It became whispered among the I.W.W. that “The Hundred” had organized.  Leaders of the strikers laughed at these rumors, telling the men that the day of the vigilante was past.

On the following Wednesday a rabid leader of the disturbers, not a union man, but a man who had never done a day’s work in his life, mounted a table on a street corner and addressed the crowd which quickly swelled to a mob.  Members of “The Hundred,” sprinkled thinly throughout the mob, listened until the speaker had finished.  Among other things, he had made a statement about the National Government which should have turned the mob to a tribunal of prompt justice and hanged him.  But many of the men were drunk, and all were inflamed with the poison of the hour.  When the man on the table continued to slander the Government, and finally named a name, there was silence.  A few of the better class of workmen edged out of the crowd.  The scattered members of “The Hundred” stayed on to the last word.

Next morning this speaker was found dead, hanging from a bridge a little way out of town.  Not a few of the strikers were startled to a sense of broad justice in his death, and yet such a hanging was an outrage to any community.  One sin did not blot out another.  And the loyal “Hundred” realized too late that they had put a potent weapon in the hands of their enemies.

A secret meeting was called by “The Hundred.”  Wires were commandeered and messages sent to several towns in the northern part of the State to men known personally by members of “The Hundred” as fearless and loyal to American institutions.  Already the mob had begun rioting, but, meeting with no resistance, it contented itself with insulting those whom they knew were not sympathizers.  Stores were closed, and were straightway broken into and looted.  Drunkenness and street fights were so common as to evoke no comment.

Two days later a small band of cowboys rode into town.  They were followed throughout the day by other riders, singly and in small groups.  It became noised about the I.W.W. camp that professional gunmen were being hired by the authorities; were coming in on horseback and on the trains.  That night the roadbed of the railroad was dynamited on both sides of town.  “The Hundred” immediately dispatched automobiles with armed guards to meet the trains.

Later, strangers were seen in town; quiet men who carried themselves coolly, said nothing, and paid no attention to catcalls and insults.  It was rumored that troops had been sent for.  Meanwhile, the town seethed with anarchy and drunkenness.  But, as must ever be the case, anarchy was slowly weaving a rope with which to hang itself.

Up in the second story of the court-house a broad-shouldered, heavy-jawed man sat at a flat-topped desk with a clerk beside him.  The clerk wrote names in a book.  In front of the clerk was a cigar-box filled with numbered brass checks.  The rows of chairs from the desk to the front windows were pretty well filled with men, lean, hard-muscled men of the ranges in the majority.  The room was quiet save for an occasional word from the big man at the desk.  The clerk drew a check from the cigar-box.  A man stepped up to the desk, gave his name, age, occupation, and address, received the numbered check, and went to his seat.  The clerk drew another check.