locks click as the hammers are brought to full cock. The foremost
runner is almost at the iron stand; his hand is outstretched to grasp
it when a gasping, warning cry reaches his ears; glancing back he sees
his fellows scattering to either side, and one look at the smooth
rolling car reveals the cause: two carbines are levelled at him, and
flat he throws himself on his face and rolls to one side amid derisive
laughter from the strikers themselves. A little farther on a knot of
surly rioters are gathered on the track. No warning whistle sounds and
the clanging bell is too far to the rear to attract their attention.
"Out of the way there!" is the blunt, roughly-spoken order. No time
this for standing on ceremony. Vengeful and scowling the men spring
aside, some stooping to pick up rocks, others reaching into their
pockets for the ready pistol; but rocks are dropped and pistols
undrawn as the train whirls rapidly by, and wrath gives place to
mystification. Who--what are these strange, silent, stubbly-bearded,
sun-tanned fellows in slouch hats, flannel shirts, and the worn old
black belts over the shoulder? Even the engine has its guard, and half
a dozen of them, perched upon the tender, have levelled their
carbines to flank and rear, ready to let drive into the crowd the
instant a brick is heaved or a trigger pulled.
And so into the great stone station they roll, and here they find the
platforms jammed with citizens,--some drawn by curiosity, some active
sympathizers in the strike, and many of them prominent leaders of the
mob surging in the crowded thoroughfare without. The train has hardly
come to a stand when from every direction the mass of outsiders is
heaving up around it.
"Now, Feeny, clear the platform to the left. Take the other side,
Wing," says Drummond, quietly, to the officer at the front door of the
next car.
In the very fraction of a second the first sergeant and a dozen men
have leaped from the deck, and straight into the heart of the crowd
they go. "Back with ye! Out o' this!" are the stern, determined
orders, emphasized by vigorous prods with the heavy carbine butts.
Astonished at methods so prompt and decided, there is only such
resistance as the weight and bulk of those in rear can offer, and that
is but momentary. The sight of those gleaming Gatling barrels, the
stern, brief orders and the rapid, confident advance combine to
overcome all idea of resistance. On both sides, at the head of the
train, the huge crowd, half laughing, half suffocating, is heaved back
upon itself and sent like a great human wave rolling up to the iron
lattice at the office end. Meantime, without an instant's delay the
battalion springs out from the cars, forms ranks on the north
platform, counts fours, and then, arms at right shoulder, away it goes
with swinging, steady tramp around the rear of its train, across the
parallel rows of rails, and in another moment, greeted by tremendous
cheers from the occupants of long lines and high tiers of stores,
offices, business blocks, the grimy, dusty, war-worn campaigners come
striding down the crowded street. Heavens! how the people shout! Staid
old burghers, portly business-men, trot panting alongside waving their
hats and cheering themselves hoarse. "Them fellers hasn't no _bo_quets
in their guns," is the way a street _gamin_ expresses it.
"Whither are they going?"--"What have they first to do?" is the cry.
Police officials ride now with the captain temporarily in command: a
carriage has whisked the colonel over to head-quarters, but haste!
haste! is the word. On they go, silent, grim, with the alkali dust of
the North Platte crossing still coating their rusty garb. A great
swing bridge looms ahead: a dozen police deploy on either side and
check the attending crowd. Over they go at route step, and then,
turning to the right, tramp on down a roughly-paved street, growing
dim and dimmer every minute with stifling smoke. Presently they are
crossing snake-like lines of hose, gashed and useless; passing fire
apparatus standing unhitched and neglected; passing firemen exhausted
and listless. Then occasional squads of scowling men give way before
their steady tramp and are driven down alley-ways and around
street-corners by reviving police. Then the head of column turns to
the left and comes full upon a scene of tumult,--a great building in
flames, a great mob surging about it defying police interference and
bent apparently on gutting the structure from roof to cellar and
pillaging the neighboring stores. Now, men of the ----th, here's work
cut out for you! Drive that mob! bloodlessly if you can, bloodletting
if you must!
The colonel is again at the head. All are on foot. "Left front into
line, double time;" the first company throws its long double rank from
curb to curb, Drummond, its commander, striding at its front; Wing,
his subaltern, anxiously watching him from among the file-closers.
Already they have reached the rearmost of the rioting groups and, with
warning cries and imprecations, these are scurrying to either side and
falling into the hands of the accompanying police. Thicker, denser
grows the smoke; thicker, denser the mob.
