BELLS' VALIANT FIGHT
"We'll get there as soon as we can," Dick said. "It may not do any
good; but we'll demand a word and give them an argument. I haven't
time to thank you now, Mrs. Meredith, but some day----"
"You owe me no thanks," was her rejoinder. "It is I who owe you. Turn
about, you know."
The big man said nothing, but took a step nearer to her horse, and
looked up into her face with his penetrating eyes. He reached up and
closed his hand over both of hers, and held them for an instant, and
then whirled back into the cabin to get his hat. The horse pivoted and
started away.
"If I see Bells before you do," a voice floated up from the shadows
below, where the moon had not yet penetrated, "I'll tell him you're
coming. So long."
As the partners dog-trotted down the trail, she was already a long way
in advance. Now and then, as they panted up the steep path leading
away behind the Rattler, whose lights glowed dimly, they heard faint
sounds telling them that she was hastening back to Goldpan. The
winding of the trail took them away from the immediate roar of the
stamp mill behind, and they were still in the gloom, when they saw the
horse and rider outlined for a moment high above them on the crest of
the divide and they thought she stopped for a moment and looked back.
Then the silhouette seemed to float down out of sight, and was gone.
At the top, wordless, and sweating with effort, they filled their
lungs, hitched their belts tighter, and plunged into the shadows
leading toward the straggling rows of lights far below. They ran now,
doggedly, hoping to arrive in the camp before the meeting came to an
end.
"All we want," Bill said jerkily, as his feet pounded on the last
decline, "is a chance to argue it out with the men themselves before
this Denver feller gets his work in. I'm entitled to talk to 'em. I've
got my own card, and am as good a union man as any of 'em. The boys'll
be reasonable if they stop to think."
They hastened up the roadway of the street, which was, as at any hour
of the night, filled with moving men and clamorous with sound. They
knew that the miners' hall was at its farthest end over the Golden Age
Saloon, and so lost no time in directing their steps toward it. A
group in the roadway compelled them to turn out; and they were
hurrying past, when a high, angry voice arrested them.
"And that's what they did to me--me, old Bells Park, who is
sixty-four!"
Dick turned into the crowd, followed by his partner, and began forcing
his way through. Bells was screaming and sobbing now in anger, and
venting a tirade of oaths. "If I'd been younger they couldn't have
done it so easily. If I'd 'a' had my gun, I'd 'a' killed some of 'em,
I would!"
As the partners gained the little opening around him, the light from a
window disclosed the white-headed, little man. Two men were
half-holding him up. His face was a mass of blood, which one of his
supporters was endeavoring to wipe away with a handkerchief, and from
all sides came indignant, sympathetic mutterings.
"Who did that?" roared the heavy, infuriated voice of Bill as he
turned to those around him.
Bells, whose eyes were swollen shut, recognized the voice, and lurched
forward.
"Some fellers backin' up that Denver thug," he wailed. "I was tryin'
to hold 'em till you come. He had the meetin' packed with a lot of
bums I never saw before, and, when I told 'em what I thought of 'em
and him, he ordered me thrown out. I tore my card to pieces and
chucked 'em in his fat face, and then one of the fellers that came
with him hit me. They threw me down the stairs, and might 'a' killed
me if there hadn't been one or two of my friends there. They call
'emselves union miners! The dirty loafers!" And his voice screamed
away again into a line of objurgations and anathemas until Bill
quieted him.
"Here, Dick," he said, "give us a hand. We'll take him over to Lily's
rooms and have her get Doc Mills."
His voice was unusually calm and contained. Dick had heard him use
that tone but once before, when he made a proposition to a man in an
Arizona camp that the road was wide, the day fine, and each well
armed. He had helped bury the other man after that meeting, so now
read the danger note.
"I'll go get The Lily to come up and open the door," one of Bells'
supporters said; "and won't you go for Doc?" He addressed the man on
the other side of the engineer.
"Sure!" replied the other.
Within five minutes they were in Mrs. Meredith's rooms again; and it
seemed to Dick, as he looked around its dainty fittings, that it was
forever to be a place of tragedy; for the memory of that terribly
burned victim of the fire was still there, and he seemed to see her
lying, scorched and unconscious, on the white counterpane.
"His nose is busted, I think," his partner said to The Lily, whose
only comment was an abrupt exclamation: "What a shame! The cowards!"
