yatt Earp remained alone out in the middle of the main street just
below the corner. He held a double-barreled shotgun over the crook of
his arm.

The ugly sound which rises from a mob came into the deserted
thoroughfare; the swift tramp of many feet, the growl of many voices.
More than three hundred miners, the majority of whom were armed with
rifles from the company's arsenal, and the fifty-odd members of the
Charleston lynching party swept into Toughnut Street, turned the
corner, and rushed down the cross street toward the Oriental.

They reached the intersection of the main street, and as they faced
the closed doors of the Oriental their left flank was toward Wyatt
Earp. They filled the roadway and the front ranks surged upon the
sidewalk toward the portals of the gambling-house.

Then some one who had seen the prisoner taken to the bowling-alley
shouted the tidings. The throng changed front in the instant and faced
the solitary man who stood there a few yards before them.

Wyatt Earp shifted his shotgun into his two hands and held it as a
trap-shooter who is waiting for the clay pigeons to rise.

In the moment of discovery the mob had checked itself, confronting him
as one man confronts another when the two are bitter enemies and the
meeting is entirely unexpected. There followed a brief, sharp surge
forward; it emanated from the rear ranks and moved in a wave toward
the front. There it stopped. And there passed a flash of time during
which the man and the mob eyed each other.

That was no ordinary lynching party such as some communities see in
these days. Its numbers included men who had outfought Apaches,
highwaymen, and posses; men who were accustomed to killing their
fellow beings and inured to facing death. And the hatred of the Earp
brothers, which had been brewing during all these months, was
white-hot now within them.

"Come on," called Wyatt Earp, and added an epithet.

Above the mass of tossing heads the muzzles of rifles were bobbing up
and down. The trampling of feet and the shuffling of packed bodies
made a dull under-note. Shouts arose from many quarters.

"Go on!" "Get him!" "Now, boys!"

Wyatt Earp threw back his head and repeated his challenge.

"Come on!" He flung an oath at them. "Sure you can get me. But"--he
gave them the supreme insult of that wild period's profanity--"the
first one makes a move, I'll get him. Who's the man?"

Those who saw him that afternoon say that his face wa