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Now, summoned by some unknown command, armed men appeared in the streets of San Francisco, twenty-four companies in all, with perhaps fifty men in each company. The Vigilantes had organized again. They brought a cannon and placed it against the jail gate, and demanded that Casey be surrendered to them.
But they had escaped the stream. Below was a strange sight. A scaffold shrouded in dust-clouds; a band of bewildered vigilantes with weapons drawn, waiting for they knew not what; three swinging, ghastly forms and a dead man on the platform; and all below, a horde of men trying to escape from one another. That shot of Kells's had precipitated a rush.
We lived through the Voice of Safety and Anti-Communist Somno-Instruction and Rightest Pills and Jet-Propelled Vigilantes. We lived through the Cold-Out, when you weren't supposed to turn on a toaster for fear its heat would be a target for prowl missiles and when people with fevers were unpopular. We lived through " Gusterson patted her hand. "You go below," he said.
Indeed, in San Francisco, as soon as it was demonstrated that the real power had passed from the City Hall to the committee room, the same set of bailiffs, constables, and rowdies that had infested the City Hall were found in the employment of the "Vigilantes;" and, after three months experience, the better class of people became tired of the midnight sessions and left the business and power of the committee in the hands of a court, of which a Sydney man was reported to be the head or chief-justice.
Men, women, children, turned out to do the Vigilantes honor. A float symbolic of Fort Gunnybags was wildly cheered. Benito Windham, Adrian Stanley and their families stood at the window of an office which had "B. Windham, Attorney and Counselor," inscribed upon its door. Benito had but recently passed his law examination and Alice was accordingly proud.
She wondered what Courtrey meant by this strange quiet following the tragic moment at the Stronghold steps when the Vigilantes had challenged him and ridden away. And then, all suddenly, into her dreaming there came the sound of a horse's hoofs on the sounding-board without slow hoofs, uncertain.
He had to run the gantlet of vigilantes down the main street of Stone Bridge, leaving dead horses and dead rustlers behind. He had jumped his horse over the Gerber Wash, a deep, wide ravine separating the fields of Glaze from the wild sage. He had been surrounded north of Sterling; and he had broken through the line.
The army of vigilantes drew up before the main gate, and a man smote it with the butt of his shotgun, demanding entrance. The crowd, anticipating a volley from within, surged back, leaving them isolated.
After lying in wait during the long night, certain that the Vigilantes would spring his trap, McNamara was astounded at news of the battle at the Midas and of Glenister's success. He stormed and cursed his men as cowards. The Judge became greatly exercised over this new development, which, coupled with his night of long anxiety, reduced him to a pitiful hysteria. "They'll blow us up next.
So it happened that, in December, 1857, J. Riley Morse, of the colony, rode southward post haste from Sacramento with the news that 200 mountain vigilantes were on their way to run the Mormons out of California.
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