"Clear this street! Out of the way!" are the orders, and for a
half-block or so clear it is. Then comes the first opposition. On a
pile of lumber a tall, stalwart man in grizzled beard and slouching
hatevidently a leader of mark among the mob--is shouting orders and
encouragement. What he says cannot be heard, but now, tightly wedged
between the rows of buildings, the mob is at bay, and, yelling mad
response to the frantic appeals and gesticulations of their leader, at
least two thousand reckless and infuriated men have faced the little
battalion surging steadily up the narrow street.
"You may have to fire, Drummond," says the colonel, coolly. "Get in
rear of your company." Obedient, the tall lieutenant turns and follows
his chief along the front of his advancing line so as to pass around
the flank. He is not fifty paces from the pile on which the mob
leader, with half a dozen half-drunken satellites, is shouting his
exhortations. Just as the lieutenant's arm is grazing grim old Feeny's
elbow as he passes the first sergeant's station a brick comes hurtling
through the air, strikes full upon the back of the officer's
unprotected head, and sends him, face forward, into the muddy street.
In the yell of triumph that follows, Wing's voice for an instant is
unheard. Obedient to its principle, "Never load until about to fire,"
the battalion's carbines are still empty, but all on a sudden "C"
troop halts. "With ball cartridges _load_!" is Wing's hoarse, stern
order. "Now aim low when I give the word. _Fire by company._
_Company_, READY!" and, like one, the hammers click. But no
command "Aim" follows. "Look out! Look out!--For God's sake don't
fire! Out of the way!" are the frantic yells from the throats of the
mob. Away they go. Scattering down side streets, alley-ways, behind
lumber-piles, everywhere--anywhere. Many even throw themselves flat on
their faces to escape the expected tempest of lead. "Don't fire," says
the colonel, mercifully. "Forward, double time, and give them the
butt. We'll support you." Down from the lumber-piles come the
erstwhile truculent leaders. "Draw cartridge, men," orders Wing in
wrath and disappointment. "Now, butts to the front, and give them
hell. _Forward!_" And out he leaps to take the lead, dashing straight
into the thick of the scattering mob, his men after him. There is a
minute of wild yelling, cursing, of resounding blows and trampling
feet, and in the midst of it all a single shot, and when Wing,
breathless, is finally halted two squares farther on, only a dozen
broken-headed wretches remain along the street to represent the
furious mob that confronted them a few minutes before. Only these few
and one writhing, bleeding form, around which half a dozen policemen
are curiously gathered, and at whose side the battalion surgeon has
just knelt.
"He's shot through and through," is his verdict, presently. "No power
can save him. Who is he?"
"About the worst and most dangerous ringleader of riot this town has
known, sir," is the answer of one of the police officials. "No one
knew where he came from either--or his real name."
And then in his dying agony the fallen demagogue turns, and the other
side of his twitching face comes uppermost. Even through the thin,
grizzly beard there is plainly seen an ugly, jagged scar stretching
from ear to chin.
"This isn't his first row by any manner of means, if it is his last,"
says a sergeant of police. "Look at that! Who shot him, anyhow?"
"I did," is the cool, prompt answer, and Sergeant Feeny raises his
hand to his carried carbine and stands attention as he sees the
surgeon kneeling there. "I did, and just in the nick of time. He had
drawn a bead on our lieutenant; but even if he hadn't I'd have downed
him, and so would any man in that company yonder." And Feeny points to
where "C" troop stands resting after its charge.
"You knew him, then?"
"Knew him instantly, as a deserter, thafe, highway-man, and
murderer,--knew him as Private Bland in Arizona, and would know him
anywhere by that scar."
A policeman bends and wrenches a loaded revolver from the clutching,
quivering fingers just as Wing comes striding back and shoulders a way
into the group.
"Is he badly hurt, doctor? That was an awful whack."
"It isn't the lieutenant, sir," says Feeny, respectfully, but with
strange significance in his tone as he draws a policeman aside.
"Look!"
And Wing, bending over, gives one glance into the dying face, then
covers his eyes with his hands and turns blindly, dizzily, away.
That evening a host of citizens are gathered about the bivouac of the
battalion at the water-works while the trumpets are sounding tattoo. A
few squares away the familiar notes come floating in through the open
windows of a room where Jim Drummond is lying on a most comfortable
sofa, which has been rolled close to the casement, where every whiff
of the cool lake breeze can fan his face, and where, glancing
languidly around, he contrasts the luxury of these surroundings with
the rude simplicity of the life he has lived and loved so many years.
