Lacey himself was in the lead, and miraculously escaped on down the canyon, riding at breakneck speed. He is sure no others escaped their doom.
I was fortunate enough to have entered the Lucky Dollar, where Lacey was steadying his nerves with Taliaferro’s whisky, before the rest of the crowd was blocked out by soldiers upon General Peach’s entry there. The General, after hearing Lacey’s story, announced his intention to depart immediately and with all his troops for the border. Colonel Whiteside interposed that Rattlesnake Canyon is in Mexican Territory, whereupon the General whirled as though he would strike his subordinate. “I will follow Espirato to hell itself, and be damned to the Mexican government!” cried he, to the accompaniment of cheers — for how fickle are men, to whom, a few minutes earlier, Peach had seemed a monster of superhuman powers. Whiteside continued to warn him that if he entered Mexican territory, trouble with that country would result, that he would certainly be court-martialed for it and end his days in disgrace. The General ordered him away contemptuously, and charged Major Standley with the preparation of the cavalry for the ride to the border.
Peach towered over his subordinates like a Titan over pygmies. Hate him as I must, I will admit he was at this moment every inch a general, and an impressive one. He seemed younger. He held himself more erect. His eyes flashed with resolution, and the commands he uttered were clear and terse; he seemed to have recovered himself completely since I had seen him last, in Bright’s City.
It was at this time that Willingham entered.[1] He is a short, rotund man with red whiskers fringing a cold and willful face. He began to seek the General’s attention, but Peach rebuffed him and, when Willingham persisted, directed one of his officers to escort the gentleman outside. Peach did this politely enough, but evidently had been holding himself in with some restraint, for when Whiteside again endeavored to make himself heard, Peach bellowed that he would be put under arrest if he uttered another word, and within twenty minutes General Peach and every officer and trooper had departed Warlock for the border.
The position of Willingham, MacDonald, and their henchmen, who have taken refuge in the Western Star Hotel, is perilous indeed, for the Medusa strikers have been released from the livery stable where they were confined, and a great number of them are now standing in Main Street outside the hotel, in ominous silence. Their mood does not seem to be one of violence — although as the day progresses and strong waters are imbibed, agitators listened to, and especially when the miners return this evening from the other mines, the mood may rapidly change, and if I were MacDonald and Willingham I would be shaking in my boots. I understand that Morgan has enlisted himself in Willingham’s party, and, with a number of foremen, stands guard at the hotel.
One of Blaikie’s hands has arrived, early this afternoon, with more news of the ambush in Rattlesnake Canyon. It now seems that Jack Cade and Mitchell have also escaped, and that their assailants were not Apaches at all, but Mexicans! This version of the ambush has immediately been accepted. For one reason, no doubt, because the possibility of Apaches on the loose and murderously inclined is an extremely unpleasant prospect to contemplate, and, for another, because the rumor has long been that McQuown and most of these same San Pablo men once ambushed Hacienda Puerto riders trailing rustled stock in Rattlesnake Canyon in exactly this same manner, masquerading as Apaches; and so it seems very likely that Don Ignacio’s vaqueros might have chosen a similar means to vengeance. Horrible though that vengeance seems, there is justice in it, and it is difficult not to wish that men such as Mitchell, and especially Jake Cade, had not been spared.
The Cowboy who brought in this news says he met the cavalry en route, and apprised them of his information — and was summarily brushed aside. It would seem, however, that the marauders will have put many miles between themselves and the border by now, if, indeed, they ever crossed it. And surely General Peach will not cross it himself, in pursuit of what the members of his staff, at least, must come to see are masqueraders.
There is laughter now about his wild, windmill-chasing ride, which, not many hours ago, had a valiant and glorious aspect. But the possibility that he will compound foolishness with idiocy, and lead his force into Mexico, is worrisome. Such an action could easily, in the present state of international relations, lead to reprisals, if not to war. To war in general we are not averse, but we decry it when we are in such an exposed position. Nor is General Peach a military commander in whom it is possible to have much faith.
The crowd of miners before the Western Star seems to have thinned out, and some say that their leaders, who had been let out of jail (the doctor was incarcerated with them!) are now meeting to decide upon a course of action. I fear they may run wild, knowing they have this respite in which to commit whatever arson and destruction they please, before Peach returns and they are rounded up again.
Blaisedell has not been seen. The subject is scrupulously avoided, and gossip is all over General Peach’s charge after the nonexistent Apaches. There is a general feeling of the fittingness of the slaughter of the rustlers, and I have heard it said that this ambush took place in exactly the same part of the Canyon as did the previous one, which it avenged. Sheriff Keller I saw in the Lucky Dollar, exceedingly under the influence of strong spirits; with him the judge, equally so. Many Cowboys are coming in from the valley. As usual, the news from Warlock has reached them on the wind, or through the voices of birds. I hope they have not come to gloat over Blaisedell’s fall. They did not accomplish it. The sight of him dropping mutely beneath General Peach’s bludgeon clings to me like an incubus.
[1] Director of a number of mining companies, and president of the board of Porphyrion and Western, “Sunny Will” Willingham was a prominent California politician and a former member of Congress.
63. THE DOCTOR CHOOSES HIS POTION
WORD had been sent out that the Medusa strikers were to meet on the vacant ground next to Robinson’s wood yard at five o’clock, and a little before that time the doctor set out from Tim Daley’s house in company with Fitzsimmons, Daley, Frenchy Martin, and the others, who, as Fitzsimmons had said, had been classified as goats rather than sheep by the fact that they had been incarcerated in the jail rather than in the livery stable with the rank and file. Old man Heck, in a sulk, had refused to attend the meeting.
The afternoon had been spent in argument over policy that had been, by careful indirection, a struggle for power. Old man Heck’s supporters had deserted him one by one, until finally even Frenchy Martin and Bull Johnson had been won over. Now the decisions, for better or for worse, lay with the doctor and Fitzsimmons, whom the goats had raised to leadership over themselves, and so over the sheep.
The doctor had been amazed by his own actions this afternoon. They had been entirely foreign to what he had known of himself, Dr. David Wagner. The hatred engendered within the struggle to manipulate words and men just passed, had far outstripped any felt for the Medusa mine, for MacDonald, and for the mineowners. He was not even disgusted with himself to realize that he was as much a subject to this as old man Heck or Bull Johnson. His jealousy, whenever any man had risen to challenge him, had been ruthless, his pleasure, when he had won each separate skirmish, triumphant; he was contemptuous now of those he had beaten.