able lack
of scruples he had won his way to a picturesque popularity and fame. But
the crowd would have little of him this day, and an almost continuous
uproar drowned out his efforts. The usual catch phrases, such as
"liberty." "Constitution," "habeas corpus," "trial by jury," and
"freedom," occasionally became audible, but the people were not
interested. "See Cora's defender!" cried someone, voicing the general
suspicion that Baker had been one of the little gambler's hidden
counsel. "Cora!" "Ed. Baker!" "$10,000!" "Out of that, you old
reprobate!" He spoke ten minutes against the storm and then yielded,
red-faced and angry. Others tried but in vain. A Southerner, Benham,
inveighing passionately against the conditions of the city, in throwing
back his coat happened inadvertently to reveal the butt of a Colt
revolver. The bystanders immediately caught the point. "There's a pretty
Law and Order man!" they shouted. "Say, Benham, don't you know it's
against the law to go armed?"

"I carry this weapon," he cried, shaking his fist, "not as an instrument
to overthrow the law, but to uphold it."

Someone from a balcony nearby interrupted: "In other words, sir, you
break the law in order to uphold the law. What more are the Vigilantes
doing?"

The crowd went wild over this response. The confusion became worse.
Upholders of Law and Order thrust forward Judge Campbell in the hope
that his age and authority on the bench would command respect. He was
unable, however, to utter even two consecutive sentences.

"I once thought," he interrupted himself piteously, "that I was the free
citizen of a free country. But recent occurrences have convinced me that
I am a slave, more a slave than any on a Southern plantation, for they
know their masters, but I know not mine!"

But his auditors refused to be affected by pathos.

"Oh, yes you do," they informed him. "You know your masters as well as
anybody. Two of them were hanged the other day!"

Though this attempt at home to gain coherence failed, the partisans at
Sacramento had better luck. They collected, it was said, five hundred
men hailing from all quarters of the globe, but chiefly from the
Southeast and Texas. All of them were fire-eaters, reckless, and sure to
make trouble. Two pieces of artillery were reported coming down the
Sacramento to aid all prisoners, but especially Billy Mulligan. The
numbers were not in themselves formidable as opposed to the enrollment
of the Vigil