Audubon County journal. (Exira, Iowa) 1884-1993, 1903-01-29

In the main street that they could adj.
vance but little way at time, and
opposite the speakers platform they,
came to standstill. A company of
town boys bored through, jostling the
people to right and left, shouting and
blowing horns. The leader, tall
young fellow, struck the Jamison horse
across the nose with horn.
Looking up, he saw who was the
driver, and his joy nearly overcame
him.
''Trembely Ed, as I'm alive!" he
shouted. Come on, boys! Here's our
game! He'll scare to death here
Perhaps they did not see that Eds
companion was woman. The people
fell back little and looked on DULY.
Some of the best men of the town
were there, but none offered to inter-
fere. Bystanders' justice is as slow in
getting under way as it is inexorabIe
in it's final action.
The gang was in their liyeliest mood.
They unbuckled the harness, tied the
horses ears, tipped the wagon and
howled and cirSled. One of them
threw half eaten banana at Ed. He
ducked, and Mrs. Jamison screamed
and clapped her hands to her eye Ed
sprang to his feet and drew the hands
gently away. Blood streamed down
her face. The sharp stem of the fruit
had made ragged cut in her cheek.
A country crowd takes up news as
water does wave motion. Within five
min hot
the place knew that something was
happening down in the square.
ED Jamison's fighting! Ed Jami-
sons killed two men! There's an aw-
full fight going on in the square! Trem-
belly Ed Jamison's gone crazy" So
the rumOrs caught from man to man.
Something was happening. Trembe-
~ Ed Jamison was clicking" the Tan
nersville gang one by one in a twelve
foot ring under the wavering torch
lights of the speakers stand, while the
speaker waited and wondered.
1t was minutes before the men about
the wagon fully believed their eyes,
but when they did Ed got fair play to
the finish. Three of the gang tried to
wriggle into the crowd, but they were
tossed back into the circle and when
they saw that escape was impossible
fought gamely; but they were no match
for the sturdy hill boy. Clean, regu-
lar living, hard work in the sunshine
and superior muscular inheritance
We're pitted against them, but more po-
tent than these was the unleashed spir-
| it of the youth. 1t was as if the dam
that had caught and held all the man
hood that should have flowed quietly
and steadily through the growing
years had suddenly given way.
This flood swept him along. He
could not stop. When the last man, the
tall leader, went down, he swung on
into the crowd like mailman. Three
men laid hold of him and shouted into
his ears that it was all over. He re-
covered slowly and went to his moth
er. A doctor was binding up her wound.
People wondered afterward how she
| could have sat there so quietly in the
midst of the noise and the jostle and
the sickening blows, but Mrs Jamison,
deep in her troubled mother heart,
knew that out of that dust and cursing
| and pain another son was being born
to her.,
When Trembely Ed took the seat be-
| side her, they hardly knew him, and
as the crowd parted widely to let him
pass the pent up feeling loosed into
cheer after cheer that rang up to the
hills and on up to the high heart of the
mother.