He had increased his guard by mustering in every able-bodied man, except such as were needed to conduct the meetings. Most of these men were Methodists, but they were all frontiermen who knew that peace and civilization have often to be won by breaking heads. By the time this guard started the camp was in extreme confusion; women were running in every direction, children were crying and men were stoutly denouncing Goodwin for his tardiness. Dividing his mounted guard of thirty men into two parts, he sent one half round the outside of the camp-ground in one direction, while he rode with the other to attack the mob on the other side. The foot-police were sent through the circle to attack them in a third direction. As Morton anticipated, his delay tended to throw the mob off their guard. They had demolished one tent and, in great exultation, had begun on another, when Morton's cavalry rode in upon them on two sides, dealing heavy and almost deadly blows with their ironwood and hickory clubs. Then the footmen charged them in front, and the mob were forced to scatter and mount their horses as best they could. As Morton had captured some of them, the rest rallied on horseback and attempted a rescue. For two or three minutes the fight was a severe one. The roughs made several rushes upon Morton, and nothing but the savage blows that Mellen laid about him saved the leader from falling into their hands. At last, however, after firing several shots, and wounding one of the guard, they retreated, Goodwin vigorously persuading his men to continue the charge. When the rowdies had been driven a short distance, Morton saw by the light of a platform torch, the same strangely dressed man who had taken the money from his hand that day near Brewer's Hole. This man, in his disguise of long beard and wolf-skin cap, was trying to get past Mellen and into the camp by creeping through the bushes. "Knock him over," shouted Goodwin to Mellen. "I know him--he's a thief." No sooner said than Mellen's club had felled him, and but for the intervening brush-wood, which broke the force of the blow, it might have killed him. "Carry him back and lock him up," said Morton to his men; but the other side now made a strong rush and bore off the fallen highwayman.