Louisiana Lou: A Western StoryWinter, William West
General
Louisiana Lou: A Western Story
Winter, William West
Western stories
Such pandemonium was bound to attract attention. Still unable to
comprehend the reason of the whole affair, De Launay was crawling
between legs and making a more or less undamaged progress to the door,
while his enemies battered one another. He had almost reached it, and
was rising to his feet, when a new element was injected into the riot.
A couple of uniformed policemen threw themselves into the mêlée.
De Launay saw only the uniforms. His wrath surged up. What were
policemen doing in this country of range and sheriffs? What had they
to do with the West? They stood for all that had come to the country,
all the change and innovation that he hated.
He expressed his feelings by letting the first policeman have it on
the point of the jaw. The second he proceeded to walk over, to beat
back and to drive through the door, out into the big room and clear
to the sidewalk. The man resisted, swinging his mace, but he found De
Launay a cold, inhumanly accurate and swift antagonist, whom it was
difficult to hit and impossible to dodge. Twice he was knocked down,
and twice he leaped up, swinging his mace at a head that was never
there when the club reached its objective.
The policeman whom De Launay had first knocked down had arisen quickly
and, seeing his Nemesis now pursuing his comrade, ran to the rescue.
De Launay could avoid a club in the hands of the man in front of him
but that wielded by the man behind was another matter. It fell on his
head just as he was driving the other policeman through the door into
the street. It was a shrewd blow and he went to the ground under it.
While they waited for the patrol wagon, the two policemen tried to
gather information about the cause of the fight, but they found Johnny
the Greek somewhat reticent. The cowboy still was upstairs, held there
by Snake Murphy. The others were more or less confused in their ideas.
Johnny was chiefly anxious that the police should remove the prisoner
and refrain from any close inquiry into the premises, so he merely
stated that the fellow had come in drunk and had made an attack on
some of the men playing pool. His henchman was seeing to it that the
robbed and wronged cowboy had no opportunity to tell a story that
would send the police upstairs.
Half conscious and wholly drunk, De Launay was carted to Sulphur
Falls' imposing stone jail, where he was duly slated before a police
sergeant for drunkenness, assault and battery, mayhem, inciting a
riot, and resisting an officer in the performance of his duty. Then he
was led away and deposited in a cell. Here he went soundly to sleep.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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