Page:The War on the Webfoot Saloon.djvu/8

 Armoured by the irrefutable logic of this, the Leaguers stood to their guns. April I found them once more at the corner of Morrison and First. There they were set upon by a number of low fellows who beat gongs in their faces and threw firecrackers under their feet. The Crusaders were unimpressed. But the mob of onlookers grew ugly and the police, fearing violence, persuaded the ladies to disperse.

For the next few days the action moved elsewhere, though there was a brief encounter on the fifth, and the Webfoot's proprietor and patrons enjoyed comparative peace. But at ten-thirty on the morning of April 7 the Leaguers appeared in force, some fifteen strong. No more had they arrived than hundreds of curiosity seekers rushed up from all directions, so that in less than three minutes more than a thousand persons had assembled. The crowd was so large that it completely jammed the sidewalks and overflowed into the streets. Moffett set up a frenzied piping on his whistle and shortly the ponderous figure of Police Chief Lappeus could be seen breasting the press. When the Chief was close enough to hear, the Webfoot's proprietor called out in a loud voice that he was a tax-payer, that he was entitled to the full protection of the law, that he had paid $ioo for a license that very morning and had a right to operate his business, that the Crusaders were harassing him and he demanded they be dispersed.

As it happened, Lappeus himself had once tried his hand at The Trade, having been one of the original owners of the Oro Fino; but in the present matter he kept his sympathies, if he had any, to himself. He approached the ladies and with grave dignity asked them to withdraw. They flatly refused. He warned them that their continued presence might lead to violence, even bloodshed. They replied loftily that it was God's Cause in which they were engaged and that their con sciences were clear. Whereupon he told them, with sad reluctance, that their obstinate course left him no alternative but arrest. So everybody trooped down First Street to the jail, the Chief in the lead and the crowd bringing up the rear.

When word of the incident got out—which it very quickly did—the fathers, husbands, brothers and assorted male rela-