like rats.
But the vigilantes were intent first of all on capturing and burning
the hall known as the Three Horses, and the rioters rallied to its
defence. As the place was assailed, the doors were barred and a sharp
fire was poured through the windows. The assailants were driven back.
Bill Dancing, heated and stubborn, refused to retreat and, picking up
a sledge dropped by a fleeing vigilante, attacked the barred doors
single-handed.
The street, swept by the bullets of the fray, rang with the splitting
blows of the heavy hammer, as the lineman, his long hair flying from
his forehead, swung at the thick panels. Within, the gamblers tried to
shoot him from the windows, but he stood close and his friends kept
up a constant supporting fire that drove the defenders back.
From above they hurled chairs and tables down on Dancing, but his head
seemed furniture-proof, and scorning to waste time in dodging he
hammered away, undaunted, until he splintered the panels and the stout
lock-stiles gave. The vigilantes, running up, tore through the door
chains with crowbars and rushed the building.
The fight in the big room lasted only a moment. The rioters crowded
toward the rear and escaped as best they could. Vigilantes with
torches made short work of the rest of it. Dancing stove in a cask of
alcohol, and as the attacking party ran out of the front door a torch
was flung back into the spreading pool.
A great burst of fire lighted the street. The next moment the long
building was in flames.
Emboldened by this success and driving the outlaws from their further
retreats, the vigilantes fired one after another of the gaudy places
that lined the upper street. Met by close shooting at every turn, the
rioters were driven up the hill and fighting desperately were pursued
to cover by men now as savage as themselves. The scattered clashes
were brief and deadly. The whole upper town was on fire. Men fleeing
for their lives skulked in the shadows of the side streets and the
constant scattering report of fire-arms added to the terrors of the
night.
Hour after hour the conflagration raged and day broke at last on the
smoking ruins of the town of Medicine Bend. The work of the
vigilantes had been mercilessly thorough. Along the railroad track
stiffened bodies hanging from the cross-bars of telegraph poles in
the gloom of the breaking day told a ghastly story of justice
summarily administered to the worst of the offenders. In the gloom
of the smoking streets stragglers roamed unmolested among the
ruins; for of the outlaws, killed or hunted out of the town, none
were now left to oppose the free passage of any one from end to end of
Medicine Bend.