“Oh, Joe,” called Van Dorn as his whole body began to tremble, “bring the Adams boy quick–here!” His voice broke into a shriek with nervous agitation and the word “here” was uttered with a piercing yell, that made the crowd wince.
Calvin brought Kenyon out and sent him across the street. Grant opened a window and called out: “Get into the car with Lila, Kenyon–please.”
The woman in the car cried: “Grant, Grant, is that you up there? They were going to murder the boy, Grant. Do you want his child up there?”
She looked up and the arc light before the hotel revealed her tragic, shattered face–a wreck of a face, crumpled and all out of line and focus as the flickering glare of the arc-light fell upon it. “Shall I send you his child?” she babbled 420hysterically, keeping the revolver pointed at Lila–“His child that he’s silly about?”
Van Dorn started for her car, but Brotherton at the window bellowed across a gun sight: “Move an inch and I’ll shoot.”
Grant called down: “Margaret, take Lila and Kenyon home, please.”
Then, with Mr. Brotherton’s gun covering the father in the street below, the driver of the car turned it carefully through the parting crowd, and was gone as mysteriously and as quickly as he came.
“Now,” cried Mr. Brotherton, still sighting down the gun barrel pointed at Van Dorn, standing alone in the middle of the street, “you make tracks, and don’t you go to that saloon either–you go home to the bosom of your family. Stop,” roared Mr. Brotherton, as the man tried to break into a run. Van Dorn stopped. “Go down to the Company store where the union men are,” commanded Mr. Brotherton. “They will take you home.
“Hey–you Local No. 10,” howled the great bull voice of Brotherton. “You fellows take this man home to his own vine and fig tree.”
Van Dorn, looking ever behind him for help that did not come, edged down the street and into the arms of Local No. 10, and was swallowed up in that crowd. A rock from across the street crashed through the window where the gun barrels were protruding, but there was no fire in return. Another rock and another came. But there was no firing.