FIRST SHOTS OF THE SUMMER
Half-way up the scarred slope of mountain-side, and opposite the mouth
of a deep ravine, hung the crude wooden buildings and costly machinery
of a modern mine. Zigzagging up the heights, the road that led to it
from the ramshackle town in the valley was dotted with groups of
rough-coated men, all plodding steadily onward. Perched on "benches"
and shelves and dumps of blasted rock and fresh-heaped earth, similar
though smaller clusters of buildings dotted the lower slopes, marring
the grand outlines and sweeping curves of the great upheavals, cutting
ugly gashes in the green and swelling billows, yet eagerly sought in
the race for wealth and the greed for gold, because of the treasures
they wrested from the bowels of the everlasting hills. Afar down the
winding valley a turbid stream went frothing away to the foot-hills,
telling of labor, turmoil, and strife. Beside it twisted and turned the
railway that burrowed through the range barely five miles back of the
town, and reappeared on the westward face of the Silver Bow, clinging
dizzily to heights that looked down on rolling miles of pine, cedar,
stunted oak, and almost primeval loneliness. The mineral wealth, said
the experts, lay on the eastward side, and by thousands the miners were
there, swarming like ants all over the surface seeking their golden
gain.
[Illustration: SILVER SHIELD]
And something was surely amiss at the mines when the chimneys of as
many as six of the "plants" gave forth no smoke, when the fires were
out and the men adrift. Something had happened that called the
craftsmen from a dozen other burrows to the aid of those at the new and
lately thronging works, on that shoulder at the mouth of the gorge--the
mine of the Silver Shield. Murder most foul, said the story, had been
done in the name of the law. Armed guards of the property had shot
down, it was said, a half-score of workmen, clamoring only for their
pay and their rights. A son of the principal owner, so it was known,
had ordered his men to fire. A son of an old soldier and settler,
living in peace barely forty miles away, was one of the victims, for he
had taken sides with Long Nolan, who without rhyme or reason had been
discharged, and violently flung from the premises. There had been a
wild rush on the guard, a volley, a recoil, a rally in force, and an
outcry for vengeance. Then the guard had to shoot in earnest and
self-defence, for their lives were at stake. Some of the men had gone
to Argenta to plead with the owners, but most had remained to stir all
hands within ten miles to the support of their fellows. The miscreant
who had ordered "fire" had escaped across to Miners' Joy, only to be
dealt with by sympathizers on the Narrow Gauge; but the men who fired
and who shot to kill were trapped like rats in a hole. Surrounded on
every side, every avenue of escape now guarded, they and the luckless
manager of the mine were cooped in their log fortification, with two
lives and several serious wounds to answer for, and as the sun went
westering this long summer's day they had two hours left in which to
decide--come out and surrender or be burned out where they lay.
Half the village had gone to swell the ranks of the rioters; another
half--slatternly women and unkempt children--swarmed in the single
street and gazed upward at the heights. Every ledge about the
threatened buildings was black with men, men furious with hate and mad
with liquor, men needing only determined and resolute leaders to go in
and finish their fearful work.
But here was their lack. The men they had counted on, one man in
particular on whose account many of their number had braved the guard
and threatened the owners--one man, Long Nolan himself, refused point
blank to have aught to do with them or their plans. Another man, he
whose son lay dying in the village, shot down by the guards, was there,
sad-eyed yet stern-faced, to stay and dissuade them. The one train up
from the East that day--the only one that could come, for now the road
was blown out in a dozen places down the gorge--had brought with it
Nolan and Shiner, with two or three friends at their back, and Nolan
and Shiner, in spite of their wrongs, were pleading hard for peace,
pleading so hard, so earnestly, that by 5 P.M. many a man, American
born, had seen the force of their reasoning and had stepped back from
the front.
But among the killed was a poor lad from the mountains of Bohemia.
Among the vengeful throng were swarms of foreigners who could
understand little or nothing of what Nolan and his friends were saying,
and who speedily would have scorned it could they have understood, for
at five o'clock another speaker took the stand, a man of the people he
called himself, a foreigner long on our shores, yet fluent in the
language of the Slavs, and in ten minutes the torrent was turned. With
terror in his eyes, a man who had long worked with Nolan, a foreigner,
too, came running to the silent, anxious little group of Anglo-Saxons.
