Mountain Part 52

McGue came up again, holding in his irritation. "What do you want this boy for?"

"None of your d.a.m.n' business! We got a warrant for him, see? You keep out, or----"

Several of the deputies in the rear clicked their hammers suggestively, snickering at the one-sided joke. A disturbed buzz wavered up and down the ma.s.sed strikers. As Huggins turned up the wider road again, it grew in volume into a subdued stream of boohs, catcalls, hisses, low threats.

He turned incautiously, facing them.

"Don't you follow me, you gutter trash, or I'll jug the lot of you!"

A weak satiric voice came from behind a house. "Aw, will you, though!"

McGue's eyes grinned; but his face remained set, as he doggedly kept pace with the head of the marching guards.

Two more men were taken in the same methodical fas.h.i.+on. The surging procession was now near the open center of the location, where a square had been left as a common, with the artesian well at one end.

Girls and women quietly replaced the men in the front line, jeering and cursing at the flushed faces of the soldiers, occasionally stumbling awkwardly against them. There was a scream as a soldier turned suddenly on a pretty red-haired girl, and caught her wrist. An old Irish virago beside clutched his shoulder and flung him sideways.

"Touch my daughter, you dirty b.a.s.t.a.r.d, and I'll tear your heart out!"

Huggins re-formed his men at the entrance to the square. There were only fifty soldiers in line; there were already several hundred of the tenters, and their number swelled constantly. Of course, they couldn't do anything.... He had his orders.

The stage was set for trouble. Over the heads of the women and girls, from the shelter of the nearest house, a rock whished--an apple-sized ore boulder from the iron heart of the hill. It crunched into one of the guards, square on his cheek. He grunted. An uncertain hand patted his dazed face. When he drew it away, it was smeared with blood; the stain widened over his collar and breast.

A second stone came from the opposite side. Then another ... another....

Two deputies fired wildly in the direction of the hidden throwers.

Out of the dissolving panorama of frightened strikers came a spurted crack, a spit of smoke. One of the deputies screamed, was supported, writhing terribly, by the men on either side of him. His head hung limp.

"Back to that building, there," boomed Huggins, pointing to the distributing store at the mountain end of the square.

The retreat began. The strikers eddied backward from the cleared place.

From houses along the way unexpected bursts of rocks, an occasional shot, crashed into the close ranks of the law-enforcers.

Four or five revolvers puffed off to the left. A guard dropped his gun, shaking his hand in agony. The left third of the soldiers at a command raised their rifles, and blazed away at the infuriated welter of retreating humanity. A madhouse of screams, men and women running, two bodies settling onto the stained July gra.s.s....

Another volley, this toward the right.

"Take that, you----" screamed a deputy, as the startled face at a window was met by the blaze of a rifle. The woman hung swaying over the ledge; choking horribly, she trembled further and further out, dropped hideously upon the ground.

At the storehouse now. "Hey, you, get out of that," Huggins commanded the strikers' distributors.

"This is our----"

The sight of the rifles settled the matter. The two dead guards were stretched on the floor, the wounded were roughly bandaged. Huggins phoned the facts to the militia headquarters on the mountain.

"Said for us to wait here," he explained to the army lieutenant in charge. "It 'ud be suicide, trying to get out. For all we know, all them houses is full of strikers. There'll be two companies here inside of an hour. By G.o.d, we'll do for 'em this time!" His tone shook in fierce rapture--the man hunt was on!

The main bulk of the rifles covered the big open field in front; small parties watched toward west, south and north, to warn if any activity showed in the houses fifty feet away.

There was no water; the wounded cursed continually for it. Huggins sent a party, well protected, over to the well, seventy feet away, to bring back two bucketfuls. One of the detail was shot in the collar bone, but managed to make his way back with the bearers of the precious drink.

There was a shouting from in front. "Hey," came a voice, waving a white towel raised high on a clothes-pole. "Can we talk with your man in charge?"

It was Edward McGuire, the father of little hump-backed Frank, who had been arrested, but had slipped away in the disorderly retreat to the store. He had been selected as one of the older, more law-abiding of the miners, to bring the flag of truce.

"What d'ye want?" Huggins demanded belligerently. "Ain't no use to talk; I got a regiment comin' in half an hour, will clean up this whole d.a.m.ned nest of rats."

"Can I come closer?" called McGuire.

There was no answer. He came over to where the lieutenant of the guard stood, clutching the pole with its white symbol high above his head.

"Well?"

"Can we pick up those bodies out on the field? You can get any of your men there. We'll carry this flag, sir--one of 'em 's my son, I think."

The deputy beside Huggins stepped two feet forward. His revolver reversed, he brought it down with all his force on the undefended grizzled head. McGuire dropped in a heap.

All the while, down the dusty July road, Major Grinnell, of the State Guards, had double-quicked his men. They reached the railroad spur just out of sight of the shack village. Here he divided his force. The company automobiles, equipped with searchlights and machine guns, had gone by the county road to the eastern end of the colony, behind the sand ridge, to cut off possible retreat. The motley ma.s.s of deputies, mine guards and special police cut in after them, to work back with the machines. The militia marched above the camp, close to the store held by Huggins. After a fifteen minutes' wait, they proceeded in open formation, converging toward the common.

The strikers, stunned by the brutal killing of McGuire, swirled together beyond the well, hidden by the jerry-built shacks.

"We gotter rush 'em," "Micky" Ray insisted, weaving in and out of the perturbed herd, followed by several adherents as violent. "d.a.m.n it, why doncher rush 'em, before they sneak out?"

McGue confronted him again. "Still at it, you fool? They'd shoot us down like dogs----"

"They'll shoot us anyway. 'Fraid of 'em, are you, Johnny?" another taunted.

"We gotter rush 'em. Get your guns ready," commanded Ray. "All that aren't afraid, line up behind Bill there."

He turned his back to round up others. The line doubled on him, an excited commotion shaking it. He tried to break his way clear, to understand what they were saying.

"What the----"

"Aincher heard her?"

"Nellie seed 'em!"

"All the soldiers is come! They're right behind the store!"

"They're everywhere!"

"You see?" stormed McGue, shoving Ray to the side. "Everybody below the common."

They made the change. The militia a.s.sembled before the storehouse, extended their wings, beat down the open s.p.a.ce and the lanes parallel with it. Undetermined, the strikers waited, poorly armed, but sheltered behind friendly walls.

Huggins' big voice came faintly. "Lay down your guns," he shouted. "The first man who shoots, we'll fire. Do you surrender?"

There was no answer.