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Glidden's place of confinement was a square warehouse, near the edge of town. Before the improvised jail guards paced up and down, strangely alert. Daylight had just cleared away the gray when a crowd of masked men appeared as if by magic and bore down upon the guards. There was an apparent desperate resistance, but, significantly, no cries or shots. The guards were overpowered and bound.
"I'm Chris Dorn's son. My father died a few days ago. He overtaxed his heart fighting fire in the wheat ... Fire set by I.W.W. men. Glidden's men! ... They burned our wheat. Ruined us!" Neuman showed shock at the news, at the sudden death of an old friend, but he did not express himself in words. "Do you deny implication in Glidden's plot to kill Anderson?" demanded Dorn. "Yes," replied Neuman.
The man called Glidden went down before that onslaught, and his gun went flying aside. Three of Glidden's group started for it. The cowboy Bill leaped forward, a gun in each hand. "Hyar!... Back!" he yelled. And then all except the two struggling principals grew rigid. Lenore's heart was burning in her throat. The movements of Dorn were too swift for her sight.
"While on the surface," they says, "the deal seems a little florid; still, when a gent armed with nothin' but a cold sense of jestice comes to pirootin' plumb through the affair with a lantern, he's due to emerge a lot with the conviction that Glidden's wrong." So Cimmaron is free in a minute. "'But thar's Glidden's store!
It might turn out a fatality. This so-called labor union intended to take advantage of a crisis to further its own ends. Yet even so, that fact did not wholly explain Glidden and his subtlety. Some nameless force loomed dark and sinister back of Glidden's meaning, and it was not peril to the wheatlands of the Northwest alone. Like a huge dog Kurt shook himself and launched into action.
Big and strong and swift, with fists like a blacksmith's, Kurt bowled over this assailant and that one. He thought he recognized Glidden in a man who kept out of his reach and who was urging on the others. Kurt lunged at him and finally got his hands on him. That was fatal for Kurt, because in his fury he forgot Glidden's comrades.
Feeling in his pocket for his gun, he was disturbed to find that it had been taken. He had no weapon. But he did not hesitate. Bounding up, he rushed like a hurricane upon the unprepared group. He saw Glidden's pale face upheld to the light of the stars, and by it saw that Glidden was recovering.
"'An' this yere longhorn's got 'em to make good, "says the Dallas sharp, p'intin' at Cimmaron, "'cause he inherits the store." "'Now, whatever do you-alls think of that?" says Cimmaron, appealin' to us. "Yere I've told this perverse sport that Glidden's done cashed in an' quit; an' now he lays for me with them indebtednesses. It shorely wearies me."
Flopping and crawling like a crippled chicken, he got out of sight below. Kurt's shot was a starter for Olsen's men. Four or five of the shot-guns boomed at once; then the second barrels were discharged, along with a sharper cracking of small arms. Pandemonium broke loose in Glidden's gang. No doubt, at least, of the effectiveness of the shot-guns!
Ponies, however, is easy. I can get 'em every moonlight night." "'When them sports is racin', which the run is to be a quarter of a mile, only they never finishes, jest as Cimmaron begins to pull ahead, his pony bein' a shade suddener than Glidden's, whatever does the latter do but rope this Cimmaron Pete's pony by the feet an' down him.
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