Don Gordon’s assailant kept him exceedingly busy in warding off the thrusts of the knife, and the boy had a lively time of it before he could escape from his clutches. When the students went to work to clear the car, Don hoped that the man would become frightened and let go his hold; but instead of that, he seemed all the more determined to pull his captive out of the door. In spite of his resistance Don was dragged as far as the stove, and there he made a desperate and final effort to escape. Placing his foot against the side of the door he threw his whole weight upon the belt, jerked it from the man’s grasp and fell in the aisle all in a heap. When he scrambled to his feet the car was clear of strikers, his antagonist being the last to jump from the platform. Don was surprised to see how few there were left of the students. When they left Bridgeport there[195] were more of them than the seats could accommodate; but there were only a handful of them remaining, and they were gathered in the forward end of the car. Where were the others? While Don stood in the aisle debating this question, two or three boys arose from their hiding-places under the seats and hurried past him. “Come on, Gordon,” said one. “The way is clear now.”
“Where are you going?” asked Don.
“Anywhere to get out of the mob. Lots of our fellows have left the car and taken to their heels. Come on.”
“Don’t go out there,” cried Don. “You will be safer if you stay with the crowd.”
The boys, who were so badly frightened that they hardly knew what they were doing, paid no attention to him. They ran out of the car, and a minute later the rioters made their first charge, and the order was given to fire. This put life into Don, who lost no time in getting out of the range of the bullets in his companions’ muskets. Stepping out of the aisle he made his way toward the forward end of the car, by jumping from the back of one seat to the back of another. As he was[196] passing a window a coupling-pin, or some other heavy missile, came crushing through it, barely missing him and filling his clothing with broken glass. If it had hit him, it would probably have ended his career as a military student then and there.
Reaching the forward end of the car in safety the first thing Don saw, as he dropped to his knee by Egan’s side, was a loaded musket; and the second was one of the Bridgeport students lying motionless under a seat. His face was too pale and his wide-open eyes were too void of expression to belong to a living boy, and Don straightway came to the conclusion that he was dead.
“Poor fellow,” was his mental comment. “There’ll be a sad home somewhere when the particulars of this night’s work get into the papers. He doesn’t need his musket any more, so I will use it in his stead.”
Don secured his musket in time to assist in repulsing every charge the mob made upon the car, and then, like the others, he began firing from the windows. While he was thus engaged one of the lieutenants passed along the aisle, and discovering a student lying prone under a seat, he bent[197] down and looked at him. Like Don, he thought, at first, that the boy was dead; but upon closer examination he found that there was plenty of life in him.
“What are you doing there?” demanded the young officer, indignantly. “Get up and go to work. Where’s your gun?”
“Gordon’s got it,” was the faint reply.
The lieutenant looked around and saw Don in the act of firing his piece out of the window. After he made his shot, the officer asked him whose gun he was using.
“I don’t know,” answered Don. “I found it on the floor, and thought it might as well take part in this fight as to lie idle there.”
“That’s all right; but it belongs to this man. Hand it over.”
Don was glad to know that his comrade was not injured, but he was reluctant to surrender the musket into the hands of one who had showed no disposition to use it when he had it. He gave it up, however, and then crouched behind a seat and passed out cartridges to Egan and Curtis, who fired as fast as they could load. Both these boys had won the marksman’s badge at five hundred[198] yards, and it was not likely that all their shots were thrown away.
About this time report was made that some of the rioters had taken refuge under the car and were shooting up through the floor, and the professor determined to abandon his position. The company was called to attention, Don Gordon opened the door, as we have recorded, and when the order was given they left the car on a run, Don being the fourth to touch the ground. After moving down the track a short distance they came to a halt and faced toward the rioters, who arose from their places of concealment and rushed over the embankment in a body, evidently with the intention of annihilating the students. In fact they told the boys as they came on that they were going to “wipe the last one of ’em out,” but they did not do it. The young soldiers were as steady as veterans, and one volley was enough to scatter the rioters, and send them in confusion to their hiding-places. But the students did not escape unscathed. As Don stood there on the track offering a fair target to the rifles of the mob, and unable to fire a single bullet in response to those that whistled about his ears, he heard a suppressed[199] exclamation from somebody, and turned quickly about to see the boy who stood on his left, bent half double and clasping both his hands around his leg.
“I’ve got it,” said he, as Don sprang to his assistance.
“Well, you take it pretty coolly,” replied the other. “Come down out of sight. You’ve no business up here now that you are shot.”
After leading his injured comrade to a place of safety behind the embankment, Don returned to the track just in time to receive in his arms the boy who stood on his right and who clapped his hand to his breast and reeled as if he were about to fall. That was the narrowest escape that Don ever had. If he had been in line, where he belonged, the bullet which struck this boy’s breast-plate and made an ugly wound in his chest, would have hit Don squarely in the side.
