Part 53 (1/2)

”We'd better,” insisted McGue, perspiring from heat and excitement.

”They ain't got anything on us. You can't fight rifles with bare hands.”

”h.e.l.l, no! You saw what they did to Ed McGuire. Let's kill the uglies----”

”Kill 'em!” Ray adopted a new slogan. ”Kill 'em! Kill 'em, I says.”

They wavered. The blistering sun beat fiercely on the metallic barrels of the menacing rifles.

A dreadful tumult of shots, shouts, indescribable noises, broke out in the rear. The shuddering sound of machine guns pelted whistling hail through the spa.r.s.e tree leaves above.

Out of the blind turmoil came running figures, blaspheming in horrible rage. ”They're there too!”

”It's another regiment!”

”They're killing everybody!”

The noise grew louder.

Major Grinnell halted at the head of his men. McGue, surrounded by a cowed hundred of the strikers, walked quietly out. ”Do you want to arrest us?”

Methodically the houses and alleys were combed, until close to five hundred men, women and children had been herded into the trampled square. One by one they were marched before the guards and deputies; a hundred and nine were pointed out largely at random, as having had some part in the attack. The rest who were involved had slipped away between the two lines of attackers. Wailing and lamenting, the former were herded away into the overcrowded jails.

That night the militia encamped in the remains of the settlement. Fire had destroyed the western third of the houses, a fire which the soldiers made no attempt to put out.

Not a striker was permitted to enter the barred area.

Jim Hewin, back on duty as a sheriff's deputy, led one of the squads that scoured the surrounding woods the next morning for fugitives and bodies. ”Hey, 'Red,'--they pipped somebody here,” he explained.

It was the rocky road behind the settlement, which led above the wet-weather falls of the brook that eased away into Shadow Creek. The oasis of gra.s.s in the middle of the sandy road was darkly muddied by a mixture of dirt and blood. A cap, crumpled, the visor torn loose, lay in the clawed sand beside it.

”Red” Jones ran up. Hewin's quick eyes zigzagged eagerly. ”Look, 'Red'--he went here!”

The trail of blood began again a few feet beyond the road. A heavy body had been dragged over succulent pokeberry plants: moist pithy leaves swung crushed, oozing their thick sap; dark berries lay mashed upon a soil purple with their blood.

They parted the sumach and haw bushes screening the falls.

The slimed slope of gray rocks was darkened by a muddy reddish trickle of water. It was a broken stretch of seventy feet to the green stagnancy below.

”Hey, 'Red'----” Jim's voice dropped; his shaking hand pointed to an awkward ma.s.s half way down the incline.

They slid cautiously, clutching the rough crag edges beside the water.

Caught in one of the shelf-flaws of the rock, his miner's s.h.i.+rt coagulated with blackened blood, his stained overalls soggy with the water, lay a dead negro.

Hewin turned the body over; his fingers shrank and slipped at the moist unpleasantness.

They peered into the dead face of Ed Cole. A clinging mould of leaves half obscured the deputy's badge on his greasy lapel.

Jim's eyes expanded. ”Cole, you know--he shot John Dawson.”