"Touch my daughter, you dirty bastard, and I'll tear your heart out!"
Huggins re-formed his men at the entrance to the square. There were only fifty soldiers in line; there were already several hundred of the tenters, and their number swelled constantly. Of course, they couldn't do anything.... He had his orders.
The stage was set for trouble. Over the heads of the women and girls, from the shelter of the nearest house, a rock whished—an apple-sized ore boulder from the iron heart of the hill. It crunched into one of the guards, square on his cheek. He grunted. An uncertain hand patted his dazed face. When he drew it away, it was smeared with blood; the stain widened over his collar and breast.
A second stone came from the opposite side. Then another ... another....
Two deputies fired wildly in the direction of the hidden throwers.
Out of the dissolving panorama of frightened strikers came a spurted crack, a spit of smoke. One of the deputies screamed, was supported, writhing terribly, by the men on either side of him. His head hung limp.
"Back to that building, there," boomed Huggins, pointing to the distributing store at the mountain end of the square.
The retreat began. The strikers eddied backward from the cleared place. From houses along the way unexpected bursts of rocks, an occasional shot, crashed into the close ranks of the law-enforcers.
Four or five revolvers puffed off to the left. A guard dropped his gun, shaking his hand in agony. The left third of the soldiers at a command raised their rifles, and blazed away at the infuriated welter of retreating humanity. A madhouse of screams, men and women running, two bodies settling onto the stained July grass....
Another volley, this toward the right.