captors had formed two lines reaching from the roadway to the interurban
tracks. There in the darkness the men were forced to run stumbling over
the uneven ground down a gauntlet that ended only with the cruel sharp
blades of a cattle guard, while on their unprotected heads and shoulders
the drunken outlaws rained blow after blow with gun-butts, black-jacks,
loaded saps and pick-handles. In the confusion one boy escaped from Ed
Hawse, but before he could get away into the brush this bully, weighing
about 260 pounds, bore down upon him, and with a couple of other
deputies proceeded to beat him well-nigh into insensibility. Deputies
who lost their clubs in the scramble aimed kicks at the privates of the
men as they passed down the line. Deputy Fred Luke swung at one man with
such force that the leather wrist thong parted and the club disappeared
into the woods. With drunken deliberation Joseph Irving cracked the head
of man after man, informing each one that they were getting an extra
dose because of his mistake in beating up a brother deputy. In the thick
of it all, smashing, kicking, and screaming obscene curses at the
helpless men and boys who dared demand free speech within the territory
sacred to the lumber trust, was the deputy-sheriff of Snohomish County,
Jefferson E. Beard!

A few of the men broke the lines and ran into the woods, a bullet past
their heads warning others from a like attempt. Across the cattle guard,
often sprawling on hands and knees from the force of the last blows
received, went the men who had cleared the gauntlet. Legs sank between
the blades of the guard and strained ligaments and sprained ankles were
the result. One man suffered a dislocated shoulder at the hands of a
Doctor Allison, another had the bridge of his nose broken by a blow from
McRae, and dangerously severe wounds and bruises were sustained by
nearly all of the forty-one.

So horrible were the moans and outcries of the stricken men, so bestial
were the actions of the infuriated deputies, that one of their own
number, W. R. Booth, sickened at the sight and sound, went reeling up
the roadway retching as he left the brutal scene.

Attracted by the curses of the deputies, the sound of the blows, and the
moans and cries of the wounded men, Mrs. Ruby Ketchum came to the door
of her house nearly a quarter of a mile away, and remained there
listening to the hideous din, while her husband, Roy Ketchum, and his
brother, Lew, went down t