Читать книгу Vigilante Days and Ways. The pioneers of the Rockies; the makers and making of Montana and Idaho онлайн

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“Dry up there, you brass-mounted hirelings, or I’ll snatch you bald-headed.”

This insulting language produced the desired effect. Smarting under the implied reproach it conveyed, one of the soldiers sharply inquired,

“Why do you single us out, when there are others more boisterous?”

Porter waited for no further provocation, but drawing and cocking his revolver with one hand, and seizing the soldier nearest to him with the other, he dragged him ignominiously into the circle where he was standing, ordering the deputy city marshal and Bob and his friends to assist in arresting him. The soldiers offered resistance. An immediate mêlée was the consequence. The women and children in the audience screamed in affright. The other soldiers present rushed with drawn pistols to the rescue of their comrade. The one in the gallery sprang upon one of the officers with the ferocity of a wild beast. Cherokee Bob with a pistol in one hand and a bowie-knife in the other, his voice wildly ringing above all other sounds, was in his true element. More than a dozen pistol shots followed in quick succession. Two of the soldiers were killed, and others fearfully mangled. Porter and his deputy assistant were each shot through a leg, the latter crippled for life. The work of blood was progressing, and but for the interference of an officer of the garrison, would have ended only with the death of the assassins.