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.
CHAPTER II
The Bodymaster
McMurdo was a man who made his mark quickly. Wherever he was the folk
around soon knew it. Within a week he had become infinitely the most
important person at Shafter's. There were ten or a dozen boarders
there; but they were honest foremen or commonplace clerks from the
stores, of a very different calibre from the young Irishman. Of an
evening when they gathered together his joke was always the readiest,
his conversation the brightest, and his song the best. He was a born
boon companion, with a magnetism which drew good humour from all
around him.
And yet he showed again and again, as he had shown in the railway
carriage, a capacity for sudden, fierce anger, which compelled the
respect and even the fear of those who met him. For the law, too, and
all who were connected with it, he exhibited a bitter contempt which
delighted some and alarmed others of his fellow boarders.
From the first he made it evident, by his open admiration, that the
daughter of the house had won his heart from the instant that he had
set eyes upon her beauty and her grace. He was no backward suitor. On
the second day he told her that he loved her, and from then onward he
repeated the same story with an absolute disregard of what she might
