The
fugitives had a good start, and, being the picked runners of the Cross-
Roads, they crossed the open, weedy acres in safety and made for their
homes. Every house had become a fort, and the defenders would have to be
fought and torn out one by one. As the guns sounded, a woman in a shanty
near the forge began to scream, and kept on screaming.
On came the farmers and the men of Plattville. They took the saloon at a
run; battered down the crazy doors with a fence-rail, and swarmed inside
like busy insects, making the place hum like a hive, but with the hotter
industries of destruction. It was empty of life as a tomb, but they beat
and tore and battered and broke and hammered and shattered like madmen;
they reduced the tawdry interior to a mere chaos, and came pouring forth
laden with trophies of ruin. And then there was a charry smell in the air,
and a slender feather of smoke floated up from a second-story window.
At the same time Watts led an assault on the adjoining house--an assault
which came to a sudden pause, for, from cracks in the front wall, a
squirrel-rifle and a shot-gun snapped and banged, and the crowd fell back
in disorder. Homer Tibbs had a hat blown away, full of buck-shot holes,
while Mr. Watts solicitously examined a small aperture in the skirts of
his brown coat. The house commanded the road, and the rush of the mob into
the village was checked, but only for the instant.
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