CHAPTER 1
The Man
It was the fourth of February in the year
1875. It had been a severe winter, and the snow lay deep in the
gorges of the Gilmerton Mountains. The steam ploughs had, however,
kept the railroad open, and the evening train which connects the
long line of coal-mining and iron-working settlements was slowly
groaning its way up the steep gradients which lead from Stagville
on the plain to Vermissa, the central township which lies at the
head of Vermissa Valley. From this point the track sweeps downward
to Bartons Crossing, Helmdale, and the purely agricultural county
of Merton. It was a single-track railroad; but at every siding—and
they were numerous—long lines of trucks piled with coal and iron
ore told of the hidden wealth which had brought a rude population
and a bustling life to this most desolate corner of the United
States of America.
For desolate it was! Little could the first pioneer
who had traversed it have ever imagined that the fairest prairies
and the most lush water pastures were valueless compared to this
gloomy land of black crag and tangled forest. Above the dark and
often scarcely penetrable woods upon their flanks, the high, bare
crowns of the mountains, white snow, and jagged rock towered upon
each flank, leaving a long, winding, tortuous valley in the centre.
Up this the little train was slowly crawling.
The oil lamps had just been lit in the leading
passenger car, a long, bare carriage in which some twenty or thirty
people were seated. The greater number of these were workmen
returning from their day’s toil in the lower part of the valley. At
least a dozen, by their grimed faces and the safety lanterns which
they carried, proclaimed themselves miners. These sat smoking in a
group and conversed in low voices, glancing occasionally at two men
on the opposite side of the car, whose uniforms and badges showed
them to be policemen.
Several women of the labouring class and one or two
travellers who might have been small local storekeepers made up the
rest of the company, with the exception of one young man in a
corner by himself. It is with this man that we are concerned. Take
a good look at him; for he is worth it.
He is a fresh-complexioned, middle-sized young man,
not far, one would guess, from his thirtieth year. He has large,
shrewd, humorous gray eyes which twinkle inquiringly from time to
time as he looks round through his spectacles at the people about
him. It is easy to see that he is of a sociable and possibly simple
disposition, anxious to be friendly to all men. Anyone could pick
him at once as gregarious in his habits and communicative in his
nature, with a quick wit and a ready smile. And yet the man who
studied him more closely might discern a certain firmness of jaw
and grim tightness about the lips which would warn him that there
were depths beyond, and that this pleasant, brown-haired young
Irishman might conceivably leave his mark for good or evil upon any
society to which he was introduced.
Having made one or two tentative remarks to the
nearest miner, and receiving only short, gruff replies, the
traveller resigned himself to uncongenial silence, staring moodily
out of the window at the fading landscape.
It was not a cheering prospect. Through the growing
gloom there pulsed the red glow of the furnaces on the sides of the
hills. Great heaps of slag and dumps of cinders loomed up on each
side, with the high shafts of the collieries towering above them.
Huddled groups of mean, wooden houses, the windows of which were
beginning to outline themselves in light, were scattered here and
there along the line, and the frequent halting places were crowded
with their swarthy inhabitants.
The iron and coal valleys of the Vermissa district
were no resorts for the leisured or the cultured. Everywhere there
were stern signs of the crudest battle of life, the rude work to be
done, and the rude, strong workers who did it.
The young traveller gazed out into this dismal
country with a face of mingled repulsion and interest, which showed
that the scene was new to him. At intervals he drew from his pocket
a bulky letter to which he referred, and on the margins of which he
scribbled some notes. Once from the back of his waist he produced
something which one would hardly have expected to find in the
possession of so mild-mannered a man. It was a navy revolver of the
largest size. As he turned it slantwise to the light, the glint
upon the rims of the copper shells within the drum showed that it
was fully loaded. He quickly restored it to his secret pocket, but
not before it had been observed by a working man who had seated
himself upon the adjoining bench.
“Hullo, mate!” said he. “You seem heeled and
ready.”
The young man smiled with an air of
embarrassment.
“Yes,” said he, “we need them sometimes in the
place I come from.”
“And where may that be?”
“I’m last from Chicago.”
“A stranger in these parts?”
“Yes.”
“You may find you need it here,” said the
workman.
“Ah! is that so?” The young man seemed
interested.
“Have you heard nothing of doings
hereabouts?”
“Nothing out of the way.”
“Why, I thought the country was full of it. You’ll
hear quick enough. What made you come here?”
“I heard there was always work for a willing
man.”
“Are you a member of the union?”
“Sure.”
“Then you’ll get your job, I guess. Have you any
friends?”
“Not yet; but I have the means of making
them.”
“How’s that, then?”
“I am one of the Eminent Order of Freemen. There’s
no town without a lodge, and where there is a lodge I’ll find my
friends.”
The remark had a singular effect upon his
companion. He glanced round suspiciously at the others in the car.
The miners were still whispering among themselves. The two police
officers were dozing. He came across, seated himself close to the
young traveller, and held out his hand.
