The Darkest Hour
If anything had been needed to give an impetus to Jack McMurdo’s
popularity among his fellows it would have been his arrest and
acquittal. That a man on the very night of joining the lodge should
have done something which brought him before the magistrate was a new
record in the annals of the society. Already he had earned the
reputation of a good boon companion, a cheery reveller, and withal a
man of high temper, who would not take an insult even from the
all-powerful Boss himself. But in addition to this he impressed his
comrades with the idea that among them all there was not one whose
brain was so ready to devise a bloodthirsty scheme, or whose hand would
be more capable of carrying it out. “He’ll be the boy for the clean
job,” said the oldsters to one another, and waited their time until
they could set him to his work.
McGinty had instruments enough already; but he recognized that this was
a supremely able one. He felt like a man holding a fierce bloodhound in
leash. There were curs to do the smaller work; but some day he would
slip this creature upon its prey. A few members of the lodge, Ted
Baldwin among them, resented the rapid rise of the stranger and hated
him for it; but they kept clear of him, for he was as ready to fight as
to laugh.
But if he gained favour with his fellows, there was another quarter,
one which had become even more vital to him, in which he lost it. Ettie
Shafter’s father would have nothing more to do with him, nor would he
allow him to enter the house. Ettie herself was too deeply in love to
give him up altogether, and yet her own good sense warned her of what
would come from a marriage with a man who was regarded as a criminal.
One morning after a sleepless night she determined to see him, possibly
for the last time, and make one strong endeavour to draw him from those
evil influences which were sucking him down. She went to his house, as
he had often begged her to do, and made her way into the room which he
used as his sitting-room. He was seated at a table, with his back
turned and a letter in front of him. A sudden spirit of girlish
mischief came over her—she was still only nineteen. He had not heard
her when she pushed open the door. Now she tiptoed forward and laid her
hand lightly upon his bended shoulders.
If she had expected to startle him, she certainly succeeded; but only
in turn to be startled herself. With a tiger spring he turned on her,
and his right hand was feeling for her throat. At the same instant with
the other hand he crumpled up the paper that lay before him. For an
instant he stood glaring. Then astonishment and joy took the place of
the ferocity which had convulsed his features—a ferocity which had sent
her shrinking back in horror as from something which had never before
intruded into her gentle life.
“It’s you!” said he, mopping his brow. “And to think that you should
come to me, heart of my heart, and I should find nothing better to do
than to want to strangle you! Come then, darling,” and he held out his
arms, “let me make it up to you.”
But she had not recovered from that sudden glimpse of guilty fear which
she had read in the man’s face. All her woman’s instinct told her that
it was not the mere fright of a man who is startled. Guilt—that was
it—guilt and fear!
“What’s come over you, Jack?” she cried. “Why were you so scared of me?
Oh, Jack, if your conscience was at ease, you would not have looked at
me like that!”
“Sure, I was thinking of other things, and when you came tripping so
lightly on those fairy feet of yours—”
“No, no, it was more than that, Jack.” Then a sudden suspicion seized
her. “Let me see that letter you were writing.”
“Ah, Ettie, I couldn’t do that.”
Her suspicions became certainties. “It’s to another woman,” she cried.
“I know it! Why else should you hold it from me? Was it to your wife
that you were writing? How am I to know that you are not a married
man—you, a stranger, that nobody knows?”
“I am not married, Ettie. See now, I swear it! You’re the only one
woman on earth to me. By the cross of Christ I swear it!”
He was so white with passionate earnestness that she could not but
believe him.
“Well, then,” she cried, “why will you not show me the letter?”
“I’ll tell you, acushla,” said he. “I’m under oath not to show it, and
just as I wouldn’t break my word to you so I would keep it to those who
hold my promise. It’s the business of the lodge, and even to you it’s
secret. And if I was scared when a hand fell on me, can’t you
understand it when it might have been the hand of a detective?”
She felt that he was telling the truth. He gathered her into his arms
and kissed away her fears and doubts.
“Sit here by me, then. It’s a queer throne for such a queen; but it’s
the best your poor lover can find. He’ll do better for you some of
these days, I’m thinking. Now your mind is easy once again, is it not?”
“How can it ever be at ease, Jack, when I know that you are a criminal
among criminals, when I never know the day that I may hear you are in
court for murder? ‘McMurdo the Scowrer,’ that’s what one of our
boarders called you yesterday. It went through my heart like a knife.”
