The Mountain Divide Part 23

Scott ran to the east window. It was true. The rioters, supplied with oil and torches, had made their way in the darkness through Callahan's picket line near the river and set fire to the shops.

Stanley was eating a hasty supper in the despatchers' office.

Within a few minutes the blaze could be seen from all the east windows of the station. Almost at the same moment, through the north windows fire was seen breaking out in one of the big stores in Front Street.

As Stanley rose from his midnight meal, Atkinson ran in with word that a band of rioters, well armed, had attacked a train of boarding-cars defended by the roundhouse men.

The sky, bright again with the flame of conflagration, made a huge dome of red, lighting the railroad yards across which men were now hurrying to make fresh dispositions for the emergency.

The vigilante leaders saw impending, in the Front Street fire, the ruin of their business property. There were no longer men enough left to fight the flames and guard the fire-fighters. A point had been reached in which life and property were no longer taken into account, and efforts to restore law and order were facing complete failure. It was then that the most radical of all measures, the last resort of organized society in its resolve to defend itself, was discussed. The vigilantes, as well as the railroad men, now realized that but one measure remained for saving Medicine Bend and that was the extermination of the outlaws themselves.

CHAPTER XXIV

The men in the barricade were lined up for orders. Ammunition was pa.s.sed and volunteers were called to form a charging party. The vigilantes formed in the glare of the burning shops.

From the head-quarters of the rioters in Front Street came scattering shots and cries as a huge volume of sparks shot up into the black sky.

Ten men under Hawk and ten under Dancing made the supporting party for the vigilantes, who asked only that a line of retreat be kept open. This Stanley had undertaken to provide. Atkinson, making a wide detour back of the station, led his men down the railroad tracks and, reaching a point where concealment was no longer possible, double-quicked up Fort Street and charged with his party across the little park.

They had already been seen. A line of men, posted behind the places that line Front Street at that point, opened fire. It was the worst possible answer to make to men in the temper of the scattered line that swept up the street in the glare of the burning buildings.

Wounded men dropped out of the charge, but those that went on carried with them a more implacable determination. Re-forming their line under cover of the cedars at the corner of Fort Street, they directed an effective fire into the dance halls adjoining, and the rioters hiding within scurried from them like rats.

But the vigilantes were intent first of all on capturing and burning the hall known as the Three Horses, and the rioters rallied to its defence. As the place was a.s.sailed, the doors were barred and a sharp fire was poured through the windows. The a.s.sailants were driven back.

Bill Dancing, heated and stubborn, refused to retreat and, picking up a sledge dropped by a fleeing vigilante, attacked the barred doors single-handed.

The street, swept by the bullets of the fray, rang with the splitting blows of the heavy hammer, as the lineman, his long hair flying from his forehead, swung at the thick panels. Within, the gamblers tried to shoot him from the windows, but he stood close and his friends kept up a constant supporting fire that drove the defenders back.

From above they hurled chairs and tables down on Dancing, but his head seemed furniture-proof, and scorning to waste time in dodging he hammered away, undaunted, until he splintered the panels and the stout lock-stiles gave. The vigilantes, running up, tore through the door chains with crowbars and rushed the building.

The fight in the big room lasted only a moment. The rioters crowded toward the rear and escaped as best they could. Vigilantes with torches made short work of the rest of it. Dancing stove in a cask of alcohol, and as the attacking party ran out of the front door a torch was flung back into the spreading pool.

A great burst of fire lighted the street. The next moment the long building was in flames.

Emboldened by this success and driving the outlaws from their further retreats, the vigilantes fired one after another of the gaudy places that lined the upper street. Met by close shooting at every turn, the rioters were driven up the hill and fighting desperately were pursued to cover by men now as savage as themselves. The scattered clashes were brief and deadly. The whole upper town was on fire. Men fleeing for their lives skulked in the shadows of the side streets and the constant scattering report of fire-arms added to the terrors of the night.

Hour after hour the conflagration raged and day broke at last on the smoking ruins of the town of Medicine Bend. The work of the vigilantes had been mercilessly thorough. Along the railroad track stiffened bodies hanging from the cross-bars of telegraph poles in the gloom of the breaking day told a ghastly story of justice summarily administered to the worst of the offenders. In the gloom of the smoking streets stragglers roamed unmolested among the ruins; for of the outlaws, killed or hunted out of the town, none were now left to oppose the free pa.s.sage of any one from end to end of Medicine Bend.

CHAPTER XXV

The victory was dear, but none murmured at its cost. Medicine Bend for once had been purged of its parasites.

At the railroad head-quarters Stanley, before daylight, was directing the resumption of operations so interrupted by the three days of anarchism on the mountain division. New men were added every hour to the pay-roll, and the smaller tradesmen of the town, ruined by the riots, were given positions to keep them until the town could be rebuilt.

