Tom had recognized his own railroad workers, and was throwing himself among them, doing his utmost with hands and voice to stop the brief but wild orgy of revenge on the part of the workmen who idolized him. In their present rage, however, Tom could not at once restrain them. Time and again he was swept back from reaching Tim Griggs, who was easily the center of this volcanic outburst of human passion.
“Boys!” roared Tim. “We'll want to know these coyotes to-morrow. Black the left eye of each rascal. I'll black both of Jim Duff's.”
Two heavy, sodden impacts sounded during a brief pause in the noise, attesting to the fact that the gambler had been decorated.
“Stop all this! Stop!” roared Tom Reade. “Men, we're not savages, just because these other fellows happen to be! Stop it, I tell you. Are there no foremen here?”
“I'm trying to reach you, Mr. Reade,” called the voice of Superintendent Hawkins. “But this is a heavy crush to get through.”
In truth it was. There were more than a hundred laborers in the cellar, while the stairs were blocked by a mob of enraged workmen.
“Stop it all, men!” Tom again urged, and this time there was silence, save for his own strong voice. “We don't want to prove ourselves to be as despicable as the enemy are. Bring 'em up to the street, but don't be brutal about it. We'll look the scoundrels over so that we'll know them to-morrow. Come along. Clear the stairs, if you please, men!”
Tom was now once more in control, as fully as though he had his force of toilers out on the desert at the Man-killer quicksand.
So, after a few minutes, all were in the street. Here fully two hundred more of the railroad men, many of them armed with stakes and other crude weapons, held back a crowd of Paloma residents who swarmed curiously about.
“Let me through, men. Let me through, I tell you!” insisted the voice of Harry Hazelton, as that young assistant engineer struggled with the crowd.