Breakfast was ready in White’s home when the mob arrived. Harkins sent Merrill in to breakfast, and himself went out on the porch, carbine in hand, to stand off the thoroughly angry gang. White also went out, beseeching the mob to disperse. Matters looked squally for a time, but it was finally agreed that Lafonte should give bond, whereupon he was promptly released.
The two officers then finished their breakfast, and shortly set out for the Blue House, an abandoned schoolhouse about forty miles distant, where the trial was to be conducted. They were followed at a distance by Lafonte’s half-drunken champions, who were by no means placated, owing to the fact that the Blue House was in a neighborhood friendly to the Government. Harkins and Merrill soon dodged to one side in the forest, until the rioters had passed them, and then proceeded leisurely in the rear. On their way to the Blue House they cut up four stills, destroyed a furnace, and made several arrests.
A Mountain Home
The next day three United States commissioners opened court in the old schoolhouse. The room was crowded by curious spectators. The trial had not proceeded beyond preliminaries when shots and shouts from the pursuing mob were heard in the distance. Immediately the room was emptied of both crowd and commissioners, who fled in all directions, leaving Harkins and Merrill to fight their battle alone.
There were thirteen men in the moonshiners’ mob. They surrounded the house, and immediately began shooting in through the windows. The officers returned the fire, but a hard-pine ceiling in the room caused the bullets of the attacking party to ricochet in all directions and made the place untenable. Harkins and his comrade sprang out through the windows, but from opposite sides of the house. Merrill ran, but Harkins grappled with the men nearest to him, and in a moment the whole force of desperadoes was upon him like a swarm of bees. Unfortunately, the brave fellow had left his carbine at the house where he had spent the night. His only weapon was a revolver that had only three cartridges in the cylinder. Each of these shots dropped a man; but there were ten men left. Nothing but Harkins’s gigantic strength saved him, that day, from immediate death. His long arms tackled three or four men at once, and all went down in a bunch. Others fell on top, as in a college cane-rush. There had been swift shooting, hitherto, but now it was mostly knife and pistol-butt. It is almost incredible, but it is true, that this extraordinary battle waged for three-quarters of an hour. At its end only one man faced the now thoroughly exhausted and badly wounded, but indomitable officer. At this fellow, Harkins hurled his pistol; it struck him in the forehead, and the battle was won.
A thick overcoat that Mr. Harkins wore was pierced by twenty-one bullets, seven of which penetrated his body. He received, besides, three or four bad knife-wounds in his back, and he was literally dripping blood from head to foot.
This tragedy had an almost comic sequel. After all danger had passed, a sheriff appeared on the scene, who placed, not the mob-leader, but the Federal officer under arrest. Harkins left a guard over the three men whom he had shot, and submitted to arrest, but demanded that he be taken to the farmhouse where he had left his horse. This the sheriff actually refused to permit, although Harkins was evidently past all possibility of continuing far afoot. Disgusted at such imbecility, the deputy stalked away from the sheriff, leaving the latter with his mouth open, and utterly obsessed.
A short distance up the road, Harkins met a countryman mounted on a sorry old mule. “Loan me that mule for half an hour,” he requested; “you see, I can walk no further.” But the fellow, scared out of his wits by the spectacle of a man in such desperate plight, refused to accommodate him.
“Get down off that mule, or I’ll break your neck!”