He turned to the woman with his set face, and, still speaking in that
calm, deadly voice, said: "Do you happen to have your gun up here?"
Her eyes opened wider, and Dick was about to interpose, when she
answered understandingly: "Yes; but I'll not give it to you, Bill
Mathews."
"I'm sorry," he said, as quietly as if his request or her refusal had
been mere desultory conversation. "I might need one in a pinch; but
if you can't spare it, I reckon the boy and me can do what we have to
do without one."
He turned and walked from the room and Dick followed, hoping to argue
him from that dangerous mood.
"Say, Bill," he said, "isn't it about bad enough without any more
trouble?"
"What? You don't mean to say you're not with me?" exclaimed the miner,
suddenly turning on him and stopping abruptly in the street. "Are you
for lettin' 'em get away with it? Of course you ain't! You always
stick. Come on."
They saw that the lights in the miners' hall were out, and began a
steady tour of the saloons in the vicinity. One of their own men was
in one of them--Smuts, the blacksmith, cursing loudly and volubly as
they entered.
"Them boys has always treated us white clean through," he bawled,
banging his fist on the bar, "and a lot of you pikers that don't know
nothin' about the case sit around like a lot of yaps and let this
Denver bunch pack the meetin' and declare a strike. Then you let the
same Denver bunch jump on poor old Bells, and hammer him to a pulp
after they've hustled him out of the door, instead of follerin' out to
see that he don't get the worst of it. Bah! I'm dead sick of you."
The partners had paused while listening to him, and he now saw them.
"Come out here, Smuts," Dick said, turning toward the door, and the
smith followed them.
"So they've ordered a strike on us, have they?" Dick asked.
"Yes," was the blacksmith's heated response; "but it don't go for me!
I stick."
"Then if you're with us, where is that Denver bunch?" Bill asked; and
Dick knew that any effort to deter his partner from his purpose would
prove useless.
"They all went down to the High Light," the smith answered. "Have you
seen Bells?"
"Yes, and taken care of him. Now I'm goin' to take care of the man
that done it."
The blacksmith banged a heavy hand on the superintendent's shoulder.
"Bully for you! I'm with you. We'll go together!" he exclaimed, and at
once led the way toward the flaming lights of the High Light but a few
doors below.
Dick nerved himself for the inevitable, and grimly walked with them as
they entered the doors. As they stood there, with the big miner in
front, a sudden hush invaded the babel of noise, and men began to look
in their direction. The grim, determined man in the lead, glaring here
and there with cold, terrible eyes, was too noticeable a figure to
escape observation. The set face of his partner, scarcely less
determined, and the smith, with brawny, clenched hands, and bushy,
black brows drawn into a fierce scowl, completed the picture of a
desperate trio come to avenge.
"You're the man I'm after," suddenly declared Bill, pointing a finger
at Thompson, of Denver, who had been the center of an admiring group.
"You're the one that's responsible for old Bells. Let's see if you or
any of your bunch are as brave with a younger man. Come outside, won't
you?"
When first he began to speak, in that silky, soft rumble, Thompson,
who was nearly as large as Mathews, assumed an air of amused disdain;
but before the speech was ended his face went a little white.
"Oh, go on away, you drunken loafers!" he said, half-turning, as if to
resume his conversation.
Instantly Bill sprang at him; and it seemed that he launched his
sinewy bulk with a tiger's directness and deadliness straight through
the ten feet intervening. He drove his fist into the face of the
Denver man, and the latter swept back against those behind him. Again
he lifted the merciless fist, and now began striking with both with
incredible rapidity. The battered Thompson was driven back, to fall
against a faro layout. The miner bent him backward over the table
until he was resting on the wildly scattered gold and silver coins,
and struck again, and this time the blood spurted in a stream, to run
across the green cloth, the staring card symbols, and the case rack.
"Don't kill him, Bill, don't kill him!" Dick's shout arose above the
shouts of men and the screams of dance-hall women. He had barely time
to observe, in a flash, that Bill had picked the limp form of Thompson
up, and heavy as it was, lifted it high above his head and thrown it
violently into a vacant corner back of the table in a crumpled heap,
when he was almost felled to the floor by a blow from behind, and
turned to fight his own battle with one of the Denver bullies.
