THE MAN WHO INTERFERED.
In an upper room of the boarding house that occupied the story above
the Flash Light Saloon a man sat at an open window, looking down on
the exciting scenes described.
He had taken that room the day before, had haunted the bar of the
Flash Light a good deal since that time, and hinted that he was the
wonderful inventor of something that would produce rain. He had not
touched much liquor, due doubtless to the fact that his finances were
obviously at a low ebb. At least, this was the opinion of Rainey, who
sized up the financial ability of every man who came his way.
Rainey had paid little attention to this man, who had signed his name
on the boarding-house register as Silas Deland.
Silas Deland had been sitting by that upper window when Buffalo Bill
rode up in front of the Flash Light and had been surrounded by the
mob, and he had continued to sit there until after the appearance of
Wild Bill. He seemed deeply interested in what was occurring, and
leaned now and then from the window. After a while he produced a
revolver.
Finally he went to the “grip” from which he had taken some cartridges
for the revolver, and dug out of it a round object of the size and
shape of an egg.
With this in his hand, Silas Deland returned to his post by the
window, and again looked down on the mob that surrounded the two
prairie pards.
Once or twice he lifted the hand which held the egg-shaped object, as
if he meant to hurl it into the midst of that screaming crowd. But he
hesitated, and continued to watch and listen until he saw Wild Bill
draw his horse around and Buffalo Bill leap to mount behind him. Then
the man’s hand went up again, and the white, egg-shaped object shot
through the window.
There followed a quick exploding puff at the point where it struck
the ground, and out of that exploding puff shot a very rain of fire
and smoke. Instantly the street was obscured by the smoke and fire,
and the members of the mob fell back, thinking that a bomb had burst
in their midst.
There was a quick leap of Wild Bill’s horse, and, as it sprang away
through the smoke, two men were mounted on it, and they were the
prairie pards.
“Hang tight!” Wild Bill had said, as he drove the spurs deep and the
horse made its first wild jump.
It was out in the street and away from the Flash Light Saloon so
quickly that the mob did not know it. In fact, the men there were
paralyzed for the moment by the strange explosion. They had rushed
pell-mell, trampling and pushing, and even treading each other down.
At the window above, all unsuspected, sat the strange man of the red
face and fiery nose; and he chuckled audibly when he saw the panic
his little bomb had created.
The two border pards were in the main street, on Wild Bill’s fast
horse, and were getting out of Scarlet Gulch at almost railroad speed.
“Ho, ho!” cackled the man at the window, as he saw them go. “See what
a great splutteration a little smoke and fire kindleth!” He peered
down into the street.
“To see the combobberation that thing kicked up one would think that
a dozen men are lying dead down there! Yet I’ll bet, unless some of
’em got burned a bit by the fire, not a single man Jack of ’em is
hurt in the least.”
It was true, as the members of the mob were already beginning to
discover. If the thing that had exploded in their midst had been a
bomb of deadly character, it had not harmed a man. As soon as they
saw that, their shattered courage began to return.
Rainey and Bug-eye Slocum began to roar their wrath again, and to
shout commands to their followers.
“Foller ’em!” yelled Rainey.
“Those bomb-hurling miscreants, who had imported the methods of
Russia into this land of the free and home of the brave, must be
captured at once,” screeched Slocum, oratorical even in his rage.
“What, ho!” he yelled. “A hundred simoleons to the man what brings
either one of ’em back, dead or alive!”
No one was heartless enough at the moment--or thought enough, perhaps
it ought to be said--to ask Bug-eye where he expected to get the
hundred dollars he offered so freely, for not once in a decade was he
known to have so much money.
No one stopped to question. They were furious as baffled foxhounds,
and all were yelping, to the effect that the escaping men must be
pursued and brought back, and hung for this outrage.
The man at the window above looked down and chuckled, and then
laughed and chuckled again, rubbing his hands together in a sort of
delirious glee.
“Ho, ho!” he said. “They think the bomb was hurled by one of the
prairie pards. Well, it’s natural that they should! They’d never
suspect poor old Silas Deland up here of doing a thing like that.
Poor old Silas is too simple-minded and altogether too innocent an
old whisky tub to even think of doing a thing like that. Ho, ho! Hear
the heathen rage and imagine vain things. It’s fun to the man up the
tree.”
A pursuit was begun in hot haste, the members of the mob seizing
whatever horses they could lay their hands on. But with the scouts
already out of the town, and the darkness heavy beyond the circle
of the street lamps, it seemed unlikely that any pursuit could be
effectual.