Now half a thousand jobless workers, armed and reckless, marched toward the docks.  They bore torches, which illuminated fitfully their flushed, impassioned faces.  Here and there one carried a transparency described, “The Chinese Must Go.”

[Illustration:  Half a thousand jobless workers, armed and reckless, marched toward the docks.  They bore torches....  “A hell-bent crew’” said Ellis.]

Chief Ellis and a squad of mounted policemen watched them as they marched down Second street, shouting threats and waving their firebrands.  “They’re a hell-bent crew,” he said to William Coleman.  “Is your posse ready?”

“Yes,” he answered, “they’ve assembled near the dock.  I’ve twenty companies.”

“Good....  You’ll need ’em all.”

As he spoke a tongue of flame leaped upward from the darkness.  Another and another.

“They’ve fired the lumber yards,” the chief said.  “I expected that.  There is fire apparatus on the spot....  It’s time to move.”

He spurred forward, rounding up his officers.  Coleman rode silently toward the entrance of the docks.  Very soon a bugle sounded.  There were staccato orders; then a tramp of feet.

The Citizens’ army moved in perfect unison toward the fires.  Already engines were at work.  One blaze was extinguished.  Then came sounds of battle.  Cries, shots.  Coleman and his men rushed forward.

Stones and sticks flew through the air.  Now and then a pistol barked.  The mounted police descended with a clatter, clubbing their way into the throng.  But they did not penetrate far, so dense was the pack; it hemmed them about, pulling officers from their horses.  The fire engines had been stopped.  One of them was pushed into the bay.

More fires leaped from incendiary torches.  The rioters seemed triumphant.  Then Coleman’s brigade fell upon them.

Whack, whack, whack, fell the pick-handles upon the backs, shoulders, sometimes heads of rioters.  It was like a systematic tattoo.  Coleman’s voice was heard directing, here and there, cool and dispassionate.  A couple of locomotive headlights threw their glare upon the now disordered gangsters.  Whack!  Whack!  Whack!

Suddenly the rioters, bleating, panic-stricken, fled like frightened sheep.  They scattered in every direction leader*-less, completely routed.  The fire engines resumed work.  An ambulance came up and the work of attending the wounded began.  The fight was over.

CHAPTER LXVII

DENNIS KEARNEY

Weeks went by and brought no further outbreak.  Chinatown which, for a time, was shuttered, fortified, almost deserted, once again resumed its feverish activities.  In the theaters, funny men made jokes about the labor trouble.  In the East strikes had abated.  All seemed safe and orderly again.

But San Francisco had yet to deal with Dennis Kearney.