The Forty-Niners: A Chronicle of the California Trail and El DoradoWhite, Stewart Edward
History
The Forty-Niners: A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado
White, Stewart Edward
California -- Gold discoveries; California -- History; California National Historic Trail
Instantly the streets were alive with men. Merchants left their
customers, clerks their books, mechanics their tools. Draymen stripped
their horses of harness, abandoned their wagons, and rode away to join
their cavalry. Within an incredibly brief space of time everybody was
off for the armory, the military companies marching like veterans, the
artillery rumbling over the pavement. The cavalry, jogging along at a
slow trot, covered the rear. A huge and roaring mob accompanied them,
followed them, raced up the side-streets to arrive at the armory at the
same time as the first files of the military force. They found the
square before the building entirely deserted except for the dauntless
Barry and Bovee, who still marched up and down singlehanded, holding the
garrison within. They were able to report that no one had either entered
or left the armory.
Inside the building the spirit had become one of stubborn sullenness.
Terry was very sorry--as, indeed, he well might be--a Judge of the
Supreme Court, who had no business being in San Francisco at all. Sworn
to uphold the law, and ostensibly on the side of the Law and Order
party, he had stepped out from his jurisdiction to commit as lawless and
as idiotic a deed of passion and prejudice as could well have been
imagined. Whatever chances the Law and Order party might have had
heretofore were thereby dissipated. Their troops were scattered in small
units; their rank and file had disappeared no one knew where; their
enemies were fully organized and had been mustered by the alarm bell to
their usual alertness and capability; and Terry's was the hand that had
struck the bell!
He was reported as much chagrined.
"This is very unfortunate, very unfortunate," he said; "but you shall
not imperil your lives for me. It is I they want. I will surrender to
them."
Instead of the prompt expostulations which he probably expected, a dead
silence greeted these words.
"There is nothing else to do," agreed Ashe at last.
An exchange of notes in military fashion followed. Ashe, as commander of
the armory and leader of the besieged party, offered to surrender to the
Executive Committee of the Vigilantes if protected from violence. The
Executive Committee demanded the surrender of Terry, Maloney, and
Philips, as well as of all arms and ammunition, promising that Terry and
Maloney should be protected against persons outside the organization. On
receiving this assurance, Ashe threw open the doors of the armory and
the Vigilantes marched in.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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