“Ay, Bill—it’s all right. We did our—best, but we were done by a damned blackguard. Now he’ll send me up—but I don’t care. I broke him—with my naked hands. Didn’t I, McNamara?” He mocked unsteadily at the boss, who cursed aloud in return, glowering like an evil mask, while Stillman ran up dishevelled and shrilly irascible.
“Take him away, I tell you! Take him to jail.”
But Wheaton held his place while the room centred its eyes upon him, scenting some unexpected dénouement. He saw it, and in concession to a natural vanity and dramatic instinct, he threw back his head and stuffed his hands into his coat-pockets while the crowd waited. He grinned insolently at the Judge and the receiver.
“This will be a day of defeats and disappointments to you, my friends. That boy won’t go to jail because you will wear the shackles yourselves. Oh, you played a shrewd game, you two, with your senators, your politics, and your pulls; but it’s our turn now, and we’ll make you dance for the mines you gutted and the robberies you’ve done and the men you’ve ruined. Thank Heaven there’s one honest court and I happened to find it.” He turned to the strangers who had accompanied him from the ship, crying, “Serve those warrants,” and they stepped forward.
The uproar of the past few minutes had brought men running from every direction till, finding no room on the stairs, they had massed in the street below while the word flew from lip to lip concerning this closing scene of their drama, the battle at the Midas, the great fight up-stairs, and the arrest by the ’Frisco deputies. Like Sindbad’s genie, a wondrous tale took shape from the rumors. Men shouldered one another eagerly for a glimpse of the actors, and when the press streamed out, greeted it with volleys of questions. They saw the unconscious marshal borne forth, followed by the old Judge, now a palsied wretch, slinking beside his captor, a very shell of a man at whom they jeered. When McNamara lurched into view, an image of defeat and chagrin, their voices rose menacingly. The pack was turning and he knew it, but, though racked and crippled, he bent upon them a visage so full of defiance and contemptuous malignity that they hushed themselves, and their final picture of him was that of a big man downed, but unbeaten to the last. They began to cry for Glenister, so that when he loomed in the doorway, a ragged, heroic figure, his heavy shock low over his eyes, his unshaven face aggressive even in its weariness, his corded arms and chest bare beneath the fluttering streamers, the street broke into wild cheering. Here was a man of their own, a son of the Northland who labored and loved and fought in a way they understood, and he had come into his due.
But Roy, dumb and listless, staggered up the street, refusing the help of every man except Wheaton. He heard his companion talking, but grasped only that the attorney gloated and gloried.
“We have whipped them, boy. We have whipped them at their own game. Arrested in their very door-yards—cited for contempt of court—that’s what they are. They disobeyed those other writs, and so I got them.”
“I broke his arm,” muttered the miner.
“Yes, I saw you do it! Ugh! it was an awful thing. I couldn’t prove conspiracy, but they’ll go to jail for a little while just the same, and we have broken the ring.”
“It snapped at the shoulder,” the other continued, dully, “just like a shovel handle. I felt it—but he tried to kill me and I had to do it.”