“Sure, hard words break no bones.”
“But they were true.”
“Well, dear, it’s not so bad as you think. We are but poor men that are
trying in our own way to get our rights.”
Ettie threw her arms round her lover’s neck. “Give it up, Jack! For my
sake, for God’s sake, give it up! It was to ask you that I came here
to-day. Oh, Jack, see—I beg it of you on my bended knees! Kneeling here
before you I implore you to give it up!”
[Illustration: “Oh, Jack, I implore you to give it up!”]
He raised her and soothed her with her head against his breast.
“Sure, my darlin’, you don’t know what it is you are asking. How could
I give it up when it would be to break my oath and to desert my
comrades? If you could see how things stand with me you could never ask
it of me. Besides, if I wanted to, how could I do it? You don’t suppose
that the lodge would let a man go free with all its secrets?”
“I’ve thought of that, Jack. I’ve planned it all. Father has saved some
money. He is weary of this place where the fear of these people darkens
our lives. He is ready to go. We would fly together to Philadelphia or
New York, where we would be safe from them.”
McMurdo laughed. “The lodge has a long arm. Do you think it could not
stretch from here to Philadelphia or New York?”
“Well, then, to the West, or to England, or to Germany, where father
came from—anywhere to get away from this Valley of Fear!”
McMurdo thought of old Brother Morris. “Sure, it is the second time I
have heard the valley so named,” said he. “The shadow does indeed seem
to lie heavy on some of you.”
“It darkens every moment of our lives. Do you suppose that Ted Baldwin
has ever forgiven us? If it were not that he fears you, what do you
suppose our chances would be? If you saw the look in those dark, hungry
eyes of his when they fall on me!”
“By Gar! I’d teach him better manners if I caught him at it! But see
here, little girl. I can’t leave here. I can’t—take that from me once
and for all. But if you will leave me to find my own way, I will try to
prepare a way of getting honourably out of it.”
“There is no honour in such a matter.”
“Well, well, it’s just how you look at it. But if you’ll give me six
months, I’ll work it so that I can leave without being ashamed to look
others in the face.”
The girl laughed with joy. “Six months!” she cried. “Is it a promise?”
“Well, it may be seven or eight. But within a year at the furthest we
will leave the valley behind us.”
It was the most that Ettie could obtain, and yet it was something.
There was this distant light to illuminate the gloom of the immediate
future. She returned to her father’s house more light-hearted than she
had ever been since Jack McMurdo had come into her life.
It might be thought that as a member, all the doings of the society
would be told to him; but he was soon to discover that the organization
was wider and more complex than the simple lodge. Even Boss McGinty was
ignorant as to many things; for there was an official named the County
Delegate, living at Hobson’s Patch farther down the line, who had power
over several different lodges which he wielded in a sudden and
arbitrary way. Only once did McMurdo see him, a sly, little gray-haired
rat of a man, with a slinking gait and a sidelong glance which was
charged with malice. Evans Pott was his name, and even the great Boss
of Vermissa felt towards him something of the repulsion and fear which
the huge Danton may have felt for the puny but dangerous Robespierre.
One day Scanlan, who was McMurdo’s fellow boarder, received a note from
McGinty inclosing one from Evans Pott, which informed him that he was
sending over two good men, Lawler and Andrews, who had instructions to
act in the neighbourhood; though it was best for the cause that no
particulars as to their objects should be given. Would the Bodymaster
see to it that suitable arrangements be made for their lodgings and
comfort until the time for action should arrive? McGinty added that it
was impossible for anyone to remain secret at the Union House, and
that, therefore, he would be obliged if McMurdo and Scanlan would put
the strangers up for a few days in their boarding house.
The same evening the two men arrived, each carrying his gripsack.
Lawler was an elderly man, shrewd, silent, and self-contained, clad in
an old black frock coat, which with his soft felt hat and ragged,
grizzled beard gave him a general resemblance to an itinerant preacher.
His companion Andrews was little more than a boy, frank-faced and
cheerful, with the breezy manner of one who is out for a holiday and
means to enjoy every minute of it. Both men were total abstainers, and
behaved in all ways as exemplary members of the society, with the one
simple exception that they were assassins who had often proved
themselves to be most capable instruments for this association of
murder. Lawler had already carried out fourteen commissions of the
kind, and Andrews three.
