The Second Night We Were There, About One O'clock, We Were Awakened By Loud Talking And Sounds Of People Running; Then Shots Were Fired Very Near, And Instantly There Were Screams Of Agony, "I'm Shot!

I'm shot!" from some person who was apparently coming across the street, and who fell directly underneath our window.

We were in a little room on the second floor, and its one window was raised far up, which made it possible for us to hear the slightest sound or movement outside.

The shooting was kept up until after the man was dead, many of the bullets hitting the side of the hotel. It was simply maddening to have to stay in that room and be compelled to listen to the moans and death gurgle of that murdered man, and hear him cry, "Oh, my lassie, my poor lassie!" as he did over and over again, until he could no longer speak. It seemed as though every time he tried to say one word, there was the report of a pistol. After he was really dead we could hear the fiends running off, and then other people came and carried the body away.

The shooting altogether did not last longer than five or ten minutes, and at almost the first shot we could hear calls all over the wretched little town of "Vigilante! Vigilante!" and knew that the vigilantes were gathering, but before they could get together the murderous work had been finished. All the time there had been perfect silence throughout the hotel. The proprietor told us that he got up, but that it would have been certain death if he or anyone else had opened a door.

Hal was on the floor in a corner of our room, and began to growl after the very first scream, and I was terrified all the time for fear he would go to the open window and attract the attention of those murderers below, who would undoubtedly have commenced firing at the window and perhaps have killed all of us. But the moans of the dying man frightened the dog awfully, and he crawled under the bed, where he stayed during the rest of the horrible night. The cause of all the trouble seems to have been that a colored man undertook to carry in his wagon three or four men from Dodge City to Fort Dodge, a distance of five miles, but when he got out on the road a short distance he came to the conclusion, from their talk, that they were going to the post for evil purposes, and telling them that he would take them no farther, he turned his team around to come back home. On the way back the men must have threatened him, for when he got in town he drove to the house of some colored people who live on a corner across from the hotel and implored them to let him in, but they were afraid and refused to open the door, for by that time the men were shooting at him.

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