Once after crossing a bridge they pulled up and listened, and then rode off into the bushes and stood quietly in hiding. They were evidently anxious to avoid pursuit. Once pistol shots followed them as they fled through the night.
At Weston a crowd of men awaited them, and crossed over to the other side in company with Bill’s party. Warren was thrown into a wagon. Presently they stepped from the boat to Missouri’s shore.
CHAPTER X.
Warren looked about him in the light of the flaming torches. Men poured down to the water’s edge as fast as they could come. The crowds which surged through the streets day and night were rushing toward the wagon where lay the prisoner, their faces distorted like demons with evil passions.
Bill Thomson mounted the wagon-seat and with an oratorical flourish recounted the prisoner’s sins against the “principles of the institootion.”
“Gentlemen, take notice!” said Gid Holmes as Bill finished. “This yere man is a abolitionist an’ a nigger thief, two crimes we never overlooks, bein’ dangerous to our peace and principles. What’s your will, gentlemen? Speak out.”
“Give him a thrashing first!” “Hang him!” “Burn him!”
And the ruffians dragged the wounded man from the wagon and threw themselves upon him—kicking him in the body—in the face and head—spitting upon him and maltreating him in every way. He defended himself well for a while; his bright head would rise from their buffeting.
“To the cross-roads!” came the hoarse cry from a thousand throats.
Tramp, tramp, on they rushed like a dark river, with cries whose horror was indescribable. It was not the voices of human beings, but more like the cries of wild animals, the screaming of enraged hyenas, the snarling of tigers, the angry, inarticulate cries of thousands of wild beasts in infuriated pursuit of their prey, yet with a something in it more sinister and blood curdling, for they were men, and added a human ferocity.