They were, as McMurdo found, quite ready to converse about their deeds
in the past, which they recounted with the half-bashful pride of men
who had done good and unselfish service for the community. They were
reticent, however, as to the immediate job in hand.
“They chose us because neither I nor the boy here drink,” Lawler
explained. “They can count on us saying no more than we should. You
must not take it amiss, but it is the orders of the County Delegate
that we obey.”
“Sure, we are all in it together,” said Scanlan, McMurdo’s mate, as the
four sat together at supper.
“That’s true enough, and we’ll talk till the cows come home of the
killing of Charlie Williams or of Simon Bird, or any other job in the
past. But till the work is done we say nothing.”
“There are half a dozen about here that I have a word to say to,” said
McMurdo, with an oath. “I suppose it isn’t Jack Knox of Ironhill that
you are after. I’d go some way to see him get his deserts.”
“No, it’s not him yet.”
“Or Herman Strauss?”
“No, nor him either.”
“Well, if you won’t tell us we can’t make you; but I’d be glad to
know.”
Lawler smiled and shook his head. He was not to be drawn.
In spite of the reticence of their guests, Scanlan and McMurdo were
quite determined to be present at what they called “the fun.” When,
therefore, at an early hour one morning McMurdo heard them creeping
down the stairs he awakened Scanlan, and the two hurried on their
clothes. When they were dressed they found that the others had stolen
out, leaving the door open behind them. It was not yet dawn, and by the
light of the lamps they could see the two men some distance down the
street. They followed them warily, treading noiselessly in the deep
snow.
The boarding house was near the edge of the town, and soon they were at
the crossroads which is beyond its boundary. Here three men were
waiting, with whom Lawler and Andrews held a short, eager conversation.
Then they all moved on together. It was clearly some notable job which
needed numbers. At this point there are several trails which lead to
various mines. The strangers took that which led to the Crow Hill, a
huge business which was in strong hands which had been able, thanks to
their energetic and fearless New England manager, Josiah H. Dunn, to
keep some order and discipline during the long reign of terror.
Day was breaking now, and a line of workmen were slowly making their
way, singly and in groups, along the blackened path.
McMurdo and Scanlan strolled on with the others, keeping in sight of
the men whom they followed. A thick mist lay over them, and from the
heart of it there came the sudden scream of a steam whistle. It was the
ten-minute signal before the cages descended and the day’s labour
began.
When they reached the open space round the mine shaft there were a
hundred miners waiting, stamping their feet and blowing on their
fingers; for it was bitterly cold. The strangers stood in a little
group under the shadow of the engine house. Scanlan and McMurdo climbed
a heap of slag from which the whole scene lay before them. They saw the
mine engineer, a great bearded Scotchman named Menzies, come out of the
engine house and blow his whistle for the cages to be lowered.
At the same instant a tall, loose-framed young man with a clean-shaved,
earnest face advanced eagerly towards the pit head. As he came forward
his eyes fell upon the group, silent and motionless, under the engine
house. The men had drawn down their hats and turned up their collars to
screen their faces. For a moment the presentiment of Death laid its
cold hand upon the manager’s heart. At the next he had shaken it off
and saw only his duty towards intrusive strangers.
“Who are you?” he asked as he advanced. “What are you loitering there
for?”
There was no answer; but the lad Andrews stepped forward and shot him
in the stomach. The hundred waiting miners stood as motionless and
helpless as if they were paralyzed. The manager clapped his two hands
to the wound and doubled himself up. Then he staggered away; but
another of the assassins fired, and he went down sidewise, kicking and
clawing among a heap of clinkers. Menzies, the Scotchman, gave a roar
of rage at the sight and rushed with an iron spanner at the murderers;
but was met by two balls in the face which dropped him dead at their
very feet.
There was a surge forward of some of the miners, and an inarticulate
cry of pity and of anger; but a couple of the strangers emptied their
six-shooters over the heads of the crowd, and they broke and scattered,
some of them rushing wildly back to their homes in Vermissa.
When a few of the bravest had rallied, and there was a return to the
mine, the murderous gang had vanished in the mists of morning, without
a single witness being able to swear to the identity of these men who
in front of a hundred spectators had wrought this double crime.
