and then wired on ahead to the
general commanding across the Missouri, or to his representatives at
head-quarters,--he being in the field. All went well enough early in the
night, but, towards morning, whiskey had been smuggled aboard in
sufficient quantity to start the devil of mischief, and finally, at
Bluff Siding, just before reaching the Missouri bridge, overpowering the
unarmed and perhaps sympathetic sentries at the car doors, and defying
the orders of their sergeants, the half-drunken crowd swarmed out and
made a swoop upon a saloon across the side-track. In less time than it
takes to tell it every cubic foot of space of the bar-room was packed
with rioting humanity in grimy blue flannel. The proprietor, who had
stood his ground at the instant of initial impact, was now doubled up
underneath the counter; his shrieking family--Hibernians all, and
somewhat used to war's alarms, though hardly to the sight of raiding
boys in blue--had taken refuge in the privacy of their own apartments
above and behind the saloon itself, while within the reeking
establishment pandemonium had broken loose. Bottles, glasses, and raw
liquor were liberally besprinkling the heads and shoulders of the
surging throng. A brawny Irishman, mad with the joy of unlimited riot
and whiskey, was on top of the counter impartially cracking the heads of
all men within reach with the blows of a big wooden bung-starter. Four
or five who had found the trapdoor leading presumably to the supplies in
the cellar were furiously fighting back the crowd so as to admit of
their raising it and forcing a passage down the wooden flight. Poor
Muffet, vainly pleading and swearing, was scouting on the outskirts of
the crowd about the door-way, occasionally turning and shrieking orders
to some bewildered lance sergeant to find the lieutenant and tell him he
must get in there and do something, but the lieutenant was nowhere to be
seen. At a respectful distance the neighbors were looking curiously on,
half a dozen roustabouts from the wharf-boat moored under the bank, a
little batch of railway employes, a number of slatternly women, not
entirely unsympathetic, and perhaps half a dozen hands from a
neighboring saw-mill, but all these, combined with the townsfolk
hurrying to the scene, would have been powerless as opposed to the
sixscore drink-maddened "toughs." Of the recruits, perhaps a dozen had
remained in the cars; of their non-commissioned officers, perhaps half a
d