telegraph instrument in a cyclone.

I saw the sergeant-at-arms--who was our man too--start down the middle
aisle and saw him trip over a hostile leg and stumble and fall, and I
saw a big mountaineer drop right on top of him, pinning him flat to the
floor. I saw the musicians inside the orchestra rail, almost under my
feet, scuttling away in two directions like a divided covey of gorgeous
blue and red birds. I saw the snare drummer, a little round German, put
his foot through the skin roof of his own drum. I saw Judge Barbee
overturn the white china pitcher of ice water that sweated on the table
at his elbow, and as the cold stream of its contents spattered down the
legs of his trousers saw him staring downward, contemplating his
drenched limbs as though that mattered greatly.

All in a flash I saw these things, and in that same flash I saw, taking
shape and impulse, a groundswell of men, all wearing red buttons,
rolling toward the stage, with the picked bad men of the city wards for
its crest; and out of the tail of my eye I saw too, stealing out from
the rear of the stage, a small, compact wedge of men wearing those same
red buttons; and the prow of the wedge was Fighting Dave Dancy, the
official bad man of a bad county, a man who packed a gun on each hip and
carried a dirk knife down the back of his neck; a man who would shoot
you at the drop of a hat and provide the hat himself--or at least so it
was said of him.

And I realized that the enemy, coming by concerted agreement from front
and rear at once, had nipped those of us who were upon the stage as
between two closing walls, and I was exceedingly unhappy to be there. I
ducked my head low, waiting for the shooting to begin. Afterward we
figured it out that nobody fired the first shot because everybody knew
the first shot would mean a massacre, where likely enough a man would
kill more friends than foes.

What happened now in the space of the next few seconds I saw with
particular clarity of vision, because it happened right alongside me and
in part right over me. I recall in especial Mink Satterlee. Mink
Satterlee was one of the worst men in town, and he ran the worst saloon
and prevailed mightily in ward politics. He had been sitting just below
our table in the front row of seats. He was a big-bodied man,
fat-necked, but this day he showed himself quick on his feet as any
toe-dancer. Leading his own forces by a length, he vaulted the orchestra
rail and lit li