Jim Waring of Sonora-Town Part 51

"Poco tiempo," said the Ranger softly.

The sheriff bunched his men as he approached the invaders. Within fifty yards of their front he halted and held up his hand. Ma.s.sed in a solid wall from curb to curb, the I.W.W. jeered and shouted as he tried to speak. A parley was impossible. The vagrants were most of them drunk.

The sheriff turned to the man nearest him.

"Tell the boys that we'll go through, turn, and ride back. Tell them not to fire a shot until we turn."

As he gathered his horse under him, the sheriff's arm dropped. The shrill "Yip! Yip!" of the range rose above the thunder of hoofs as twenty ponies jumped to a run. The living thunder-bolt tore through the ma.s.s. The staccato crack of guns sounded sharply above the deeper roar of the mob. The ragged pathway closed again as the riders swung round, bunched, and launched at the ma.s.s from the rear. Those who had turned to face the second charge were crowded back as the cowboys, with guns going, ate into the yelling crowd. The mob turned, and like a great, black wave swept down the street and into the court-house square.

The cowboys raced past, and reined in a block below the court-house. As they paused to reload, a riderless horse, badly wounded, plunged among them. A cowboy caught the horse and shot it. Another rider, gripping his s.h.i.+rt above his abdomen, writhed and groaned, begging piteously for some one to kill him. Before they could get him off his horse he spurred out, and, pulling his carbine from the scabbard, charged into the mob, in the square. With the lever going like lightning, he bored into the mob, fired his last shot in the face of a man that had caught his horse's bridle, and sank to the ground. Shattered and torn he lay, a red pulp that the mob trampled into the dust.

The upper windows of the court-house filled with figures. An irregular fire drove the cowboys to the shelter of a side street. In the wide doorway of the court-house several men crouched behind a blue-steel tripod. Those still in the square crowded past and into the building.

Behind the stone pillars of the entrance, guarded by a machine gun, the crazy mob cheered drunkenly and defied the guards to dislodge them.

From a building opposite came a single shot, and the group round the machine gun lifted one of their fellows and carried him back into the building. Again came the peremptory snarl of a carbine, and another figure sank in the doorway. The machine gun was dragged back. Its muzzle still commanded the square, but its operators were now s.h.i.+elded by an angle of the entrance.

Back on the side street, the old ex-Ranger had difficulty in restraining his men. They knew by the number of shots fired that some of their companions had gone down.

The sheriff was about to call for volunteers to capture the machine gun when a white handkerchief fluttered from an upper window of the court-house. Almost immediately a man appeared on the court-house steps, alone and indicating by his gestures that he wished to parley with the guard. The sheriff dismounted and stepped forward.

One of his men checked him. "That's a trap, John. They want to get you, special. Don't you try it."

"It's up to me," said the sheriff, and shaking off the other's hand he strode across the square.

At the foot of the steps he met the man. The guard saw them converse for a brief minute; saw the sheriff shake his fist in the other's face and turn to walk back. As he turned, a shot from an upper window dropped him in his stride.

The cowboys yelled and charged across the square. The machine gun stuttered and sprayed a fury of slugs that cut down horses and riders. A cowboy, his horse shot from under him, sprang up the steps and dragged the machine gun into the open. A rain of slugs from the upper windows struck him down. His companions carried him back to cover. The machine gun stood in the square, no longer a menace, yet no one dared approach it from either side.

When the old Ranger, who had orders to hold his men in reserve, heard that the sheriff had been shot down under a flag of truce, he shook his head.

"Three men could 'a' stopped that gun as easy as twenty, and saved more hosses. Who wants to take a little pasear after that gun?"

Several of his men volunteered.

"I only need two," he said, smiling. "I call by guess. Number twenty-six, number thirty-eight, and number three."

The last was his own number.

In the wide hallway and ma.s.sed on the court-house stairs the mob was calling out to recover the gun. Beyond control of their leaders, crazed with drink and killing, they surged forward, quarreling, and shoved from behind by those above.

"We're ridin'," said the old Ranger.

With a man on each side of him he charged across the square.

