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 grass 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.