After a hasty breakfast they set to work barricading the windows and doors of the stout log-house, as well as building a fort of stones around the well and cutting a trench from there to the house and the barn, a large two-storey frame structure which was rendered almost bullet-proof by lining it with bales of hay. Noon found them well prepared for a siege—found, too, close on three hundred Rustlers watching them from the surrounding hill-tops.
A long-range fusillade was kept up all day on Monday without effect on either side, and Monday night also passed uneventfully. Tuesday found the Rustlers entrenched in rifle-pits and stone forts within easy range on all sides of the ranch buildings. They had received large quantities of ammunition from Buffalo, which was only fifteen miles north of them, and had also brought up the tents and provisions abandoned by the White Caps near the Powder River. All day long the numbers of the Rustlers kept constantly increasing, till by nightfall fully five hundred men were pouring lead into the buildings and forts on the A—T. The firing kept up all Tuesday night, and under cover of the darkness the Rustlers advanced their rifle-pits to within two hundred yards of the ranch buildings. Seated on the top of a pile of earth and thinking himself safe in the darkness, young Tommy Arnold, of the Rustlers, fired a shot at the dark mass of buildings in the valley. Quick as lightning came an answering shot, fired at the flash of his gun, and young Arnold pitched forward, shot through the breast. Angered at the death of Arnold, several Rustlers digging a pit near him seized their rifles and poured in a volley of bullets at the spot where they had seen the gun-flash in the valley. With five further shots, however, the hidden marksman wounded two of them and threw dirt into the faces of a couple more, so that they were soon glad to quit the unequal duel. The man who did this shooting was afterwards discovered to be an ex-United States marshal from Oklahoma, named Smith. He was wounded on the last day of the fight, and afterwards died from his wounds.
On Tuesday afternoon Bob Snelling and John Pettybone, two of the richest ranchers among the Rustlers, rode over to Fort McKinney and offered the commander there two thousand dollars for the use of his cannon for one day. Of course, the commandant had to refuse, and he further took warning, so that that night, when a party of Rustlers, led by Tom Ray, arrived with the intention of stealing the gun they found it had been wheeled into the guard-house and a sentry stationed over it. Not to be daunted by these failures to secure a big gun, old Jack Flagett, a veteran of the Civil War, essayed to make one. He secured a team and drove to Buffalo, returning with a number of lengths of iron piping. He first placed a three-inch pipe around a two-inch and pounded the intervening space full of wet sand, repeating the performance with a four and six inch pipe. The whole affair was then chained securely to the stump of a tree on the top of a hill about five hundred yards from the A—T buildings. Next the amateur artillerist rammed in a couple of pounds of powder, and, for a projectile, put in five pounds of dynamite. Then he called out to some near-by Rustlers: “Come over, boys, and watch me blow that White Cap outfit to Hades!”
He was about to set a match to the touch-hole when one Fred Johnston interfered.
“Better set it off with a fuse, Jack,” he said.
“Well, to satisfy you, I will,” replied Flagett; “but there is no danger, as this gun can stand anything.”
A six-inch fuse was then placed in the gun and lighted, and everyone retired into an adjacent pit, dragging old Jack with them. For a moment all was silence; then came an awful ear-splitting report, and a cloud of dust settled over the rifle pit. When it cleared away all trace of Flagett’s cannon and the stump as well had disappeared. Not a piece of either was ever found, though Hall Smith, who was in charge of the cook-camp half a mile farther back, swore that he heard a piece of pipe whistle over his head a few seconds after the explosion.
Wednesday night passed very quietly, the White Caps being short of ammunition, and the Rustlers busy in the construction of a movable fort on wheels. They placed three mountain wagons in the shape of the letter V, and built a framework of poles between them. This frame they covered with bales of hay and suspended other bales from it clear to the ground. There was room within this curious fort for twenty men, and loopholes were left in the front sides for firing through as they slowly propelled it forward. It was the intention to roll this up within throwing distance of the ranch buildings, and then to demolish them with dynamite bombs.
On Thursday morning, just at sunrise, the ponderous engine began to crawl forward on its half-mile journey. Slowly but surely it crept along, till at ten o’clock it was less than three hundred yards from the ranch. In vain did the White Caps concentrate their fire on the moving fortress; their bullets were absorbed by the hay as water by a sponge. Inside the beleaguered ranch all was excitement and terror. Only too well did they know the fate that awaited them unless the grim monster advancing on them was checked. Benton called his boys together. “Boys, we must stop that fort or die like rats in a trap,” he said. “I want twenty men to follow me. Each will take a torch in one hand and his six-shooter in the other, and I promise one thousand dollars to the first man to fire the hay walls of the fort.”
The moving fort was now less than a hundred yards from the house, and the furious fire from the hills and pits that had covered its advance died down as the Rustlers lay, with their loaded rifles silent, waiting for some move on the part of the White Caps.