What King saw when he reached the point in the street where it turned and ran along the bank of the river made him stand a moment aghast. Back against the trees the buildings stood, huddling together closely in the cold light of the early morning. The water in the river was almost level with the ground on which he was standing, and large sections of the bank had been swept away during the night, until the corral in which the horses were placed before King left town the night before, was now standing on the very brink of the flood.
This was in itself enough to strike fear into King's heart, but the movements of the men were what concerned him most. Half-drunken still from their night's debauch they seemed to be rolling about in a kind of ridiculous orgy, stumbling and falling and scrambling to their feet again, shouting and cursing and grappling each other in frenzied disorder.
A glance was enough for King to realize fully what was wrong. He could not see McCartney anywhere among the men, but Cherry had told him enough--if telling had been at all necessary. Back a little from the struggling mass stood six or eight men, looking on quietly and talking among themselves. King recognized them as some of his own men, upon whom he thought he could rely for support. In a moment he was standing in the middle of the group.
"What are you standing here for?" he asked. "Come on--get into it!"
In a flash they were into the struggle, King leading them as they bored their way through in an effort to reach the corral. King's plan was clear in his own mind. Once with his back to the walls of the corral, he could call his men one by one about him, and having displaced their opponents, drive them off by united effort, break up their organization, and beat them into submission.
The plan, easily enough conceived, was not so easily carried into effect. King's appearance, it is true, had raised the spirits of the men who were fighting together to settle the scores they had accumulated during weeks of growing hatred for McCartney and his crowd. But as their spirits rose, the determination of their opponents became more grim as they saw themselves faced with possible defeat where they had never dreamed of anything but an easy victory. The fight became more and more furious every minute. Whereas before King's coming they had fought without much bad temper and with little evidence of losing control of themselves, now they struck out madly and grappled with the fierceness of men in a battle where life and death depended upon the outcome. They had fought only with their fists before. Now sticks and clubs began to make their appearance as if by magic, and in many cases the fight was for the possession of weapons.