Unlike the Highlanders, however, they were not a bit choice in their language, and I soon saw that the burden of their displeasure related to me. in fact, I was the storm center of all their accumulated aggregation of wrath, and they proceeded to unload their vituperation upon me in a gloveless style.
In all my experience I had never encountered individuals half so skilled in the use of blasphemous expressions. They seemed to be pastmasters in the art. and what impressed me most was the array of ponderous jaws, all turned in my direction. In fact it resembled a sea of upturned jaws, and for a few seconds I would have sold out my interest in Section 4 and about everything else worth having at a very cheap figure.
There did not appear to be much humor in the situation, and I cannot comprehend what possessed me to do it, but I told the crowd a funny story, and some of them were kind enough to laugh at it. and then I knew that the danger crisis was passed. Whitaker and I had become separated, and I saw him expostulating wildly with a bunch of the square- jawed fraternity fully twenty feet away from me. Gradually, however, they left him. and concentrated their energies on me.
They undertook to harangue me concerning the relative rights of the mineral locators and scrippers to the lands, and I knew that as soon as they started into talking we had them. We argued the proposition in all its phases from 9:30 at night until 1:30 the next morning—four hours of solid discussion—and finally reached what each side viewed as an amicable adjustment of the difficulty. It was arranged that ten of their number should accompany me to the cabin on Section 4; that I should remove my personal belongings, lock the door of the establishment, and that I was not supposed to know what happened afterwards.
Some of the mob demanded that both Whitaker and myself accompany them to the cabin, but he refused absolutely to agree to any such proposition, but I was willing to go for several reasons; in the first place, it would not have been fair to Joe, the hired inan, to have left him there alone and let the crowd come in on him without any warning. He would most likely have opened fire on them as soon as they undertook to disturb the cabin, and while he might have injured some of them, they w^ould eventually have killed him. Besides, the proceeding was in the nature of a forcible ejectment from the land, and my legal rights were in no way impaired thereby. I was not particularly infatuated with the idea of living out there in the cabin in the first place, and this "forcible ejectment" idea furnished an excellent solution of the whole thing, as I could thereafter live in comfort in town, while, from a legal point of view, I was still a resident of the bleak and desolate Section 4, and figuratively speaking, my cabin was yet on the land.
It did not take us long to act after we had reached the conclusion indicated. A two-seated rig was secured, and accompanied by four men, I started for the cabin. Following us was a four-horse wagon, in which were six or eight additional men, the idea being for them to attach the tongue of our four-wheeled cabin to the larger vehicle and haul it off the land. It was pitch dark when we reached the vicinity of the cabin, and I called a halt, telling them that I would get out and go on ahead so as to apprise Joe of our coming.
"He is subject to heart disease," I said, significantly, "and if he is rudely awakened by this crowd, it might have a disastrous effect upon his nervous system."
My companions appeared to see the point, so I went on ahead and gave Joe the countersign. He had been asleep, but as soon as he heard my voice he was outside in an instant with a shotgun in one hand and my favorite rifle in the other. In his half-drowsy condition he v.as liable to shoot me or anybody else, and it was some moments before he properly understood the situation. It was easy to perceive the wisdom of my accompanying the crowd.
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