Waco, peering from behind a stone column in the entrance, saw that Lorry was one of the riders. Lorry's lips were drawn tight. His face was pale, but his gun arm swung up and down with the regularity of a machine as he threw shot after shot into the black tide that welled from the court-house doorway. A man near Waco pulled an automatic and leveled it.

Waco swung his arm and brained the man with an empty whiskey bottle. He threw the bottle at another of his fellows, and, stumbling down the steps, called to Lorry. The three riders paused for an instant as Waco ran forward. The riders had won almost to the gun when Waco stooped and jerked it round and poured a withering volley into the close-packed doorway.

Back in the side street the leader of the cowboys addressed his men.

"We'll leave the horses here," he said. "Tex went after that gun, and I reckon he's got it. We'll clean up afoot."

But the I.W.W. had had enough. Their leaders had told them that with the machine gun they could clean up the town, capture the court-house, and make their own terms. They had captured the court-house, but they were themselves trapped. One of their own number had planned that treachery.

And they knew that those lean, bronzed men out there would shoot them down from room to room as mercilessly as they would kill coyotes.

They surrendered, shuffling out and down the slippery stone steps. Each man dropped his gun in the little pile that grew and grew until the old Ranger shook his head, pondering. That men of this kind should have access to arms and ammunition of the latest military type--and a machine gun. What was behind it all? He tried to reason it out in his old-fas.h.i.+oned way even as the trembling horde filed past, cordoned by grim, silent cowboys.

The vagrants were escorted out of town in a body. Fearful of the hate of the guard, of treachery among themselves and of the townsfolk in other places, they tramped across the hills, followed closely by the stern-visaged riders. Several miles north of Sterling they disbanded.

When a company of infantrymen arrived in Sterling they found several cowboys sluicing down the court-house steps with water hauled laboriously from the river.

The captain stated that he would take charge of things, and suggested that the cowboys take a rest.

"That's all right, Cap," said a puncher, pointing toward the naked flagstaff. "But we-all would admire to see the Stars and Stripes floatin' up there afore we drift."

"I'll have the flag run up," said the captain.

"That's all right, Cap. But you don't sabe the idee. These here steps got to be _clean_ afore that flag goes up."

"And they's some good in bein' fat," said Bud Shoop as he met Lorry next morning. "The army doc just put a plaster on my arm where one of them automatic pills nicked me. Now, if I'd been lean like you--"

"Did you see Waco?" queried Lorry.

"Waco? What's ailin' you, son?"

"Nothin'. It was Waco went down, workin' that machine gun against his own crowd. I didn't sabe that at first."

"Him? Didn't know he was in town."

"I didn't, either, till last night. He sneaked in to tell me about the killin' of Pat. Next I seen him was when he brained a fella that was shootin' at me. Then somehow he got to the gun--and you know the rest."

"Looks like he was crazy," suggested Shoop.

"I don' know about that. I got to him before he cashed in. He pawed around like he couldn't see. I asked what I could do. He kind of braced up then. 'That you, kid?' he says. 'They didn't get you?' I told him no.

'Then I reckon we're square,' he says. I thought he was gone, but he reached out his hand. Seems he couldn't see. 'Would you mind shakin'

hands with a b.u.m?' he says. I did. And then he let go my hand. He was done."

"H'm! And him! But you can't always tell. Sometimes it takes a bullet placed just right, and sometimes religion, and sometimes a woman to make a man show what's in him. I reckon Waco done you a good turn that journey. But ain't it hard luck when a fella waits till he's got to cross over afore he shows white?"

"He must 'a' had a hunch he was goin' to get his," said Lorry. "Or he wouldn't chanced sneakin' into town last night. When do we go north?"

"To-morrow. The doc says the sheriff will pull through. He sure ought to get the benefit of the big doubt. There's a man that G.o.d A'mighty took some trouble in makin'."

"Well, I'm mighty glad it's over. I don't want any more like this. I come through all right, but this ain't fightin'; it's plumb killin' and murder."

"And both sides thinks so," said Bud. "And lemme tell you; you can read your eyes out about peace and equality and fraternity, but they's goin'

to be killin' in this here world just as long as they's fools willin' to listen to other fools talk. And they's always goin' to be some fools."