The most eastward of the debilitated edifices of Six-Cross-Roads was the
saloon, which bore the painted legends: on the west wall, "Last Chance";
on the east wall, "First Chance." Next to this, and separated by two or
three acres of weedy vacancy from the corners where the population centred
thickest, stood-if one may so predicate of a building which leaned in
seven directions-the house of Mr. Robert Skillett, the proprietor of the
saloon. Both buildings were shut up as tight as their state of repair
permitted. As they were furthest to the east, they formed the nearest
shelter, and to them the Cross-Roaders bent their flight, though they
stopped not here, but disappeared behind Skillett's shanty, putting it
between them and their pursuers, whose guns were beginning to speak. The
fugitives had a good start, and, being the picked runners of the Cross-
Roads, they crossed the open, weedy acres in safety and made for their
homes. Every house had become a fort, and the defenders would have to be
fought and torn out one by one. As the guns sounded, a woman in a shanty
near the forge began to scream, and kept on screaming.
On came the farmers and the men of Plattville. They took the saloon at a
run; battered down the crazy doors with a fence-rail, and swarmed inside
like busy insects, making the place hum like a hive, but with the hotter
industries of destruction. It was empty of life as a tomb, but they beat
and tore and battered and broke and hammered and shattered like madmen;
they reduced the tawdry interior to a mere chaos, and came pouring forth
laden with trophies of ruin. And then there was a charry smell in the air,
and a slender feather of smoke floated up from a second-story window.
At the same time Watts led an assault on the adjoining house--an assault
which came to a sudden pause, for, from cracks in the front wall, a
squirrel-rifle and a shot-gun snapped and banged, and the crowd fell back
in disorder. Homer Tibbs had a hat blown away, full of buck-shot holes,
while Mr. Watts solicitously examined a small aperture in the skirts of
his brown coat. The house commanded the road, and the rush of the mob into
the village was checked, but only for the instant.
A rickety woodshed, which formed a portion of the Skillett mansion,
closely joined the "Last Chance" side of the family place of business.
Scarcely had the guns of the defenders sounded, when, with a loud shout,
Lige Willetts leaped from an upper window on that side of the burning
saloon and landed on the woodshed, and, immediately climbing the roof of
the house itself, applied a fiery brand to the time-worn clapboards. Ross
Schofield dropped on the shed, close behind him, his arm lovingly
enfolding a gallon jug of whiskey, which he emptied (not without evident
regret) upon the clapboards as Lige fired them. Flames burst forth almost
instantly, and the smoke, uniting with that now rolling out of every
window of the saloon, went up to heaven in a cumbrous, gray column.