He turned his back to round up others. The line doubled on him, an excited commotion shaking it. He tried to break his way clear, to understand what they were saying.
"All the soldiers is come! They're right behind the store!"
"You see?" stormed McGue, shoving Ray to the side. "Everybody below the common."
They made the change. The militia assembled before the storehouse, extended their wings, beat down the open space and the lanes parallel with it. Undetermined, the strikers waited, poorly armed, but sheltered behind friendly walls.
Huggins' big voice came faintly. "Lay down your guns," he shouted. "The first man who shoots, we'll fire. Do you surrender?"
"We'd better," insisted McGue, perspiring from heat and excitement. "They ain't got anything on us. You can't fight rifles with bare hands."
"Hell, no! You saw what they did to Ed McGuire. Let's kill the uglies----"
"Kill 'em!" Ray adopted a new slogan. "Kill 'em! Kill 'em, I says."
They wavered. The blistering sun beat fiercely on the metallic barrels of the menacing rifles.
A dreadful tumult of shots, shouts, indescribable noises, broke out in the rear. The shuddering sound of machine guns pelted whistling hail through the sparse tree leaves above.
Out of the blind turmoil came running figures, blaspheming in horrible rage. "They're there too!"
Major Grinnell halted at the head of his men. McGue, surrounded by a cowed hundred of the strikers, walked quietly out. "Do you want to arrest us?"
Methodically the houses and alleys were combed, until close to five hundred men, women and children had been herded into the trampled square. One by one they were marched before the guards and deputies; a hundred and nine were pointed out largely at random, as having had some part in the attack. The rest who were involved had slipped away between the two lines of attackers. Wailing and lamenting, the former were herded away into the overcrowded jails.
That night the militia encamped in the remains of the settlement. Fire had destroyed the western third of the houses, a fire which the soldiers made no attempt to put out.
Not a striker was permitted to enter the barred area.
Jim Hewin, back on duty as a sheriff's deputy, led one of the squads that scoured the surrounding woods the next morning for fugitives and bodies. "Hey, 'Red,'--they pipped somebody here," he explained.