Within the ranch-house all was quiet. The twenty men selected for the dash stood with their right hands clenched around the butts of their heavy Colts and their lefts grasping kerosene-soaked torches. All eyes were fixed on their leader, who stood next to big Ben Williams, who was noiselessly removing the bars from the door. “Ready, boys!” came in clear, low tones from Benton as the last bar was lifted from its socket. Every man braced himself for the leap—ready, in fact, anxious, to have the dreadful suspense at an end, though each well knew that the opening of the door would be a signal for five hundred rifles to sweep the space between the house and the fort with a perfect hail of lead. Quickly the door swung open, and Benton leaped out. His eyes swept the surrounding hills; then he turned and tried to leap back into the protection of the log walls again. But all in vain! Quicker than thought came a flash of fire from a loophole in the fort, and Benton fell in the doorway with a bullet from Tom Champion’s rifle through his lungs.
“Keep back, boys!” he gasped. “Stay inside. You’re saved—the troops are coming.” They dragged him in, but these were his last words; the heavy hand of the avenging angel had fallen on him, and he had gone for a final reckoning.
“To the loopholes, boys!” shouted Williams, who had now taken command. “Shoot as you never shot before. If we can hold them in check for five minutes we are saved.”
From loopholes and cracks thirty-five rifles concentrated their fire on the hay fort, and the furious storm of lead caused Champion and the twenty men behind the bales to lie low and hug the ground. They knew that the fire could not long be sustained at that rate, and that when it slackened they could advance with fewer casualties. Glancing from a loophole to the north, Tom Champion saw two lines of brown-coated men, riding furiously in the midst of a cloud of dust, sweep over the hills less than a mile away. “Boys, the troops are coming!” he shouted. “Quick! light a fuse and try a throw from here.”
Hastily the bomb was prepared and thrown. The five-pound parcel of dynamite circled through the air and fell only ten feet short of the wall. For an instant there was silence; then came the explosion, and for a few minutes all was hid in a blinding cloud of dust. When it settled it revealed a gaping hole in the side of the house and the dim forms of men inside striving desperately to replace the dislocated logs.
“To the loopholes, boys! Pick them off!” cried Champion, but before a shot could be fired, between them and the house swept a line of cavalry, and the fight at the A—-T had passed into history.
Clothed in the uniform and authority of the United States army, fifty men from the Thirteenth Cavalry robbed five hundred raging Rustlers of their prey. No true American can fire on the army uniform, and cursing and furious, but powerless to interfere, the Rustlers could only stand by and watch thirty-five men—all that were left of the invaders—come forth and surrender themselves to Captain Watterson and his men, to be transported to Cheyenne for trial for the murder of Ray, Champion, and others. They were ultimately released without the formality of a trial after some of the moneyed cattle kings had conferred with the State officials.
“BENTON FELL IN THE DOORWAY WITH A BULLET FROM TOM CHAMPION’S RIFLE THROUGH HIS LUNGS.”
Dr. Hays, Ben Williams, and other of the leading cattlemen fled from the country, never to return. Their buildings were burned, their horses and cattle shot on sight by the Rustlers, while their calves bore the brand of the first man to see them. Many a wealthy rancher in that district to-day owes his start to the calves he gathered up when the big outfits went to pieces.