“Put it there,” he said.
A hand-grip passed between the two.
“I see you speak the truth,” said the workman. “But
it’s well to make certain.” He raised his right hand to his right
eyebrow. The traveller at once raised his left hand to his left
eyebrow.
“Dark nights are unpleasant,” said the
workman.
“Yes, for strangers to travel,” the other
answered.
“That’s good enough. I’m Brother Scanlan, Lodge
341, Vermissa Valley. Glad to see you in these parts.”
“Thank you. I’m Brother John McMurdo, Lodge 29,
Chicago. Bodymaster J. H. Scott. But I am in luck to meet a brother
so early.”
“Well, there are plenty of us about. You won’t find
the order more flourishing anywhere in the States than right here
in Vermissa Valley. But we could do with some lads like you. I
can’t understand a spry man of the union finding no work to do in
Chicago.”
“I found plenty of work to do,” said McMurdo.
“Then why did you leave?”
McMurdo nodded towards the policemen and smiled. “I
guess those chaps would be glad to know,” he said.
Scanlan groaned sympathetically. “In trouble?” he
asked in a whisper.
“Deep.”
“A penitentiary job?”
“And the rest.”
“Not a killing!”
“It’s early days to talk of such things,” said
McMurdo with the air of a man who had been surprised into saying
more than he intended. “I’ve my own good reasons for leaving
Chicago, and let that be enough for you. Who are you that you
should take it on yourself to ask such things?” His gray eyes
gleamed with sudden and dangerous anger from behind his
glasses.
“All right, mate, no offense meant. The boys will
think none the worse of you, whatever you may have done. Where are
you bound for now?”
“Vermissa.”
“That’s the third halt down the line. Where are you
staying?”
McMurdo took out an envelope and held it close to
the murky oil lamp. “Here is the address—Jacob Shafter, Sheridan
Street. It’s a boarding house that was recommended by a man I knew
in Chicago.”
“Well, I don’t know it; but Vermissa is out of my
beat. I live at Hobson’s Patch, and that’s here where we are
drawing up. But, say, there’s one bit of advice I’ll give you
before we part: If you’re in trouble in Vermissa, go straight to
the Union House and see Boss McGinty. He is the Bodymaster of
Vermissa Lodge, and nothing can happen in these parts unless Black
Jack McGinty wants it. So long, mate! Maybe we’ll meet in lodge one
of these evenings. But mind my words: If you are in trouble, go to
Boss McGinty”
Scanlan descended, and McMurdo was left once again
to his thoughts. Night had now fallen, and the flames of the
frequent furnaces were roaring and leaping in the darkness. Against
their lurid background dark figures were bending and straining,
twisting and turning, with the motion of winch or of windlass, to
the rhythm of an eternal clank and roar.
“I guess hell must look something like that,” said
a voice.
McMurdo turned and saw that one of the policemen
had shifted in his seat and was staring out into the fiery
waste.
“For that matter,” said the other policeman, “I
allow that hell must be something like that. If there are worse
devils down yonder than some we could name, it’s more than I’d
expect. I guess you are new to this part, young man?”
“Well, what if I am?” McMurdo answered in a surly
voice.
“Just this, mister, that I should advise you to be
careful in choosing your friends. I don’t think I’d begin with Mike
Scanlan or his gang if I were you.”
“What the hell is it to you who are my friends?”
roared McMurdo in a voice which brought every head in the carriage
round to witness the altercation. “Did I ask you for your advice,
or did you think me such a sucker that I couldn’t move without it?
You speak when you are spoken to, and by the Lord you’d have to
wait a long time if it was me!” He thrust out his face and grinned
at the patrolmen like a snarling dog.
The two policemen, heavy, good-natured men, were
taken aback by the extraordinary vehemence with which their
friendly advances had been rejected.
“No offense, stranger,” said one. “It was a warning
for your own good, seeing that you are, by your own showing, new to
the place.”
“I’m new to the place; but I’m not new to you and
your kind!” cried McMurdo in cold fury. “I guess you’re the same in
all places, shoving your advice in when nobody asks for it.”
“Maybe we’ll see more of you before very long,”
said one of the patrolmen with a grin. “You’re a real hand-picked
one, if I am a judge.”
“I was thinking the same,” remarked the other. “I
guess we may meet again.”
“I’m not afraid of you, and don’t you think it!”
cried McMurdo. “My name’s Jack McMurdo—see? If you want me, you’ll
find me at Jacob Shafter’s on Sheridan Street, Vermissa; so I’m not
hiding from you, am I? Day or night I dare to look the like of you
in the face—don’t make any mistake about that!”
There was a murmur of sympathy and admiration from
the miners at the dauntless demeanour of the newcomer, while the
two policemen shrugged their shoulders and renewed a conversation
between themselves.