The wounded boy had a gun, and Don lost no time in taking possession of it. After seeing that the owner was cared for by some of the unarmed students, Don went back to his place in line, where he remained just long enough to fire one round, when the company was ordered off the track[200] behind the embankment, and an inspection of boxes was held. To their great astonishment the young soldiers found that they had not more than two or three cartridges remaining. As it was impossible for them to hold their ground with so small a supply of ammunition, Mr. Kellogg thought it best to draw off while he could. The wounded were sent to the rear in charge of the boys who had lost their guns in the car, after which the company climbed the fence and struck off through an oat-field toward the road. Seeing this retrograde movement the mob made another charge, but one volley sufficed to check it. If the boys were whipped (as a Hamilton paper, which was cowardly enough to pander to the mob and to extol its heroism afterward declared they were) they did not know it, and neither did the rioters, who took pains after that to keep out of sight. They remained by the car, which they afterward used to carry their wounded to the city, and the students saw them no more that night.
It was during this short halt that Don Gordon, after firing his single round, was approached by Curtis and Egan, one of whom held a musket in[201] each hand, while the other had his fingers tightly clasped around his wrist. The latter was Egan, and his left hand was covered with blood.
“Have you got a spare handkerchief about you, Gordon?” said he. “I’m hit.”
“Great Scott!” exclaimed Don. “When did you get it?”
“Just now. Curtis had a loud call too,” said Egan, nodding toward his friend. “His plume was shot out of his cap.”
“Let me look at your hand,” said Don, drawing a couple of handkerchiefs from his pocket.
“Oh, there’s no artery cut, for the blood comes out in drops and not in jets,” answered Egan. “But I am afraid my little finger has gone up. I have bled for my country and you haven’t.”
“And what’s more, I don’t want to,” said Don.
The latter bandaged the wounded hand as well as he could, and the line moved on across the oat-field. On the way the boy who had been shot through the leg, gave out and had to be carried. The other held up bravely, making frequent and clamorous demands for his gun, and announcing his readiness, severely wounded as he was, to whip the boy who stole it from him. Don kept a still[202] tongue in his head. He had the gun, and being in a better condition to use it than the owner was, he determined to hold fast to it.
When they reached the road they tore a panel or two of the fence to pieces to make a litter for the boy who had given out, and here they were joined by ten or a dozen of their comrades who had left the car by the rear door. By some extraordinary streak of good luck, such as might not have fallen to them again in a thousand years, they had succeeded in escaping the mob and finding refuge in a culvert under the railroad. They brought two wounded boys with them, one of whom had been struck in the eye with a buck-shot, while the other had had his scalp laid open by a vicious blow from the butt of a musket as he was jumping from the car.
“When we heard you going across the field we came out,” said one of the new-comers, who was delighted to find himself among friends once more. “There were strikers in the culvert, too, but they didn’t bother us, for they were as badly frightened as we were. If they had known that there was going to be a fight they wouldn’t have come near the bridge. They said so.”
[203]
“Seen anything of Hop?” asked Don, as soon as he had satisfied himself that his fat friend was not with the party.
“Not lately,” was the reply, “but I guess he’s all right. The last time I put eyes on him he was going up the track toward Bridgeport, beating the time of Maud S. all to pieces. If he kept on he’s at the academy by this time. I always had an idea that I could outrun Hop, but when he passed me I thought I was standing still.”
“Were there any strikers after him?”
“There wasn’t one in sight. When you fellows in the car got fairly to work, you kept such a fusillade that they were afraid to show their heads.”
By this time the litter was completed, and the wounded boy being placed upon it, the students resumed their march, stopping at the first house they came to, which proved to be a little German inn. The hospitable proprietor gave up his house to them; guards were posted at once; a good Samaritan, who was also a surgeon, promptly made his appearance; the wounded were tenderly cared for; and one of the corporals exchanged his uniform for a citizen’s suit, went into the city, reported[204] the fight, and in due time returned with orders for the company to march in and report at the railroad depot.
When morning came the good Samaritan came also, accompanied by a liberal supply of hot coffee and a substantial breakfast, which were served out to the boys while they were sitting in the shade of the trees opposite the inn. The doctor took the wounded home with him to be cared for until they could be sent back to Bridgeport; and the others, having broken their fast, shouldered their guns and set out for Hamilton.
Don Gordon afterward said that his courage had never been so severely tested as it was that morning. On their way to the depot the students passed through the lower portion of the city and through the coal-yards in which the hands had just struck. Thousands of tons of coal were piled on each side of the narrow street, and on the top of these piles stood the striking workmen, who, outnumbering the boys more than twenty to one, and having every advantage of them in position, could have annihilated them in a minute’s time if they had made the attempt. It required all the nerve Don possessed to march through there with his[205] eyes straight to the front, and his hair seemed to rise on end whenever he heard one of the men call out to his comrades:
“Thim’s the fellers, b’ys. Have a bit of coal at thim.”
Some of t............