Scanlan and McMurdo made their way back; Scanlan somewhat subdued, for
it was the first murder job that he had seen with his own eyes, and it
appeared less funny than he had been led to believe. The horrible
screams of the dead manager’s wife pursued them as they hurried to the
town. McMurdo was absorbed and silent; but he showed no sympathy for
the weakening of his companion.
“Sure, it is like a war,” he repeated. “What is it but a war between us
and them, and we hit back where we best can.”
There was high revel in the lodge room at the Union House that night,
not only over the killing of the manager and engineer of the Crow Hill
mine, which would bring this organization into line with the other
blackmailed and terror-stricken companies of the district, but also
over a distant triumph which had been wrought by the hands of the lodge
itself.
It would appear that when the County Delegate had sent over five good
men to strike a blow in Vermissa, he had demanded that in return three
Vermissa men should be secretly selected and sent across to kill
William Hales of Stake Royal, one of the best known and most popular
mine owners in the Gilmerton district, a man who was believed not to
have an enemy in the world; for he was in all ways a model employer. He
had insisted, however, upon efficiency in the work, and had, therefore,
paid off certain drunken and idle employees who were members of the
all-powerful society. Coffin notices hung outside his door had not
weakened his resolution, and so in a free, civilized country he found
himself condemned to death.
The execution had now been duly carried out. Ted Baldwin, who sprawled
now in the seat of honour beside the Bodymaster, had been chief of the
party. His flushed face and glazed, bloodshot eyes told of
sleeplessness and drink. He and his two comrades had spent the night
before among the mountains. They were unkempt and weather-stained. But
no heroes, returning from a forlorn hope, could have had a warmer
welcome from their comrades.
The story was told and retold amid cries of delight and shouts of
laughter. They had waited for their man as he drove home at nightfall,
taking their station at the top of a steep hill, where his horse must
be at a walk. He was so furred to keep out the cold that he could not
lay his hand on his pistol. They had pulled him out and shot him again
and again. He had screamed for mercy. The screams were repeated for the
amusement of the lodge.
“Let’s hear again how he squealed,” they cried.
None of them knew the man; but there is eternal drama in a killing, and
they had shown the Scowrers of Gilmerton that the Vermissa men were to
be relied upon.
There had been one contretemps; for a man and his wife had driven up
while they were still emptying their revolvers into the silent body. It
had been suggested that they should shoot them both; but they were
harmless folk who were not connected with the mines, so they were
sternly bidden to drive on and keep silent, lest a worse thing befall
them. And so the blood-mottled figure had been left as a warning to all
such hard-hearted employers, and the three noble avengers had hurried
off into the mountains where unbroken nature comes down to the very
edge of the furnaces and the slag heaps. Here they were, safe and
sound, their work well done, and the plaudits of their companions in
their ears.
It had been a great day for the Scowrers. The shadow had fallen even
darker over the valley. But as the wise general chooses the moment of
victory in which to redouble his efforts, so that his foes may have no
time to steady themselves after disaster, so Boss McGinty, looking out
upon the scene of his operations with his brooding and malicious eyes,
had devised a new attack upon those who opposed him. That very night,
as the half-drunken company broke up, he touched McMurdo on the arm and
led him aside into that inner room where they had their first
interview.
“See here, my lad,” said he, “I’ve got a job that’s worthy of you at
last. You’ll have the doing of it in your own hands.”
“Proud I am to hear it,” McMurdo answered.
“You can take two men with you—Manders and Reilly. They have been
warned for service. We’ll never be right in this district until Chester
Wilcox has been settled, and you’ll have the thanks of every lodge in
the coal fields if you can down him.”
“I’ll do my best, anyhow. Who is he, and where shall I find him?”
McGinty took his eternal half-chewed, half-smoked cigar from the corner
of his mouth, and proceeded to draw a rough diagram on a page torn from
his notebook.
“He’s the chief foreman of the Iron Dike Company. He’s a hard citizen,
an old colour sergeant of the war, all scars and grizzle. We’ve had two
tries at him; but had no luck, and Jim Carnaway lost his life over it.
Now it’s for you to take it over. That’s the house—all alone at the
Iron Dike crossroad, same as you see here on the map—without another
within earshot. It’s no good by day. He’s armed and shoots quick and
straight, with no questions asked. But at night—well, there he is with
his wife, three children, and a hired help. You can’t pick or choose.
