Reborn in 1878: America's Number One Bandit

Chapter 113 Siege of the Police Station
The wailing of sirens pierced the thick smoke.

Sheriff Monroe jumped off the carriage, the scalding ashes burning his feet.

The offices of the San Francisco Chronicle, a place that represented civilization and public opinion yesterday, have now become a living hell.

The fire burst from the third-floor windows, and the entire block reeked of burning.

"Don't you fucking stand there, put out the fire!"

Monroe roared and kicked a dumbfounded policeman in the backside: "Casey, take some men and come with me in there. Capture those Irish bastards alive!"

He blasted open the charred and deformed door with a single shot.

Inside the office, a dozen or so young Irish thugs were already in a bloodthirsty frenzy.

They danced wildly amidst the flames and thick smoke.

They knocked the last resisting printer to the ground and stomped on his face.

"Die, you lying bastard!"

"This is what happens when we are discriminated against!"

"police!"

One of the thugs saw Monroe and his men rushing in.

"Great."

Monroe grinned menacingly, his eyes filled with murderous intent: "It saves me the trouble of going looking for them one by one!"

Casey's baton struck a thug on the back of the head first.

"Ah! You cop!"

"Fight them!"

The rioters charged forward, brandishing flaming wooden sticks and iron bars.

Monroe dodged a metal bar that was about to smash into his face, grabbed the other man's wrist with his other hand, and snapped the man's wrist!

The moment the man let out a horrific scream, Monroe slammed his other hand into his stomach.

"Uh!"

The thug's eyes were bulging out, his body was hunched over, and acidic fluid and bloody foam gushed from his mouth.

"Chubby!"

Monroe knocked him to the ground, then drew his gun and aimed it at the knee of another thug who charged at him.

"my leg!"

The thug collapsed to the ground, clutching his bleeding knee.

These young men, who might be fierce in street brawls, are incredibly vulnerable when faced with trained professional violence machines like Monroe and Casey.

Ten minutes later, the battle ended.

A dozen or so Irish youths, some dead, some unconscious, lay on the ground, their hands and feet roughly bound behind their backs with belts and ropes by police officers.

"Take inventory."

Monroe, panting heavily, said, "Tie them all up while they're still alive!"

"Sheriff."

Casey's voice came from the typesetting room: "You'd better come and take a look."

Monroe frowned, kicked aside a pile of burning newspapers, and walked over.

Then he saw Martin's body.

The editor-in-chief of the San Francisco Chronicle was lying in a pool of blood and scattered printed words.

His death was gruesome.

His head was crushed by an iron roller, one eye was missing, and his mouth was stuffed with lead type, as if the thugs wanted him to swallow all the lies he had written.

Monroe felt a churning in his stomach.

He wasn't unfamiliar with dead people; he had personally killed at least a dozen, but he had never seen one die like this...

It has symbolic meaning.

This has really blown things up.

The murder of Chief Harrison can be attributed to random crimes committed by homeless people.

But now, the editor-in-chief of a newspaper that ranks among the top in the United States was brutally murdered in his office by a group of Irish thugs in a manner resembling an execution.

This isn't a crime, this is fucking a declaration of war!
"Those damn Irish bastards!"

Monroe was furious. He walked up to the bound prisoners and kicked one of them hard in the face.

"Do you even know what you've done? Huh? You brainless beasts!"

The young man's mouth was full of blood, yet he was still laughing wildly: "He deserved it! He called us animals..."

"I'll show you what an animal is right now!"

Monroe pulled out his revolver and pressed it hard against his forehead.

"Sheriff, no!"

Casey grabbed him: "Mr. Barkley wants them alive. We'll put them on the gallows and let the whole city see!"

Monroe eventually put his gun away.

"You're right. Drag them all out! Parade them through the streets! I want the whole of San Francisco to see what happens when you go against the cops!"

"Get out of the way! All of you, get the fuck out of the way!"

Monroe rode on horseback like a Roman general escorting spoils of war.

Thirteen Irish youths, with nooses around their necks, were forced to run naked through the streets.

They were left with only a few tattered rags, covered in blood and soot, and trudged forward, driven by police batons and whips.

The news spread faster than fire.

Citizens poured out of their homes and blocked both sides of the street.

When they saw the horrific state of the murderers and learned that Martin, the editor-in-chief of the California Chronicle, had been brutally murdered, their anger was instantly ignited.

"murderer!"