His old gymnasium training stood him in good stead; for, half-dazed by
the blow, he could only reel back and block the heavy fists that were
smashing toward him, when there came a sudden pause, and he saw that
the smith had forced his way forward and lunged, with his heavy, slow
arm, a deadly punch that landed under his assailant's ear, and sent
him limp and dazed to the floor. The smith jumped forward and lifted
his heavy boot to kick the weaving face; but Dick caught him by the
arm, and whirled him back in time to prevent needless brutality.
"There's another of 'em that hit Bells," the smith yelled, pointing to
a man who began desperately edging toward the door.
All the rage of the primitive was aroused in Dick by this time, the
battle lust that dwells, placidly through life, perhaps, in every man,
but which breaks loose in a torrent when once unleashed. He leaped
after the retreating man, seized him by the collar, and gave a wrench
that tore coat, collar, and tie from the man's throat. He drove a blow
into the frightened face, and yelled: "That for old Bells Park! And
that!"
The room had become a pandemonium. Men seemed striking everywhere.
Fists were flying, the bartenders and gamblers shouting for order; and
Dick looked back to where Smuts and Bill were clearing a wide circle
as they went after individual members of Thompson's supporters who
were edging in. Suddenly he saw a man leap on the bar, and recognized
in him the man who had been watchman at the Croix d'Or. Even in that
tempestuous instant Dick wondered at his temerity in entering the
place.
Something glistened in the light, and he saw that the watchman held a
drawn revolver, and was leveling it at Bill. The motion of the fight
was all that prevented the shot, as Mathews leaped to and fro. A dozen
men were between Dick and the watchman; but almost under his hand, at
the edge of the bar, stood a whisky bottle. He dove for it, brought it
up, and threw. The watchman, struck fairly on the side of the head,
dropped off backward, and fell to the floor behind the bar, and his
pistol exploded harmlessly upward.
Instantly there came a change. From terrific uproar the room became as
still as a solitude. Brutal and deadly as had been that fierce minute
or two of battle in which all men fought, or strove to protect
themselves from the maddened ones nearest, the sound of the shot
brought them to their senses. A fight was one thing, a shooting
another. Gunmen as many of them were, they dreaded the results if
firearms were resorted to in that dense mass of excited men, and each
one stood still, panting, listening, calmed.
"I think Bells Park has played even," came a calm, steady voice at the
door.
They turned in surprise. Standing in the doorway, motionless,
scornful, and immaculate, with her white hat still on her head, as if
she had just entered from the street, stood The Lily.
"Poor old Bells! Poor old man!" she said, in that panting silence, and
then for what seemed a long time looked at the floor. "Bells Park,"
she said at last, lifting her eyes, "is dead!"
Suddenly, and before any one could speak, she clenched her hands at
her sides, her eyes blazed, her face twisted, and went white.
"Oh," she said bitterly, in a voice low-pitched and tortured with
passion, "I hate you! I hate you! You brutes of Goldpan. You gambling
dogs! You purchasers of women. From this time, forever, I am done with
you!"
She lifted her arms, opened her hands, and made one wide, sweeping,
inclusive gesture, and turned and walked out into the night.
"Dead! Dead! Bells is dead!"
Dick heard an unutterably sorrowful voice exclaim; and Bill,
half-denuded, his blue shirt in shreds, his face puffed from blows,
and his cut knuckles dripping a slow, trickling red, plunged toward
him, followed by the smith. No one blocked their way as they went,
the three together, as they had come. Behind them, the room broke into
hushed, awed exclamations, and began to writhe and twist, as men
lifted and revived the fallen, and took stock of their injuries.
Two men came running down the street with weapons in hand; and the
moonlight, which had lifted until it shone white and clear into the
squalors of the camp, picked out dim blazes from the stars on their
breasts. They were the town marshal and a deputy sheriff, summoned
from some distant saloon by the turmoil, and hastening forward to
arrest the rioters, not suspecting that men were wanted for a graver
offense. Standing alone in the moonlight, in the middle of the road,
with her hands clenched before her, the three men discerned another
figure, and, when they gained it, saw that in the eyes of The Lily
swam unshed tears.
Dick and the smith hastened onward toward her rooms; but Bill abruptly
turned, after they had passed her, and spoke. They did not hear what
he said. They scarcely noted his pause, for in but two or three steps
he was with them again, grimly hurrying to where lay the man they had
come to love.