"Nolan--Nolan," he cried. "He says you was traitor! He says you was
gone to Argenta and told all their secrets, and you was bought
off--bribed--and you bring strangers to help you! He says you and they
are just spies, an' now they come for _you_!"
One glance from where the little group were crouching, sheltered from
possible shots from the buildings, yet between them and the throng,
told Nolan and Shiner the alarm was real, the words were true. Like so
many maddened beasts, a gang of uncouth, unkempt, blood-thirsty beings
were now crowding up the narrow roadway from the bench below.
"My God, Mr. Geordie!" cried Nolan, in sudden agony of spirit, "I never
once dreamed of this!"
It was, indeed, a moment of terror. Here, barely a dozen in all, were
Nolan, Shiner, George Graham, and a few of the more intelligent, the
Americans, among the miners. There, possibly a hundred yards away, and
to the number of at least three hundred, a throng of human brutes,
utterly ignorant, superstitious, credulous, craftily inspired, were
now surging slowly forward up the heights. Two minutes would bring them
about the little party in overwhelming strength. Flight anywhere
downhill was impossible. The one refuge in sight was that beleaguered
little clump of buildings just beyond them up the slope, garrisoned by
a dozen desperate men who had shouted warning again and again, they'd
shoot down the first man that showed a head above the rocks.
But desperate straits need desperate measures. All on a sudden a tall,
slender youth, in the coarse dress of a railway fireman, sprang from
the midst of the pallid-faced group and, waving his handkerchief over
his head, called back, "Stay where you are one minute!" and then,
without a second's falter or swerve, straight for the nearest building,
a low, one-story log-house, the manager's office near the mouth of the
mine, waving his white signal high as his arm could reach, and
shouting, "Don't fire--we are friends!" George Graham swiftly climbed
for the upper level. One rifle flashed. One bullet whizzed over his
head, but he reached the road, then, both arms extended, rushed
straight for the door.
It was thrown open to admit him by Cawker, the manager, white-faced
almost as they whom Geordie had left. "Come out here!" cried Graham.
"See for yourself. Nolan, Shiner, with those few lads, are all that
have stood between you and the mob below. Every American is out of it.
They're coming to kill Nolan for turning against them. Call him up!
Call them all--There's barely a dozen. Then you've got just as many
more to stand by you!"
And Cawker had sense to see and to realize. "Call 'em yourself," said
he. "Don't shoot, men! These are friends come to aid us!" he cried,
running up and down in front of the loop-holes. "Come on, Nolan and all
of you," he added, for Graham had gone bounding half-way back again,
and, like so many goats, the threatened party came scrambling out of
their shelter and up the steep incline, while afar down the hill-side
rose a yell of baffled rage and vengeance.
"Hold the rest of them whatever you do!" shouted Geordie, again racing
back. "Don't let that gang over the edge or you're gone!" And again the
brown barrels of the rifles thrust forth from the wooden walls and were
turned on the bend of the road. Almost breathless, Long Nolan, and with
him the little squad of adherents, came running up to the door.
"Inside, quick as you can!" shouted Cawker. "We've got to give those
blood-hounds a lesson."
Even as he spoke a shot struck the thick, iron hinge of the heavy door,
the lead spattering viciously. Another ripped through the casement of
the nearest window, and a shiver of glass was heard within, as the
bullet spun through the shade of a lamp swinging from the beam above.
Cawker ducked, unaccustomed to such sounds, and dove to the interior.
Old Nolan, soldier of the Civil War and veteran of many an Indian
skirmish, disdained to notice it. Geordie, bemoaning the luck that had
left his pet rifle in Denver, busied himself with Nolan in "herding"
the party within before himself following. Then Shiner was found
missing.
"He started with us," cried Nolan. "He wanted to go back to be with his
boy, but we showed him he'd never get through. Those brutes would head
him off and kick his life out. He must have--Good God, Mr. Geordie!
Look where he lies!"