A few minutes later the train ran into the ill-lit
station, and there was a general clearing; for Vermissa was by far
the largest town on the line. McMurdo picked up his leather
gripsack and was about to start off into the darkness, when one of
the miners accosted him.
“By Gar, mate! you know how to speak to the cops,”
he said in a voice, of awe. “It was grand to hear you. Let me carry
your grip and show you the road. I’m passing Shafter’s on the way
to my own shack.”
There was a chorus of friendly “Good-nights” from
the other miners as they passed from the platform. Before ever he
had set foot in it, McMurdo the turbulent had become a character in
Vermissa.
The country had been a place of terror; but the
town was in its way even more depressing. Down that long valley
there was at least a certain gloomy grandeur in the huge fires and
the clouds of drifting smoke, while the strength and industry of
man found fitting monuments in the hills which he had spilled by
the side of his monstrous excavations. But the town showed a dead
level of mean ugliness and squalor. The broad street was churned up
by the traffic into a horrible rutted paste of muddy snow. The
sidewalks were narrow and uneven. The numerous gas-lamps served
only to show more clearly a long line of wooden houses, each with
its veranda facing the street, unkempt and dirty.
As they approached the centre of the town the scene
was brightened by a row of well-lit stores, and even more by a
cluster of saloons and gaming houses, in which the miners spent
their hard-earned but generous wages.
“That’s the Union House,” said the guide, pointing
to one saloon which rose almost to the dignity of being a hotel.
“Jack McGinty is the boss there.”
“What sort of a man is he?” McMurdo asked.
“What! have you never heard of the boss?”
“How could I have heard of him when you know that I
am a stranger in these parts?”
“Well, I thought his name was known clear across
the country. It’s been in the papers often enough.”
“What for?”
“Well,” the miner lowered his voice—“over the
affairs.”
“What affairs?”
“Good Lord, mister! you are queer, if I must say it
without offense. There’s only one set of affairs that you’ll hear
of in these parts, and that’s the affairs of the Scowrers.”
“Why, I seem to have read of the Scowrers in
Chicago. A gang of murderers, are they not?”
“Hush, on your life!” cried the miner, standing
still in alarm, and gazing in amazement at his companion. “Man, you
won’t live long in these parts if you speak in the open street like
that. Many a man has had the life beaten out of him for
less.”
“Well, I know nothing about them. It’s only what I
have read.”
“And I’m not saying that you have not read the
truth.” The man looked nervously round him as he spoke, peering
into the shadows as if he feared to see some lurking danger. “If
killing is murder, then God knows there is murder and to spare. But
don’t you dare to breathe the name of Jack McGinty in connection
with it, stranger; for every whisper goes back to him, and he is
not one that is likely to let it pass. Now, that’s the house you’re
after, that one standing back from the street. You’ll find old
Jacob Shafter that runs it as honest a man as lives in this
township.”
“I thank you,” said McMurdo, and shaking hands with
his new acquaintance he plodded, gripsack in hand, up the path
which led to the dwelling house, at the door of which he gave a
resounding knock.
It was opened at once by someone very different
from what he had expected. It was a woman, young and singularly
beautiful. She was of the German type, blonde and fair-haired, with
the piquant contrast of a pair of beautiful dark eyes with which
she surveyed the stranger with surprise and a pleasing
embarrassment which brought a wave of colour over her pale face.
Framed in the bright light of the open doorway, it seemed to
McMurdo that he had never seen a more beautiful picture; the more
attractive for its contrast with the sordid and gloomy
surroundings. A lovely violet growing upon one of those black
slag-heaps of the mines would not have seemed more surprising. So
entranced was he that he stood staring without a word, and it was
she who broke the silence.
“I thought it was father,” said she with a pleasing
little touch of a German accent. “Did you come to see him? He is
downtown. I expect him back every minute.”
McMurdo continued to gaze at her in open admiration
until her eyes dropped in confusion before this masterful
visitor.
“No, miss,” he said at last, “I’m in no hurry to
see him. But your house was recommended to me for board. I thought
it might suit me—and now I know it will.”
“You are quick to make up your mind,” said she with
a smile.
“Anyone but a blind man could do as much,” the
other answered.
She laughed at the compliment. “Come right in,
sir,” she said. “I’m Miss Ettie Shafter, Mr. Shafter’s daughter. My
mother’s dead, and I run the house. You can sit down by the stove
in the front room until father comes along—Ah, here he is! So you
can fix things with him right away.”
A heavy, elderly man came plodding up the path. In
a few words McMurdo explained his business. A man of the name of
Murphy had given him the address in Chicago. He in turn had had it
from someone else. Old Shafter was quite ready. The stranger made
no bones about terms, agreed at once to every condition, and was
apparently fairly flush of money. For seven dollars a week paid in
advance he was to have board and lodging.
So it was that McMurdo, the self-confessed fugitive
from justice, took up his abode under the roof of the Shafters, the
first step which was to lead to so long and dark a train of events,
ending in a far distant land.