CHAPTER IV. ON THE STREET.
The battle in the street was now at its height, and the spirit in which it was waged on the part of the citizens showed how grossly the robbers had mistaken the mettle of the people with whom they had to deal. The community was taken by surprise and at a great disadvantage. It was at the height of the prairie-chicken season, and a majority of the men who had guns were away in the field. The excellent hunting in the neighborhood had drawn many sportsmen from the larger cities, accustoming the people to the presence of strangers, while they had no reason to expect a hostile invasion. When the mounted bandits on Bridge Square and Division Street began riding and shooting, the first impression was that of surprise. Some thought it the reckless fun of drunken scapegraces. Some took the riders to be the attaches of a traveling show, advertising their performance. When the bullets began to [pg 26] fly about people's ears, and the character of the invaders became evident, every body was stunned and dazed, and there was a general scramble for shelter. But the next moment there was an equally prompt rally of brave men to repel the attack.
Dr. Wheeler, who had been one of the first to give the alarm, and who had been driven from the street by the imprecations and bullets of the robbers, hastened to the drug-store where he usually kept his gun. Remembering as he went that he had left it at the house, he did not slacken his pace, but kept on through the store, heading first for the house of a neighbor, where he hoped a weapon might be found, but on second thought turning into the Dampier Hotel, close at hand, where he remembered to have seen one. There, instead of the fowling-piece he looked for, he found an old army carbine, for which, with the help of Mr. Dampier the clerk, three cartridges were discovered in another part of the house. All this was so quickly done, that he was at a second-story chamber window, with his gun loaded, in time for the beginning of the fight.
HENRY M. WHEELER.
Meantime Mr. Allen, who had also sounded so prompt and vigorous an alarm, ran to his store where he had a number of guns, and loading them [pg 27] with such ammunition as came to his hand, gave them to anybody who would take them. One of them was taken by Mr. Elias Stacy, who used it to good purpose in the battle that followed.
As Mr. Allen went to his own store, he had passed that of Mr. Manning, to whom he shouted his warning concerning the robbers. Up to this time Manning had no suspicion of what was going on. One of the robbers had been in the store in the forenoon, looking about and pretending he wanted to buy a gun. He was a genteel, well-dressed fellow, and Manning supposed him to be some stranger who had come to Northfield to hunt; though he did not believe that he wanted any gun, and thought there was something wrong about him. Even when the three horsemen dashed through the Square so noisily and belligerently, he thought little of it. But when he heard Allen's shout, and made out the words “Robbing the Bank,” he recalled what he had seen and the meaning of it all flashed upon his mind. Abruptly leaving the customer he was serving, he rushed for a weapon, thinking hard and fast. Pistols? No, they would be of little account, His shotgun? Yes—No; he had left all his loaded cartridges at home. His breach-loading rifle! That was the thing; and here it was in the window; and there [pg 28] in a pigeon-hole of his desk were the cartridges, where they had been carelessly thrown months before. All this came to him without an instant's loss of time. He forgot nothing and he made no mistakes. Stripping the rifle of its cover, and seizing a handful of cartridges, he hurried to the scene of battle, loading as he ran.
The scene on the street is indescribable. People had not only made haste to get out of the way of the leaden hail-storm that had burst forth, but had also taken measures to protect themselves and their property against the raiders, whose intention was believed to be not only to rob the bank but to pillage the entire town. Stores and offices were hastily closed. The postmaster, Capt. H. S. French, who chanced to have an exceptionally heavy registered mail on hand that day, hastened to lock it in the safe and close the Office. Jewelers and others who had valuable and portable stock pursued a similar course. The news of the invasion, emphasized by the sound of the shooting, spread swiftly through the town. Warning was sent to the public school and to Carleton College to keep the students off the streets. The general impression was that the town was in possession of a horde of robbers, numbering nobody knew how many, and coming [pg 29] nobody knew whence, and bent on ruthless plunder, nobody knew to what extent.
The scene of the actual conflict was that part of Division Street on which the bank faced, and scarcely a full block in length. Here the five mounted robbers went riding back and forth, up one side of the street and down the other, doing their utmost with voice and arms to keep up the reign of terror which they had begun. The citizens whom they had driven in were looking for weapons, and the bolder ones were coming back, some armed and some unarmed, around the margin of the field. Capt. French, having made Uncle Sam's property as secure as possible, stood in front of the locked door, wondering where he could soonest find a gun. Justice Streater and ex policeman Elias Hobbs stepped out into the Square, empty handed but undaunted, and determined to do something by way of resistance to the invasion. A few were so fortunate as to have not only the courage but the means for an armed defence. Mr. Stacy, already referred to, came out with a fowling-piece, and confronting Miller, just as the latter was mounting his horse, fired at his head. The fine bird shot marked the robber's face, and the force of the charge knocked him back from the saddle, but inflicted no serious wound. [pg 30] There was a poetic justice in the incident, as it was Allen, whom Miller had seized and threatened at the bank, who owned and loaded the gun, and sent it out in the hands of his neighbor to draw first blood from the very man that had assaulted its owner.