Northfield by Johnny D. Boggs

bastard, Charlie!”
    Then…a gunshot!
    My ears rang as I hurried, seeing the bullet splinter the blinds right before I pushed through them, crashing outside, hearing the cannonade of the attack from all around Mill Square and Division Street.
    From inside the bank: “Kill that son-of-a-bitch!”
    Outside—shrieks, hoofs, gunfire that surrounded, it seemed, the entire town.
    Feet churning, flailing stupidly, I ran as hard as I could, heard the dark man’s vile cursing, heard the click of his revolver, or at least imagined I did.
    An instant later, a bullet slammed into my back.

C HAPTER N INE
A NSELM R. M ANNING
    Try as I might, my hands would not quit trembling.
    I am not a soldier, not a young man. I am a forty-three-year-old Canadian-turned-Minnesotan, an Episcopalian and Freemason, a Northfield businessman with a lovely wife and three-month-old daughter. For all of those things I have mentioned above, albeit not in that order, I found myself fighting when bandits attempted to sack our town. My town. My home for the past twenty years. I would not be deterred, no matter how frightened I was, no matter the danger of the situation. My life meant nothing, not in the grand scheme of things.
    But…gee willikins! I acted as naive as most citizens on that Thursday afternoon. Even the first shot did not alarm me.
    “What was that?” R.C. Phillips asked.
    Phillips started walking toward the entrance of the hardware store, where I sat working on the books, but I waved him off. Earlier, I had read in the Rice County Journal that some Thespian group was performing at the Opera House that evening, and I warranted the actors in this combination had gotten permission through the local constabulary to ride up and down Division Street and raise a ruction, to draw up interest for the sordid melodrama that appealed to teen-age boys and ne’er-do-wells with too much time on their hands and an imagination whetted by the half-dime novels published by Beadle & Adams.
    Yet when I heard the panicked shouts, and J.S. Allen’s warning—“Get your guns, boys, they’re robbing the bank!”—followed by muffled curses and an explosion of musketry, I understood the gravity of the afternoon.
    At that moment, J.S. Allen, who owned the hardware store next to my own, ran inside my store, it being closest, out of breath, terrified but unfaltering. “Robbery!” he cried out. “Robbery! Robbery! We’ve got…to get the…guns.”
    He tried to explain what was happening to R.C. Phillips, but I caught only bits and pieces. Allen had walked to the First National, temporarily being housed in the Scriver Building. One or two men had stopped him, struck him, cursed him. He had fled. They had fired at him, maybe in warning, perhaps with the intention to maim or kill.
    I didn’t hear the rest. John Tosney and John Archer rushed inside as R.C. made his way to the door, pushing him away from the door and windows. “They’re robbing the bank!” one of them shouted. “Better stay off the streets!”
    Yet I had no intention of doing such. Gunshots popped outside as I grabbed a handful of ammunition, picked up the Remington breechloader with which I had been practicing for the fall hunts, and stepped out of the store over stunned protests and made my way to the corner of Mill Square and Division Street.
    “Get off the streets! Get back, you sons-of-bitches!”
    At first glance, I knew more than two men were taking part in this affair. I spotted two men in front of the bank, three others galloping on horses, firing six-shot revolvers, yipping a bloodcurdling yelp, cursing. Desperate men.
    “Better jump back now!” came a friendly if petrified voice near me. “Or they shall kill you.”
    With trembling hands, I took careful aim. I squeezed the trigger, and shot a horse tethered in front of the Scriver Building.
    This action aroused the wrath of one of the men in front of the bank. He wore a broad black hat and linen duster, as did all of these