Every now and then you would come on a fist-fight, or maybe a fight
with bottles, and a crowd, laughing and whooping, engaged in pulling
the warriors apart and sitting on them. Through a mile or two of
this kind of thing I made my way, my heart sinking deeper with
misgiving. I got within a couple of blocks of the City Hall, and
then suddenly I came upon the thing I dreaded--my friend Carpenter
in the hands of the mob!
LXI
They had got hold of a canvas-covered wagon, of the type of the old
"prairie-schooner." You still find these camped by our roadsides now
and then, with nomad families in them; and evidently one of these
families had been so ill advised as to come to town for the
convention. The rioters had hoisted their victim on top of the
wagon, having first dumped a gallon of red paint over his head, so
that everyone might know him for the Red Prophet they had been
reading about in the papers. They had tied a long rope to the shaft
of the wagon, and one or two hundred men had hold of it, and were
hauling it through the streets, dancing and singing, shouting
murder-threats against the "reds.
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