rises higher; harsh voices, pitched to their highest key, convey epithets of infamous import back and forth; there is a rush one way, and a scattering in all the others, and a lively fight has commenced. We see hats knocked off, catch glimpses of steel bars swung into the air above the heads of the excited mass, see here and there the glinting of short swords, brandished with desperate earnestness of intent, and hear the low thud, thud, thud, of the heavy bars falling on naked scalps. Then a pistol rings out sharp and clear above the din, and there is another scattering of the combatants, just as, in answer to the shrill whistles blown long and loud by outside spectators, the police arrive on the run, and knocking right and left with their heavy lignumvitae clubs and the butts of their revolvers, beat their way through the crowd and arrest the luckless devil who has just been knocked down, beaten, and shot through the shoulder, and now lies bleeding and helpless on the sidewalk, and hurry him and the witnesses away to the calaboose.
As the officers and their prisoner hurry along Kearney Street toward the City Hall, they divide the attention of the crowds on the sidewalks for the moment with a slender, black, little Mexican, with a thin, sharp face and long moustache, through which his white teeth show, and over which his dark eyes flash with a peculiar Mephistophelean effect, attired in full Spanish-American costume, broad sombrero, short, embroidered jacket, with silver buttons, wide, slashed buckskin pants, looped up with silver lacings at the sides, and long, inlaid
