A woman who happened to be scouting about the town at the unseemly hour when the net was drawn about the block, found herself caught in it. She tried every corner and, at each, found a row of bayonets held in front of her.
Not a word was spoken anywhere, and this silence and the sight of the arms and masks so frightened her that she galloped about at a very lively rate for a time, then suddenly disappeared, no one knew whither. Some printers also going home from their work on a morning paper, were halted, and their foreman, a fussy, fidgetty old fellow, recently from San Francisco, was frightened nearly out of his wits. When he found half a dozen bayonets at his breast, and saw before him the masked faces, he was sure he had fallen into the hands of robbers.
“Don’t shoot! for God’s sake don’t shoot!” he cried. “I’m a poor miserable old printer and haven’t got a cent!”
Said a voice: “We know you, you old fool. You only want to go two doors above here. I guess we’ll just escort you!” Then turning to the printers, who stood back, heartily enjoying the fright of their foreman, the same masked man said: “Come on boys, you lodge in the same house, I believe!”
Four or five men stepped out and marched the printers within the lines, seeing them to and through their own door.
“Gentlemen, will we be quite safe here?” asked the still anxious foreman, thrusting his head out at the door, after it was thought he was secured within.
“You are safe inside,” said one of the masked men, “but if you come out again we’ll blow the whole top of your head off!”
The head instantly disappeared.
Every few minutes some belated citizen was halted and turned back, at one or another corner of the beleaguered[beleaguered] block, giving him an opportunity of returning to his favorite saloon, telling of the wonder and taking another drink. The armed and masked men at the corners were all that any one saw; what was going on within the guarded square no one knew, but all were able to make a tolerably correct guess.
Suddenly the heavy boom of a cannon shook the town and disturbed the stillness of the night. Instantly, and as though by magic, the armed and masked men disappeared from the streets, going no one knew whither. The boom of the cannon, which was fired in the eastern part of the city, at an old military post occupied during the rebellion by a provost guard, told that Arthur Perkins was no more.