Gray-haired George Harvey, kindly Mrs. Stone, his sister, blissful,
beautiful Fanny Wing with burly baby Harvey in her arms and her proud,
soldierly husband by her side, and a tall, lovely, silent girl have
all been there to minister to his needs and bid him thrice welcome and
make him feel that here, if anywhere on earth, he is at home. And here
the battalion surgeon and the family physician unite in declaring he
must remain until released by their order, and here for three days
and nights he is nursed and petted and made so much of that he is
unable to recognize himself, and here sister Puss comes to cry over
and kiss and bless him and, in her turn, to be made much of and
forbidden to leave, and then, after her big brother's return to duty
with the battalion, now being fed and _fêted_ by all the North Side,
he must needs come over every evening to see her; and, now that
presentable uniforms have arrived and the rough beards have been
shaved and the men of the old regiment look less like "toughs," but no
more like American soldiers as our soldiers look in the field of their
sternest service, her sisterly pride in her big brother is beautiful
to see,--so is her self-abnegation, for, somehow or other, though he
comes to see her he stays to look at Ruth Harvey, shy, silent, and
beautiful, and soon, as though by common consent, that corner of the
big parlor is given up to those two, the tall, stalwart trooper and
the slender, willowy girl. And one evening he comes earlier than usual
in manifest discomposure, and soon it transpires that important orders
have reached him. Fanny turns pale. "Are you--all--ordered back?" she
cries, and is for an instant radiant at his assurance that the order
involves only himself. He is called to department head-quarters to
report in person to the general commanding, who is about to make a
tour through the mountains in Northwestern Wyoming and wants Drummond
with the escort. She is radiant only until she catches sight of her
sister's face. It is not so very warm an evening, yet she marshals the
household out on the steps, out on the back veranda,--anywhere out of
that parlor, where, just as the faint notes of the trumpets are heard,
sounding their martial "tattoo," and just as Lieutenant Wing,
returning from a tiptoed visit to his sleeping boy and escaped for the
moment from the vigilance of his wife, now happens to go blundering
in,--there is heard from the dimly-lighted corner near the piano the
sound of subdued sobbing, the sound of a deep, manly voice, low,
soothing, wondrously happy, the sound--a sound--indescribable in
appropriate English, yet never misunderstood,--a sound at which Wing
halts short, pauses one instant irresolute; then faces about and goes
tip-toeing out into the brilliant sheen of the vestibule lamps,--into
the brilliant gleam of his fond wife's questioning, reproachful eyes.
And for all answer, it being perhaps too public a spot for other
demonstration, Wing simply hugs himself.
That night, under the arching roof of the great railway station, the
comrades, so long united by the ties of such respect and affection as
are engendered only by years of danger and hardship borne in common,
and now so happily united by a closer tie, are pacing the platform
absorbed in parting words.
"Jim, think what a load I've had to carry all these five years and
forbidden by my good angel to breathe a word of it to you."
"I can't realize my own happiness, old man. I never dreamed that,
after she got out into the world and saw for herself, that she would
remember her girlish fancy or have another thought for me."
"I know you didn't. Yet Fan says that ever since the voyage in the
'Newbern' little Ruth has never had a thought for anybody else."
There is a moment's silence, then Wing speaks again:
"There has not been time for mother's letter to reach me. I had to
write, of course, and tell her of the fate that at last befell him. Do
you know I feel as though after all it was my hand that did it."
"How so?"
"Feeny says he knew him the instant that side of his face was turned
towards him,--the side my knife laid open years ago. That was a fatal
scar."
THE END.
NOVELS BY CAPT. KING.
CAPTAIN BLAKE. Illustrated. 12mo Cloth, $1.25
THE COLONEL'S DAUGHTER. Illustrated. " 1.25
THE COLONEL'S CHRISTMAS DINNER " 1.25
MARION'S FAITH. Illustrated " 1.25
STARLIGHT RANCH " 1.00
KITTY'S CONQUEST " 1.00
LARAMIE " 1.00
THE DESERTER, AND FROM THE RANKS " 1.00
TWO SOLDIERS, AND DUNRAVEN RANCH " 1.00
A SOLDIER'S SECRET, AND AN ARMY PORTIA " 1.00
FOR SALE BY ALL BOOKSELLERS.
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY, Publishers,
715 and 717 Market Street, Philadelphia.