The pressure on the operating department increased twofold with the resumption of traffic. Winter was now upon the mountains, but construction could not be stopped for winter. The enormous prizes for extending the line through the Rockies to meet the rival railroad heading east from California, spurred the builders to every effort to lengthen their mileage, and something unheard of was attempted, namely, mountain railroad-building in midwinter.

Levake, the leader among the mountain outlaws, was nursed back to life by the surgeon he had so nearly murdered. But his respite was a brief one. When new officers of the law were elected in Medicine Bend, the murderer was tried for one of his many crimes and paid on the scaffold the penalty of his cold-blooded cruelty. Rebstock, the fox, and his companion Seagrue escaped the exterminating raid of the vigilantes but fought shy of Medicine Bend for long afterward.

A few days after the riots Stanley sent for Bucks, who was holding a key among the operators downstairs, to come to his office.

"How long have you been a telegraph operator, Bucks?" he asked.

Bucks laughed in some embarra.s.sment. "Since I was about twelve years old, sir."

"Twelve years old!" echoed Stanley in amazement. "Where did you learn to telegraph at twelve?"

Bucks hesitated again. "I never learned, sir!"

"What do you mean?"

"I used to sit in the telegraph office of the road when my uncle was superintendent, and I got used to hearing the sound of the instruments. I just woke up one morning and found I could telegraph.

I couldn't the night before. That's the only way I ever learned, sir."

Stanley regarded the boy with interest. "How old are you now?"

"Seventeen."

"Very well. When you went to bed last night you were not a train despatcher: this morning you are." Bucks started. "If any one ever asks you," continued Stanley dryly, "how you learned to be a train despatcher, tell them just that."

"I don't want you to think you are old enough to be a despatcher,"

continued Stanley, as Bucks stammered his thanks, "for you are not.

And I don't want you to think I like to make you one. I don't. Neither for your sake nor mine. I don't like to impose the responsibilities of a man on a boy. But I can't help it. We haven't the men, and we can't get them--and we must all, men and boys, pull together and just do the best we can--do you understand?"

"I understand everything, Colonel Stanley."

"I need not say much about what is before you. You have been sending despatchers' orders for years yourself. You know how many lives are held every minute in the despatchers' hand. Don't overrate your responsibility and grow nervous over it; and don't ever underestimate it. As long as you keep yourself fit for your work, and do the best you can, you may sleep with a clear conscience. Report to Mr. Baxter.

Remember you are working with green trainmen and don't expect too much of them."

When Bucks signed a transfer and took his train-sheet that night at twelve o'clock, his chief anxiety was to keep the material trains going to Cas.e.m.e.nt and everything eastbound was laid out in an effort to send the ties and rails west. Bucks set himself to keep pace with the good work done by the despatcher in the evening trick and for two hours kept his sheet pretty clean.

A heavy train of rails which he had been helping all the way west after midnight was then at Castle Springs, and Bucks gave its crew an order to meet the eastbound pa.s.senger train at Point of Rocks. It was three o'clock when a message came from the operator at Point of Rocks, saying the rail train had pa.s.sed westbound. Bucks seized a key and silencing the wires asked for the pa.s.senger train. Nothing had been seen of it. He called up Bitter Creek, the first telegraph point west of Point of Rocks with an order to hold the pa.s.senger train. But the train had already gone.

The new dispatcher sprang up from the table frantic. Then, racing again to the key, he made the operator at Castle Springs repeat the order and a.s.sure him it had been delivered. Of this there could be no question. The freight crew had ignored or forgotten it, and were now past Point of Rocks running head-on against the pa.s.senger train. If the heavens had fallen the situation would have seemed better to Bucks. A head-on collision on the first night of his promotion meant, he felt, his ruin. As he sat overwhelmed with despair, trying to collect his wits and to determine what to do, the door opened and Bob Scott appeared.

The scout, with his unfailing and kindly smile, advanced and held out his hand. "Just dropped in to extend my congratulations."

Bucks looked at him in horror, his face rigid and his eyes set. Scott paused and regarded his aspect with surprise. "Something has happened," he said, waiting for the despatcher to speak.

"Bob!" exclaimed the boy in desperation, "No. 9 has run past her meeting order at Point of Rocks with No. 2. They will meet head-on and kill everybody. My G.o.d! what can I do?"

In the dim light of the shaded oil lamp, Bucks, looking at the scout, stood the picture of despair. Scott picked up the poker and began to stir the fire and asked only a few questions and said little. However, when Bucks told him he was going to wake Stanley, whose sleeping-room adjoined his office at the end of the hall, Scott counselled no.

"He could do nothing," said Scott reflecting. "Let us wait a while before we do anything like that," he added, coupling himself with the despatcher in the latter's overwhelming anxiety. "The first news of the collision will come from Bitter Creek. It will be time enough then to call Stanley. Give your orders for a wrecking crew, get a train ready, and get word to Doctor Arnold to go with it."