Frank and Will Edgley were teamsters and draymen like their father John and were hard working men. They owned their own teams and asked favors of no man and when they were not at work did not seek the society of others. Late on Saturday afternoons, when the week’s work was done and the horses cleaned, fed and bedded down for the night they dressed themselves in black suits, put on white collars and black derby hats and went into our main street to drink themselves drunk. By ten o’clock they had succeeded and went reeling homeward. When in the darkness under the maple trees on Vine or Walnut Streets they met a Bidwell citizen, also homeward bound, a row started. “Damn you, get out of our way. Get off the sidewalk,” Frank Edgley shouted and the two men rushed forward intent on a fight. One evening in the month of June, when there was a moon and when insects sang loudly in the long grass between the sidewalks and the road, the Edgley brothers met Ed Pesch, a young German farmer, out for an evening’s walk with Caroline Dupee, daughter of a Bidwell drygoods merchant, and the fight the Edgley boys had long been looking for took place. Frank Edgley shouted and he and his brother plunged forward but Ed Pesch did not run into the road and leave them to go triumphantly homeward. He fought and the brothers were badly beaten, and on Monday morning appeared driving their team and with faces disfigured and eyes blackened. For a week they went up and down alleyways and along residence streets, delivering ice and coal to houses and merchandise to the stores without lifting their eyes or speaking. The town was delighted and clerks ran from store to store making comments, they longed to repeat within hearing of one of the brothers. “Have you seen the Edgley boys?” they asked one another. “They got what was coming to them. Ed Pesch gave them what for.” The more excitable and imaginative of the clerks spoke of the fight in the darkness as though they had been on hand and had seen every blow struck. “They are bullies and can be beaten by any man who stands up for his rights,” declared Walter Wills, a slender, nervous young man who worked for Albert Twist, the grocer. The clerk hungered to be such another fighter as Ed Pesch had proven himself. At night he went home from the store in the soft darkness and imagined himself as meeting the Edgleys. “I’ll show you—you big bullies,” he muttered and his fists shot out, striking at nothingness. An eager strained feeling ran along the muscles of his back and arms but his night time courage did not abide with him through the day. On Wednesday when Will Edgley came to the back door of the store, his wagon loaded with salt in barrels, Walter went into the alleyway to enjoy the sight of the cut lips and blackened eyes. Will stood with hands in pockets looking at the ground. An uncomfortable silence ensued and in the end it was broken by the voice of the clerk. “There’s no one here