It’s all or none. If you could get a bag of blasting powder at the
front door with a slow match to it—”
“What’s the man done?”
“Didn’t I tell you he shot Jim Carnaway?”
“Why did he shoot him?”
“What in thunder has that to do with you? Carnaway was about his house
at night, and he shot him. That’s enough for me and you. You’ve got to
settle the thing right.”
“There’s these two women and the children. Do they go up too?”
“They have to—else how can we get him?”
“It seems hard on them; for they’ve done nothing.”
“What sort of fool’s talk is this? Do you back out?”
“Easy, Councillor, easy! What have I ever said or done that you should
think I would be after standing back from an order of the Bodymaster of
my own lodge? If it’s right or if it’s wrong, it’s for you to decide.”
“You’ll do it, then?”
“Of course I will do it.”
“When?”
“Well, you had best give me a night or two that I may see the house and
make my plans. Then—”
“Very good,” said McGinty, shaking him by the hand. “I leave it with
you. It will be a great day when you bring us the news. It’s just the
last stroke that will bring them all to their knees.”
McMurdo thought long and deeply over the commission which had been so
suddenly placed in his hands. The isolated house in which Chester
Wilcox lived was about five miles off in an adjacent valley. That very
night he started off all alone to prepare for the attempt. It was
daylight before he returned from his reconnaissance. Next day he
interviewed his two subordinates, Manders and Reilly, reckless
youngsters who were as elated as if it were a deer-hunt.
Two nights later they met outside the town, all three armed, and one of
them carrying a sack stuffed with the powder which was used in the
quarries. It was two in the morning before they came to the lonely
house. The night was a windy one, with broken clouds drifting swiftly
across the face of a three-quarter moon. They had been warned to be on
their guard against bloodhounds; so they moved forward cautiously, with
their pistols cocked in their hands. But there was no sound save the
howling of the wind, and no movement but the swaying branches above
them.
McMurdo listened at the door of the lonely house; but all was still
within. Then he leaned the powder bag against it, ripped a hole in it
with his knife, and attached the fuse. When it was well alight he and
his two companions took to their heels, and were some distance off,
safe and snug in a sheltering ditch, before the shattering roar of the
explosion, with the low, deep rumble of the collapsing building, told
them that their work was done. No cleaner job had ever been carried out
in the bloodstained annals of the society.
But alas that work so well organized and boldly carried out should all
have gone for nothing! Warned by the fate of the various victims, and
knowing that he was marked down for destruction, Chester Wilcox had
moved himself and his family only the day before to some safer and less
known quarters, where a guard of police should watch over them. It was
an empty house which had been torn down by the gunpowder, and the grim
old colour sergeant of the war was still teaching discipline to the
miners of Iron Dike.
“Leave him to me,” said McMurdo. “He’s my man, and I’ll get him sure if
I have to wait a year for him.”
A vote of thanks and confidence was passed in full lodge, and so for
the time the matter ended. When a few weeks later it was reported in
the papers that Wilcox had been shot at from an ambuscade, it was an
open secret that McMurdo was still at work upon his unfinished job.
Such were the methods of the Society of Freemen, and such were the
deeds of the Scowrers by which they spread their rule of fear over the
great and rich district which was for so long a period haunted by their
terrible presence. Why should these pages be stained by further crimes?
Have I not said enough to show the men and their methods?
These deeds are written in history, and there are records wherein one
may read the details of them. There one may learn of the shooting of
Policemen Hunt and Evans because they had ventured to arrest two
members of the society—a double outrage planned at the Vermissa lodge
and carried out in cold blood upon two helpless and disarmed men. There
also one may read of the shooting of Mrs. Larbey when she was nursing
her husband, who had been beaten almost to death by orders of Boss
McGinty. The killing of the elder Jenkins, shortly followed by that of
his brother, the mutilation of James Murdoch, the blowing up of the
Staphouse family, and the murder of the Stendals all followed hard upon
one another in the same terrible winter.
Darkly the shadow lay upon the Valley of Fear. The spring had come with
running brooks and blossoming trees. There was hope for all Nature
bound so long in an iron grip; but nowhere was there any hope for the
men and women who lived under the yoke of the terror. Never had the
cloud above them been so dark and hopeless as in the early summer of
the year 1875.