And then they saw that the old plainsman, in his eagerness to make a
way back to his possibly dying son, had quit the rush when half-way up,
had turned eastward and sought a foot-path down the mountain-side, had
found it guarded, like the rest, by a gang that yelled savage welcome
at sight of him. Then, too late, he had turned again, had managed to
run some fifty yards along the jagged slope, when a shot from a
well-aimed rifle laid him low. With a leg broken just above the knee,
poor Shiner went down, and without so much as a word, with only one
glance into each other's eyes, Long Nolan and Geordie swooped down to
the rescue.
Breasting the hill fifty yards below him came the heaving throng of
rioters, few of them, luckily, with fire-arms, but all bent on
vengeance. Darting downhill to Shiner came the old and the new of the
regiment he had known for years and swore by to the end--Nolan, its
oldest sergeant when discharged; Graham, its youngest subaltern when so
recently commissioned. But, old and new, they were one in purpose and
in spirit. The trained muscles, the lithe young limbs of the new bore
him bounding down the slope in half the time it took the elder. Shiner
lay facing the coming throng, grim hate in his eyes and revolver in
hand. In the fury of yells that arose he never heard the shout of
encouragement from above. Geordie was bending over him, had seized him
by the arm, was slinging him on his broad young back before ever Shiner
saw the face of his rescuer, and Geordie, with his helpless burden, was
stumbling up the height again before Nolan could join and aid him.
By that time the peering guardians of the office had caught sight of
the cause of the pandemonium of howls and curses from below, and the
onward rush was stayed by the sound of shots from the hill and bullets
whistling overhead. Yet only for a moment. Bullets sent downhill almost
always fly high, and finding this to be so the mob took courage and
came on again, those who had guns or revolvers shooting frantically up
the slope, splintering rocks and spattering dirt as they bit at the
heels of the rescuers. It was a desperate, do or die, neck or nothing,
bit of daring and devotion--Nolan's third and Geordie's first
experience in just such a feat. But the blood of the Graemes was up,
and the younger soldier was not to be outdone by the old. The guards at
the office burst into a cheer as the two came staggering up to the
level, with poor Shiner groaning between them, and then quick work and
hot was needed, for the mob came fierce on their trail.
"There's more Winchesters there in the gun-rack," shouted Cawker, as
Shiner was laid on a bunk in a back room. "They'll be all round us here
in a minute."
"Aim low and pick out the leaders, d'ye hear?" panted Nolan. "Don't let
'em get within reach of the buildings, whatever you do. They'll burn
'em over our heads. Let me have your loop-hole, _you_!" he ordered a
young fellow, whose lips were blue with excitement and dread. "Go sit
by Shiner and give him water till I spoil a few of these voters." And
the presence of the veteran, the confident ring of his voice, seemed to
lend instant courage to the defence.
And courage, cool courage and grit, were needed, for the situation was
difficult, if not, indeed, desperate. With any skilled leader to direct
the mob, the refuge sought by the defence would already have been
ruined. The office building, made of hewn logs laid horizontally and
with possible view of defence, had been placed at the brow of the slope
on one side and near the mouth of the mine on the other. Later,
however, rude structures of unplaned pine sprung up--compressor-plant,
blacksmith-shop, and the like--about it, no one of them strong enough
to serve as a fort, and all of them a menace now because they screened
the approaches on two sides and could be fired in a dozen places.
And now that Graham and Nolan were here to aid, this defect was noticed
at once.
"This won't do at all, Mr. Cawker," said Graham, as he sprung the lever
of a new Winchester and glanced into the chamber. "We'll be surrounded
and burned out of here in ten minutes. We've got to occupy those
others, too."
Cawker stared at the "young feller" with angering eyes. A moment agone
and he was praising his daring, but that astonishing tone of authority
nettled him. What business had a railway fireman telling him, a mine
manager, what to do in case of a row?
"_You_ get to a loop-hole and 'tend to that," snapped he. "I'll 'tend
to my business," and he turned to Long Nolan, just heaving up from a
peep-hole, for support and approval. Nolan he knew for a soldier of
old. He had learned to respect him quite as much as he jealously
feared, and Nolan's answer took him utterly aback:
"You do as he tells you and do it quick. He knows his business better'n
ever you'll begin to know yours."