Frank H. Spearman

“ With Bucks, open-eyed with surprise, hanging on in front of him, Stanley gave no heed to the bouncing, and the freight-engine pounded through the mountains like a steam-roller with a touch of crushed-stone delirium. Hour after hour the wild pace was kept up through the Sleepy Cat Mountains and across the Sweet Grass Plains. There was no easing up until the frantic machine struck the gorge of the Medicine River and whistled for the long yards above the roundhouse. ”

“ He stood on a ledge of rock so narrow that it gave only a footing even in daylight, but Bucks was called on to descend it in the middle of the night.
For any man to have attempted the feat seemed to him, the next morning, sheer insanity. Dancing, however, knew the treacherous face of the river wall. To his gigantic size and strength he united the sureness of a cat in climbing up or down a mountain arête. Often he had crept with a telegraph wire, unaided, where his best men hung back even in harness. ”

“ To a less hopeful temperament than Scuffy’s, life would not have seemed worth living. It was only Bucks who insured him anything at all to eat, and the enmity of the big, rangy hounds for the lean and hungry tramp dog left him no peace save when they were fighting in dreams. To accept life under such conditions indicated that Scuffy was a philosopher, and he accepted the conditions cheerfully, filching what he could of sustenance from the common pot and licking his troublesome wounds at night after his truculent companions had gone to sleep. ”

“ Cliff Street, only a block long and only half-opened, terminated then at the cliffs above the gorge of the Medicine River. But darkness under the brow of the hill helped the fleeing railroad men. Dancing dodged in and out of the undergrowth that fringed the street line and eluding his pursuers reached the brow of the cliff unseen. The rioters, knowing that no escape lay in that direction, beat the bushes that fringed the half-opened street, confident that the fugitives were in hiding among them.
For an ordinary man, indeed, there was no escape toward the river. ”

“ The main street was alive with strange-looking frontiersmen, trappers, hunters, scouts, soldiers, settlers, railroad laborers, outlaws, prospectors, and miners. Every face that Bucks looked into presented a study. They were sometimes faces bronzed with the clear, dry sunshine of the plains and mountains, rugged with adventure and keen with dangers met and passed, but others were furrowed with dissipation and seamed with vice, or merely vacant with the curiosity of the wanderer.
Nearly every man carried a fire-arm of some 36 sort. ”

“ Dancing, to whom every foot of the rocky way was familiar and who could get over obstructions in the dark as well as if it were day, led the way with a celerity that kept his companion breathing fast. Both had long legs, but Dancing in some mysterious way planted his feet with marvellous certainty of effect, while Bucks slipped and floundered over rocks and brush piles and across gullies until they took a short cut through a residence yard and found themselves on the heels of the mob surrounding the burning jail and in the glare of the fire in upper Front Street. ”

“ The Indians, seeking with unerring instinct the weakest point in the defence, converged in hundreds upon the long string of box-cars that made up the construction train at the rear of the camp, where Stanley, extending his few men in a resolute skirmish line, endeavored to prevent the savages from scalping the non-combatant cooks and burning the sleeping-cars. Bucks saw, conspicuous in the attack, a slender Sioux chief riding a strong-limbed, fleet pony with a coat of burnished gold and as much filled with the fire of the fight as his master was. ”

“ But the sight of the train now completely unnerved him. To lose his life with help a few moments away was an added bitterness, and he saw that the relief train would be too late to save him.
He fired the last cartridge in his hot revolver at the circling braves and, as he reloaded, the Indians ran up on the platform and threw themselves against the door. Fiendish faces peered through the window-panes and one Indian smashed a sash in with a war club. ”

“ Nothing less would have saved them. The fight, moving every instant after Dancing, reached the broad wooden steps leading from the jail yard to the street. Down these the lineman, stubborn and bleeding, drove a desperate way. And Bucks, able again to handle himself, was putting up a good fight when, to his horror, Dancing, fighting down the flight of steps, stumbled and fell.
Half a dozen men, with a yell, jumped for him. Bucks thought the finish had come. He sprang into the fight and, armed only with a wagon spoke, cracked right and left wherever he could reach a head. ”

“ The Indians yelled lustily at the success of their raid, the stampeded horses dashed panic-stricken before them, and the braves shouted back in derision at the vain efforts of the troopers to stop them with useless bullets. Bucks’s own impulse was to empty a charge of birdshot into the last of the fleeing warriors, but this he knew might cost him his life, and he resisted the temptation. When he was sure all were past he ran toward the bluffs, and gaining a little eminence saw the fleeing Indians, a dozen in all, making their way jubilantly up the river. ”

“ Happily, Bucks’s scrub horse gave a better account of himself in climbing than he had done in covering better ground. As their horses stumbled hurriedly along the narrow ledges, they made noise enough to wake the Indian dead and the loose rock tumbled with sinister echoes down the canyon wall. But progress was made, and the white men felt only anxious lest pursuit should catch them exposed on the uncovered height up which they were fast clambering.
Secure in their escape, the three were nearing the coveted top when a yell echoed through the canyon from below. ”

