“No,” repeated Stanley. “Levake is the head and front of this whole disorder. As long as he can shoot down unarmed men in the streets of Medicine Bend there will be no law and order here. While men see him walking these streets unpunished they will take their cue from him and rob and shoot whom they please––Levake and his ilk must go. A railroad, on the start, brings a lawless element with it––this is true. But it also brings law and order and that element has come to Medicine Bend to stay. If the machinery of the law is too weak to support it, so much worse 291 for the machinery. I don’t want to see blood shed or property destroyed, but the responsibility for this rests with the outlaws that are terrorizing this town. And I will spend every ounce of ammunition I have and fight them to the last man, rather than compromise with a bunch of cutthroats.
“If any man here feels differently about this, he may step out of the barricade now,” continued Stanley, addressing those of the townsmen that listened. “There will be no hard feeling. But this is the time to do it. Worse is ahead of us before we can clean the town up as it will have to be cleaned sometime. The longer you leave the job undone, the harder it will be when you tackle it.”
A movement across the square interrupted his words, and a messenger waving a white handkerchief came over to the barricade to ask for a surgeon for a wounded man. There were some who opposed sending any relief to men that had forfeited all claim to humane consideration. Doctor Arnold, however, was summoned, and Stanley 292 finally determined that the matter should be left to the surgeon himself––he could go if he wished. Arnold did not hesitate in his decision. “It is my duty to go,” he decided briefly.
“I don’t quite see that,” muttered Atkinson.
The white-haired surgeon turned to the leader of the vigilantes. “It is not a matter of personal inclination, Atkinson. When I took my degree for the practice of medicine, I took an oath to respond to every call of suffering and I have no right to refuse this one.”
Leaving his own injured with his assistant, the surgeon told the messenger to proceed and the two walked across the square and up Front Street to the Three Horses. Arriving there, Arnold was asked to dress the wound of a man that had been shot through the breast in the fight along Fort Street. While he was working over his patient, who lay on a table surrounded by a motley crowd of onlookers, Levake walked in. He nodded to the surgeon and drawing a pocket knife, while Arnold was cleansing the wound, sat down beside him to whittle a stick.
“I hear your man, Stanley, wants me,” began Levake after an interval.
“I guess you hear right,” returned Arnold dryly.
“Tell him for me to come get me, will you?” suggested Levake.