“I mean,” answered his friend, “that there are Tom Allen, Jack Looney, Schmidt, and the rest of the gang. If they see you here, you’ll be shot without mercy.”
“Oh, well,” answered Ben, “I guess they will give me some sort of show for my life. I’m willing to meet them all in a bunch, if I have a pistol.”
The driveway leading to the hotel steps was in the shape of a semicircle, thus affording approach from either direction. Allen and the others were waiting on the steps at the point where they expected Ben to dismount. The carriage drove up as though intending to stop, but instead of doing so, the gentleman who was driving whipped up his spirited horses, dashed by the steps, and around the curve to the road again.
Perceiving that they had been foiled, Allen and the others started in hot pursuit. Some were in carriages, some on horseback, and some on foot. Eagan, the stake-holder, succeeded in closing up the gap between him and the carriage in which Ben was seated, and drawing his revolver, cried out:
“If you don’t stop, I’ll shoot!”
Just at that moment, Ben had neither the inclination nor the time to stop. Fortunately for him, the horses behind which he was driving were fleeter than any of those in pursuit, and so gained steadily upon Allen and his friends.
Ben was driven back to his hotel, where he parted with his friends. He went at once to the landlord and told him that it might be better for him to leave, as he did not care to disgrace the house by being killed there. The landlord only laughed and told him that he would take the chances on that.
Some of Allen’s followers did call at the hotel, but confined their operations to blackguardism and windy talk.
Ben meantime remained quietly in his room until the day of the exhibition. All things considered, he thought it would be safer not to take any more carriage rides to Wash Home.
Frustrated in their designs of shooting Ben, his enemies resorted to a different course of tactics. They took advantage of the so-called vagrant law—one of the most disgraceful statutes that ever appeared in the law books of any city—and managed to procure the arrest of both Ben and Sweeney, while the two were at dinner in the hotel. The men were locked up, really guilty of no offense, unless it be a crime for a man to live in some other place than in St. Louis. The intention, of course, on the part of those who had entered the complaints, was to break up the exhibition. In this, however, their plans failed.