“ The whole upper town was on fire. Men fleeing for their lives skulked in the shadows of the side streets and the constant scattering report of fire-arms added to the terrors of the night.
Hour after hour the conflagration raged and day broke at last on the smoking ruins of the town of Medicine Bend. The work of the vigilantes had been mercilessly thorough. Along the railroad track stiffened bodies hanging from the cross-bars of telegraph poles in the gloom of the breaking day told a ghastly story of justice summarily administered to the worst of the offenders. ”

“ Outnumbering the little band, the rioters closed in on their flanks and showered stones upon them. Bill Dancing was the centre of the fight. A piece of rock laid open his scalp, but, though the mob was sure of getting him, he fought like a whirlwind. They redoubled their efforts to bring him down. One active rioter with the seam of some other fight slashed across his forehead struck down a vigilante and ran in on Dancing. It was Seagrue. The lineman, warned by Bucks, turned too late to escape a blow on the head that would have dazed a bullock. ”

“ As Stanley rose from his midnight meal, Atkinson ran in with word that a band of rioters, well armed, had attacked a train of boarding-cars defended by the roundhouse men.
The sky, bright again with the flame of conflagration, made a huge dome of red, lighting the railroad yards across which men were now hurrying to make fresh dispositions for the emergency.
The vigilante leaders saw impending, in the Front Street fire, the ruin of their business property. There were no longer men enough left to fight the flames and guard the fire-fighters. ”

“ Scott only smiled to himself. Both ends of the little canyon were guarded. From where he was searching the scout peered carefully out at the canyon walls. There were hiding-places, but they were hardly large enough to conceal a man. It was somewhere in the rocks close at hand that the fugitives had found a temporary refuge; but they could not now escape––nor could they be far from the wagon.
Without losing sight of the surroundings, Scott, disclosing nothing of his discovery to the trader, announced that he was satisfied and that the men he wanted did not appear to be there. ”

“ He made noise enough for a pack of dogs and simulated a fury that gave the bear the surprise of his life. Bucks realized that only his four-legged friend stood between him and destruction and that so unequal a contest could not endure long. Skilful as 106 the little fellow was, he was pitted against an antagonist quite as quick and wary. The clumsiness of the bear was no more than seeming, and any one of the terrific blows he dealt at Scuffy with his huge paw would have stretched a man lifeless. Bucks, collecting his disordered faculties, raised his rifle to help his champion with a shot. ”

“ He wandered aimlessly across the track and seeing nothing better to interest him began climbing Point of Rocks.
The higher he climbed the more absorbed he became. Youth and strength lent ardor to the ascent, and Bucks, soon forgetting everything below, was scaling the granite pile that towered above him. For thirty minutes, without a halt, he continued to climb, and reaching after a while what seemed the highest ledge of the rocky spur, he walked out upon it to the very edge and was rewarded for his labor with a magnificent panorama of the mountain divide. ”

“ Bucks, looking eagerly, saw in the west a cloud of dust. At the same time he saw the tie gang running in dozens for their lives from the divide where they were working toward the camp. The men beyond them on the grade had scrambled into the wagons, dumped any ties they might contain helter-skelter to the ground, and were clinging to the wagon boxes. In these, the drivers standing up, lashed their horses with whip and line for life, and death, while everywhere beside and behind them other men on foot were racing back to safety. ”

“ Before the young substitute took up his train-sheet, he told the chief despatcher of how strangely the conductor, Dave Hawk, had talked to him.
“He has a reason for it,” responded Baxter briefly.
“What reason?”
“There is as good a railroad man as ever lived,” said Baxter, referring to the black-bearded conductor. “He is the master of us all in the handling of trains. He could be anything anybody is on this line to-day that he might want to be but for one thing. If he hadn’t ruined his own life, Dave Hawk could be superintendent here. He knows whereof he speaks, Bucks.” ”

“ All eyes centred on the two men. Every one realized that open war was on and that it needed only a spark to start the shooting. The gamblers, rallying to Seagrue, backed him with oaths and threats.
“Seagrue, put down that pistol or I’ll wring your neck,” returned the lineman, baring his right arm as he sauntered toward the outlaw. Bucks, beside Stanley, stood transfixed as he watched Dancing. The lineman’s revolver was slung in the holster at his side.
Seagrue hesitated. He saw Bob Scott standing in the doorway of the gambling tent with his rifle lying carelessly over his arm. ”

“ A tall young man, spare but almost gigantic in stature, standing back in one corner of the agent’s office as the men about him were hustled along, likewise regarded Bucks with surprise as he saw him start single-handed to expel the intruders. This was the mountain telegraph lineman, Bill Dancing, as simple as he was strong, and ready at any time to be surprised, but not often disconcerted. In this instance, however, he was amazed, for almost before he realized it the energetic operator was hustling him out with the others. ”

“ Railroad men who came running from the station to help were too late. The flurry was over and they found nothing to do but to cheer their new aids.
Nor were the gamblers asleep. Word had gone out both east and west of the approaching crisis between the disorderly and the law-and-order elements, and every passenger train into Medicine Bend brought mysterious men from towns and railroad camps who were openly or secretly allied in one or another vicious calling to the classes that were now making a stand for the rule or ruin of the railroad town. ”