"Hang them!"

"Irish pigs! Get out of San Francisco!"

It started as just cursing, but it quickly escalated into a real attack.

A rotten tomato exploded on one of the youths' faces.

Then, rotten eggs, rotten cabbages, oyster shells—all sorts of trash—were hurled at the poor team.

"Haha! Well done!"

"Kill these bastards!"

The citizens were celebrating.

They loathe these thugs, and even more so the Irish community they represent, which threatens their decent lives.

Instead of stopping them, the police officers laughed and deliberately slowed down the horses, allowing the rioters to enjoy their privilege for a longer period of time.

Among the crowd were several laborers of Irish descent who had come out to watch the spectacle.

One of the clever ones quietly slipped out of the crowd and ran wildly down the alley, pulling up his pants.

Celtic Fist Tavern.

Declan is enjoying the service in a private room on the second floor.

A newly acquired Russian prostitute, blonde and blue-eyed with skin as white as ivory, was awkwardly and forcefully massaging his calves with hands that were said to have once played the piano for a relative of the Tsar.

"Push harder, you bitch."

Declan, eyes closed and a cigar dangling from his mouth, said, "Didn't you fucking eat? Or is all you Russian girls can do is spread your legs?"

The Russian girl trembled with fright, tears welling in her eyes, but she tightened her grip even more.

Declan gave a comfortable hum, ignoring the faint shouts coming from outside.

Until the door to the private room was kicked open.

"Mr. De... Mr. Declan!"

The Irish laborer who had run back scrambled in.

"Something happened!"

Declan slowly opened his eyes and kicked the Russian girl in the butt: "Get out."

The girl felt as if she had been granted a pardon and ran away as fast as she could.

"Speak," Declan said, pulling on his wine-stained shirt. "What is it?"

"It's a cop!"

The laborer named Jimmy gave an incoherent, embellished account of what he had seen on the street.

“They tied Pat and Michael up like dogs! The whole town was throwing things at them! They beat Martin, that bastard from the newspaper, to death!”

Declan's languidness vanished instantly, replaced by an almost frenzied excitement.

Damn it, those idiots, well done!
That's the effect he wanted, he wanted bloodshed, he wanted martyrs!
“Mr. Declan, what… what do we do?” Jimmy was still trembling. “The cops… the cops have all gone mad…”

"Shut up!"

Declan patted Jimmy on the shoulder.

“Jimmy, what you see is not a group of prisoners, but heroes of our Ireland!”

"A hero?" Jimmy was dumbfounded.

“That’s right!” Declan’s eyes shone with an alarming light: “They dared to rebel, dared to fight those bastards who use their pens to stab us in the back for the sake of our dignity! They are warriors!”

He flung open the door and strode out.

"You!" He pointed at one of his trusted men in the tavern downstairs: "Go, ring the bell! Call all the able-bodied men in the neighborhood over here! Now!"

"Boom! Boom! Boom!"

Five minutes, ten minutes...

The Irish community is like a hornet's nest that has been poked.

The men poured out of their low, damp shacks.

There were laborers who had just finished work at the docks, thugs from the tavern, bakery workers, and even a few priests.

They carried shovels, axes, crowbars, meat cleavers, and a few old-fashioned hunting rifles hidden under the bed.

Declan's hundreds of gang members were fully armed, and they were at the heart of this storm.

In just twenty minutes.

Nearly a thousand Irish people gathered in the open space in front of the church.

Declan stood on the church steps; he was the king of these angry beasts.

"Brothers! You've all heard! That bastard Martin from the Chronicle is dead!"

“Our good brothers, Pat and Michael, those dozen or so guys got arrested by the cops and are being dragged through the street!”

Fuck the cops!

From the crowd, the leader of the assassins planted by Lawson immediately took the lead in roaring.

"Yeah! Fuck the cops!"

Declan raised his fist: "Why are they arresting our brothers? Because those bastards at the newspaper discriminate against us! They call us animals, they call us potato pigs!"

“Our brothers couldn’t stand this bullshit, so they smashed up the newspaper office and killed that son of a bitch Martin! I ask you, did they do anything wrong?”

"No!" the assassins shouted in unison.

"Yes! They are our heroes! They are defending the dignity of us Irish people with their blood!"

"Now, these heroes have been captured by those Protestant-trained bastard cops! They're going to hang our heroes!"

"I ask you again! You just watched our hero being hanged..."

