The Salt Lake tribune. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1890-current, 1913-05-18
By FRANK II. SpEARMAN

pit him it couldu have been done
cleaner His friends for McTerza had
them, must have sbivered-but that
was Just McTcrza; TO be. when be
shouldn' Z. where he shouldn Z. Even
had there not been more pressing mat
tiers, nobody could have figured out
where the fellow had come from with
his convoy, or where he was going, he
was there; that was all--hc was there.
The dispatchers yelled at him from
above. The cry echoed back short from
a hundred Polack throats, and they sent
splitter; il was plain they were mad
for blood Even that cry didn Z greatly
faze the fellow, but in the clatter of
! it all he caught another cry--a cry
straight to McTerza s ear, and he
turned at the voice and the words like
and brandishing the truck. stake at the
hated stuttcrer, yelled, Kill the
scabl''
The Reading engineer halted like a
| baited bear. Rucker s cry was enough
in that time and at that place it was
enough. McTerza froze to the plat
form. There was more-and we knew
it, all of us-,more between those two
men than scab and brotherhood, strike
| and riot. food or fire; there was a
| woman. We knew il so well there was
hardly a hutter anywhere, take it,,
when men saw McTerza stopping, grasp
Sinkers shove him toward the depot,
slip like snake out Of his pea jacket,
and turn to front the whole blooming
mob. There WASH any futtering, !
take it-and not very much breathing;
only the scab, never a tremendous big
man, sweled bigger in the eyes then
straining his way than any man IN Nc
Cloud has ever swelled before or since
Mobs are queer. A minute before it
was the depot, now it was the scab-
kill him.
The scab stood. Rucker stumbled
across a rail in his fury, and went
sprawling. but the scab stood. The
line wavcred like tumbleweeds. They
didn Il understand man fronting forty.
Then Ben Nicholson recognized his
whiskers-began blazing at him with a
pistol. Yet the scab stood and halted
the Polack line. They hesitated, they
stopped to yell; but the scab stood.
'Stone him' shouted Ben Nichol-
son. McTerza backed warily across the
platform. The Polacks wavered: the
instinct of danger unsettled them Mobs
are queer. a single man Will head
them quicker than hundred guns
There is nothing so dangerous as one
man.
McTerza saw the inevitable, the
steady circling that must get him at
last, and as the missiles flew at him
from score of miners he crouched
with the rage Of a cornered rat, one eye
always on Rucker.
"Come In, you coyote! yelled Nc
Terra tauntingly. "Come in!" be
cried, catching up a coupling pin that
struck him and hurting it wickedly
at his nearest assailant Rucker
swinging his club, ran straight at his
enemy.
"Kill the scab!' he cried again, and
a dozen bristling savages. taking his
lead, closed on the Reading man like
a fan. From the windows above the
railroad men popped with their pistols
they might as well have thrown fire
spring, leaped through rain of brick
bats for Rucker.
The club in the striker hSpds came
around with sweep enough to drop
steer. Quick as a sounder key Nc
Terra s head bobbed, and he went il
and under on Rucker' s Jaw with hi
left hand. The man' g head twisted
with the terrific impact like q Chinest
doll s. Down he went, McTerza, hungry
at his throat; and on top of McTerzi
the Polacks. with knives and hatchet
and Cossack barks, and they CLOSED
over him like water over stone
Nobody ever looked to see him pul
out, vet he wormed his way through
them corkscrew fashion, even Will,
they hacked at one another, ant
sprang out behind mis- assailants Will
Fuckers club. In his hands it Gu
through guards and arms and knive
like tooth picks. Rucker was smother
ing under toppling Polacks. But other
ran In like rats. They fought McTerz;
from side to side of the platform. The,
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