The going of the six young men to the dance was unpremeditated. They had met at the Crescent Saloon early on that June evening and there was a good deal of drinking. There had been a ball game between the baseball teams of Clyde and Bidwell during the week before, and that was talked over, and, thinking and speaking of the defeat of the Bidwell team, all six of the young men grew angry. “Let’s go over to Clyde,” Cal Mosher said. The young men went to a livery stable and hired a team and surrey and set out, taking with them a plentiful supply of whiskey in bottles. It was decided they would make a night of it. As they drove along Turner’s Pike, between Bidwell and Clyde they stopped before farmhouses. “Hey, go to bed you rubes. Get the cows milked and go on to bed,” they shouted. Michael Tompkins, called Mike, was the wit of the party and he decided upon a stroke to win applause. At one of the farmhouses he went to the door and told the woman who came to answer his knock that a friend of hers wanted to speak to her in the road and the woman, a plump red-cheeked farmer’s wife, came boldly out and stood in the road beside the surrey. Mike crept up behind her and throwing his arms about her neck pulled her quickly backward. The woman screamed with fright as Mike kissed her on the cheek and, jumping into the surrey, Mike joined in the laughter of his companions. “Tell your husband your lover has been here,” he shouted at the woman, now fleeing toward the house. Cal Mosher slapped him on the back. “You got a nerve, Mike,” he said filled with admiration. He slapped his knees with his hands. “She’ll have something to talk about for ten years, eh? She won’t get over talking about that kiss Mike gave her for ten years.” At Clyde, the Bidwell young men went into Charley Shuter’s saloon and there got into trouble. Sid Gould was pitcher for the Bidwell team and during the game at Clyde, during the week before, had been hurt by a swiftly pitched ball that struck him on the side of the head as he stood at bat. He had been unable to continue pitching, and the man who took his place was unskillful and the game was lost, and now, standing at the bar in Charley Shuter’s saloon, Sid remembered his injury and began to talk in a loud voice, challenging another group of young men at another end of the bar. Charley Shuter’s bartender became alarmed. “Here, now, don’t you go starting nothing. Don’t you go trying to start nothing in this place,” he growled. Sid turned to his friends. “Well, the cowardly pup, he beaned me,” he said. “Well, I had the team, this town thinks so much of, eating out of my hand. For five innings they never got a smell of a hit. Then what did they do, eh? They fixed it up with their cowardly pitcher to bean me—that’s what they did.”