ned upon them by Dancing and Callahan.
Before Baggs could rub his eyes the room was cleared, and half a dozen
trainmen hastily summoned and led by a despatcher were engaged out
upon the platform in a free fight with the Front Street ruffians.

Within the office, the despatcher found Bucks talking to Callahan,
while Baggs was trying to explain to Bill Dancing how the confidence
men had tried to inveigle him into a "shell" game and, when they found
they could not rob him of his month's pay in any other way, had
knocked him down to pick his pockets.

Callahan, who knew the trouble-making element better than any of the
railroad men, went up town to estimate the feeling after the fight,
which was now being discussed by crowds everywhere along Front Street.
For every bruised and sore head marked by the punishment given by
Dancing in the defence of Baggs a new enemy and an active one had been
made.

Stanley came in late from the west and heard the story of the fight.
His comment was brief but significant. "It will soon be getting so
they won't wait for the railroad men to draw their pay. They will come
down here," said he ironically, "to draw it for them."

CHAPTER XX

A second and more serious disturbance followed close on the fight at
the railroad station. A passenger alighting in the evening from a
westbound train was set upon, robbed, and beaten into insensibility
within ten feet of the train platform. A dozen other passengers
hastened to his assistance. They joined in repulsing his assailants
and were beating them off when other thugs, reinforcing their fellows,
attacked the passengers and those railroad men that had hurried up to
drive off the miscreants.

In the melee, a brakeman was shot through the head and a second
passenger wounded. But the railroad men rallied and, returning the
pistol fire, drove off the outlaws.

The train was hurried out of town and measures were taken at once to
defend the railroad property for the night. Guards were set in the
yards, and a patrol established about the roundhouse, the railroad
hotel and the eating-house and freight-houses.

Stanley, with his car attached to the night passenger train, was on
his way to Casement's camp when the fight occurred, and had taken
Bucks with him. The despatch detailing the disturbance reached him at
a small station east of Point of Rocks, where he was awakened and the
message was read to him advising the manager of the murder of the
b