“All we want,” Bill said jerkily, as his feet pounded on the last decline, “is a chance to argue it out with the men themselves before this Denver feller gets his work in. I’m entitled to talk to ’em. I’ve got my own card, and am as good a union man as any of ’em. The boys’ll be reasonable if they stop to think.”
They hastened up the roadway of the street, which was, as at any hour of the night, filled with moving men and clamorous with sound. They knew that the miners’ hall was at its farthest end over the Golden Age Saloon, and so lost no time in directing their steps toward it. A group in the roadway compelled them to turn out; and they were hurrying past, when a high, angry voice arrested them.
“And that’s what they did to me––me, old Bells Park, who is sixty-four!”
Dick turned into the crowd, followed by his partner, and began forcing his way through. Bells was screaming and sobbing now in anger, and venting a tirade of oaths. “If I’d been younger they couldn’t have done it so easily. If I’d ’a’ had my gun, I’d ’a’ killed some of ’em, I would!”
As the partners gained the little opening around him, the light from a window disclosed the white-headed, little man. Two men were half-holding him up. His face was a mass of blood, which one of his supporters was endeavoring to wipe away with a handkerchief, and from all sides came indignant, sympathetic mutterings.
“Who did that?” roared the heavy, infuriated 185 voice of Bill as he turned to those around him.
Bells, whose eyes were swollen shut, recognized the voice, and lurched forward.
“Some fellers backin’ up that Denver thug,” he wailed. “I was tryin’ to hold ’em till you come. He had the meetin’ packed with a lot of bums I never saw before, and, when I told ’em what I thought of ’em and him, he ordered me thrown out. I tore my card to pieces and chucked ’em in his fat face, and then one of the fellers that came with him hit me. They threw me down the stairs, and might ’a’ killed me if there hadn’t been one or two of my friends there. They call ’emselves union miners! The dirty loafers!” And his voice screamed away again into a line of objurgations and anathemas until Bill quieted him.
“Here, Dick,” he said, “give us a hand. We’ll take him over to Lily’s rooms and have her get Doc Mills.”