“Oh, lieutenant,” they called, and I went up to them. “We saw that fellow shoot at you, and McPherson held the horses and I slipped down the dark side of the street and located him. He stuck his head out of the window, and I rested across a door-post and let him have it.”
“Did you hit him?”
“Well, you kin bet! He came out of that window like a turkey out of a pine-tree. A little slow at first, but kerflop at last.”
So I took the street of my late enemy, and had a look at a dark object which lay on the sidewalk under the house I had located. In response to the order I bore, the infantry advanced to develop any opposition which there might be. Men were thrown out in front, and the heavy body marched in rear. We had proceeded this way for some blocks with no sound but the dropping rifle-fire some quarter of a mile to our left and behind us, when we began to find men huddled in doorways, who were promptly taken prisoners and disarmed, and sent to the rear. Some bore rifles and all had revolvers, and a hard-looking set they were. The artillery fire had demoralized them, and whatever they were to have done they had abandoned after the first shell had gone shrieking and crashing down the street.
“They’ll get a drum-head in the morning, and it won’t sit ten minutes,” mused an officer. “I suppose they are anarchists. Well, they ought to like this; this is a sort of anarchy. It’s the best we have got in our shop.”
These words were scarcely spoken before a blinding flash lit up the street as lightning might. A tremendous report followed, and I was knocked down right over my bicycle, which I was trundling. I was up in an instant, and with a ringing clash an object had fallen at my feet and struck my leg a smart blow, which pained me considerably. I reached down and picked up a Springfield rifle barrel without lock or stock. A dynamite cartridge had been exploded in our front. The infantry hesitated for a moment. Many men had been flung on their backs by the force of the concussion. “Forward!” was the command, and dropping my bicycle, I followed the dark figures of the infantry as they made their way down the sides of the streets. Half a block ahead was a great hole in the pavement, and the sidewalk was littered with cobble-stones and débris from the walls of the surrounding buildings. The bomb had been exploded over the advance-guard, and had destroyed it utterly. Which building had it come from? We stood in the doorways, and held our breath and waited. A stone dropped in the street with a crash. A tiny light appeared in one of the upper windows of a tall narrow office building. It disappeared instantly, and all was dark. Two men put their heads out of the window. “See-e!” I hissed, as a soldier drew up his rifle. All was quiet. The two heads peered down the street, and then whispered together, when shortly we caught the hollow echo of the words, “D—— ’em, they don’t want any more.”
“Now run for it,” said the captain in command, who was a big fellow, and we all scampered off down the street to our main body. What we had discovered was reported to the battery commander. He swore a great oath.
“Bring that gun up here to this side; boost her on to the sidewalk. Come, get hold here, you fellows; lend us a hand; run her along a little; train her on that doorway. Now fire!” And then, in a high voice, “Captain, let your men cover that house with rifle-fire, and detail some men to break into a store and get inflammables.”
The big gun went with a deafening crash, and the doorway was in slivers. A dropping rifle-fire rained into the windows. Crash went the big gun after a minute, but the building was dark and silent, as though holding their sputtering toys in contempt.