"Or are you going to fucking come with me to smash up that son of a bitch police station and get our brothers back?"

"Get it back!"

"Get it back!"

The roars of nearly a thousand people merged into a terrifying wave of sound.

Led and incited by the suicide squad, these Irishmen went completely berserk.

"Go to the police station!"

"Release our brothers!"

Smash their dog heads!

Declan smiled with satisfaction.

He grabbed a bottle of whiskey, tilted his head back and took a big gulp, then smashed the bottle on the ground.

"set off!"

Meanwhile, in Chinatown.

Qingshan stood on the third-floor balcony of the Huaqing Association headquarters, holding a cup of freshly brewed Longjing tea.

In stark contrast to the deafening noise of the Irish community, Chinatown, though bustling with people, was eerily efficient.

One group after another of Chinese laborers, carrying simple belongings, boarded horse-drawn carriages in an orderly fashion, guided by members of the Chinese Youth Association, and were then transported to the docks.
There, a specially chartered ferry was waiting for them.

"The fifth batch, 320 people, has already boarded the ship. We expect to send two more batches off before dark."

"very good."

Within a few days, nearly half of the more than 20,000 Chinese laborers who lived in Chinatown had been safely relocated.

And there's a constant stream of people, with the guarantees of the six major associations, crying and begging to go to Northern California.

The Huaqing Association is always responsive to requests.

Anyone who volunteers and is in good health will be sent there for free, with a promise that they will find work there.

That vast expanse of land in Northern California is the largest reservoir in Lawson.

at this time.

Lawson looked up and gazed towards the southeast of the city.

He could clearly hear the angry torrent of nearly a thousand people surging toward the police station.

The deafening slogans could be clearly heard even several blocks away.

Lawson curled his lips into a cold smile.

"The show is about to begin."

San Francisco Police Department.

Barkley was pacing back and forth in his new office, clearly frustrated.

The door was suddenly kicked open, and a patrolman tumbled in.

"Director, something terrible has happened!"

"What's the panic? Is your dad dead?" Barkley, with nowhere to vent his anger, launched into a tirade.

"No! It's the Irish! They've attacked!" the patrolman gasped.

Barkley could hardly believe his ears.

"It's Declan, that newly appointed bastard leader! He brought at least a thousand men and surrounded us!"

Barkley's heart skipped a beat.

He rushed to the window and looked down, almost collapsing to the ground.

The square and streets below the police station were packed with people.

They held sticks and torches, howling like a pack of mad dogs.

"my God!"

After a brief moment of fear, anger at being offended took over.

"Are those damned Irishmen going to rebel?"

In the eyes of a respectable man like him, Declan and his gang of thugs were not even human.

They are stinking dog shit, social maggots, tools used to generate revenue for people like Harrison!
How dare they surround a police station that represents law and order?

"Gather everyone!"

Barkley roared, "Grab your guns! Come with me!"

The police station doors were flung open.

Barkley stood on the high steps, with more than thirty police officers behind him, armed with shotguns and rifles, looking tense.

He stared down at Declan.

"Declan!"

"Do you even know what you're doing? You're declaring war on the San Francisco government!"

"I don't care what's wrong with you, you mad dog!"

Barkley pointed at Declan's nose: "I order you to immediately disperse this mob! Otherwise, I swear, you will all be hanged in the square like those murderers!"

If Barkley had said those words before, Quinn might have been so terrified that he would have knelt down and begged for mercy.

Unfortunately, he was facing Declan, a henchman who only obeyed Lawson, a professional troublemaker.

Declan picked at his ear, too lazy to beat around the bush with Barkley: "Release them."

"What?" Barkley thought he had misheard.

"I said, release those thirteen Irish warriors you captured."

"impossible!"

Barkley was trembling with rage: "They smashed up the newspaper office! They killed people! They're murderers! Their only fate is the gallows!"

Instead of being afraid, Declan smiled strangely.

"Brothers! Did you all hear that?"

"That son of a bitch of a politician, he said our brothers are murderers!"

"He said he wanted to hang our Irish hero!"

"Do you agree?"

"No way!" The leaders of the assassins standing at the front of the crowd immediately took the lead in shouting.

"No!"

"Let go!"

"Let go!"

The roars of nearly a thousand people converged into a terrifying sound wave.

The Irish mob felt stronger than ever before, their blood boiling.

With so many people gathering together to cause trouble, the police must be scared, right?

(End of this chapter)