Feeling climbed to a higher pitch. Seven committees of local militia were organized and tempers were now reaching the boiling point. One day on Harrison Avenue for a distance of eight blocks, eight thousand striking miners menacingly swaggered back and forth and a like number of citizens of opposite sympathies paraded with determination as grim as theirs. The street was jammed. As I looked down, worried and fearful, from the window of my suite, it seemed as if at any moment, a local war would break out and the whole camp be destroyed by flames and bloodshed.
The leading men of the town took this moment to read a proclamation to the miners. Tabor, Davis and a number of others stepped out on the balcony of the Tabor Opera House. I hurried into the street to watch the proceedings, my heart beating wildly with fear. The seething mass of humanity below these men were all armed and they were mostly good shots. Tabor standing up so tall and dark and fierce on the balcony would make an excellent target.
“Oh, dear God,” I prayed. “Don’t let anything happen!”
I hardly realized I was praying at the time. But Davis demanded menacingly that the strike be called off. He told the miners to return to work, then said that if they would not accede, the citizens would protect the owners. He said they would bring in other workers to take their jobs. My fear was so great that I could actually hear my lips mumbling incoherent, beseeching words.
A shot rang out!
The sharp noise seemed to rend my heart in two. I hardly dared take my eyes from the balcony to glance around for fear of missing a falling figure among that intrepid group. But Tabor and his friends were straight and unconcerned. Their belief in law and order made them brave. The cut-throat mob must have sensed that. No figure fell from their midst. Whatever the shot was, it had not been fired at them. I sighed with relief.
Colonel Bohn of the Committee of Safety was trying to urge a horse he was mounted on through the mob, and was brandishing a drawn sword to emphasize his right. It was a very foolish thing to do at a time like that.
“Somebody must be trying to shoot the old fool,” the teamster next to me in the crowd remarked.
“Maybe a signal for the miners to start firing,” the man with him offered as a counter-suggestion.
I was terrified—not for myself—but because of Tabor’s exposed position. My hands flew to my throat.