The boarding house was near the edge of the town, and soonthey were at the crossroads which is beyond its boundary. Herethree men were waiting, with whom Lawler and Andrews held ashort, eager conversation. Then they all moved on together. Itwas clearly some notable job which needed numbers. At this pointthere are several trails which lead to various mines. The strangerstook that which led to the Crow Hill, a huge business which wasin strong hands which had been able, thanks to their energeticand fearless New England manager, Josiah H. Dunn, to keep someorder and discipline during the long reign of terror.
Day was breaking now, and a line of workmen were slowlymaking their way, singly and in groups, along the blackened path.
McMurdo and Scanlan strolled on with the others, keeping insight 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 steamwhistle. It was the ten-minute signal before the cages descendedand the day’s labour began.
When they reached the open space round the mine shaft therewere a hundred miners waiting, stamping their feet and blowingon their fingers; for it was bitterly cold. The strangers stood in alittle group under the shadow of the engine house. Scanlan andMcMurdo climbed a heap of slag from which the whole scenelay before them. They saw the mine engineer, a great beardedScotchman named Menzies, come out of the engine house andblow his whistle for the cages to be lowered.
At the same instant a tall, loose-framed young man with a cleanshaved,earnest face advanced eagerly towards the pit head. As hecame forward his eyes fell upon the group, silent and motionless,under the engine house. The men had drawn down their hatsand turned up their collars to screen their faces. For a momentthe presentiment of Death laid its cold hand upon the manager’sheart. At the next he had shaken it off and saw only his dutytowards intrusive strangers.
“Who are you?” he asked as he advanced. “What are you loiteringthere for?”
There was no answer; but the lad Andrews stepped forward andshot him in the stomach. The hundred waiting miners stood asmotionless and helpless as if they were paralyzed. The managerclapped his two hands to the wound and doubled himself up. Thenhe staggered away; but another of the assassins fired, and he wentdown sidewise, kicking and clawing among a heap of clinkers.
Menzies, the Scotchman, gave a roar of rage at the sight andrushed with an iron spanner at the murderers; but was met by twoballs in the face which dropped him dead at their very feet.
There was a surge forward of some of the miners, and aninarticulate cry of pity and of anger; but a couple of the strangersemptied their six-shooters over the heads of the crowd, and theybroke and scattered, some of them rushing wildly back to theirhomes in Vermissa.
When a few of the bravest had rallied, and there was a returnto the mine, the murderous gang had vanished in the mists ofmorning, without a single witness being able to swear to theidentity of these men who in front of a hundred spectators hadwrought this double crime.
Scanlan and McMurdo made their way back; Scanlan somewhatsubdued, for it was the first murder job that he had seen withhis own eyes, and it appeared less funny than he had been led tobelieve. The horrible screams of the dead manager’s wife pursuedthem as they hurried to the town. McMurdo was absorbed andsilent; but he showed no sympathy for the weakening of hiscompanion.
“Sure, it is like a war,” he repeated. “What is it but a war betweenus and them, and we hit back where we best can.”
There was high revel in the lodge room at the Union House thatnight, not only over the killing of the manager and engineer ofthe Crow Hill mine, which would bring this organization into linewith the other blackmailed and terror-stricken companies of thedistrict, but also over a distant triumph which had been wroughtby the hands of the lodge itself.
It would appear that when the County Delegate had sent overfive good men to strike a blow in Vermissa, he had demandedthat in return three Vermissa men should be secretly selected andsent across to kill William Hales of Stake Royal, one of the bestknown and most popular mine owners in the Gilmerton district,a man who was believed not to have an enemy in the world; for hewas in all ways a model employer. He had insisted, however, uponefficiency in the work, and had, therefore, paid off certain drunkenand idle employees who were members of the all-powerful society.
Coffin notices hung outside his door had not weakened hisresolution, and so in a free, civilized country he found himselfcondemned to death.
The execution had now been duly carried out. Ted Baldwin, whosprawled now in the seat of honour beside the Bodymaster, hadbeen chief of the party. His flushed face and glazed, blood-shoteyes told of sleeplessness and drink. He and his two comrades hadspent the night before among the mountains. They were unkemptand weather-stained. But no heroes, returning from a forlornhope, could have had a warmer welcome from their comrades.
The story was told and retold amid cries of delight and shoutsof laughter. They had waited for their man as he drove home atnightfall, taking their station at the top of a steep hill, where hishorse must be at a walk. He was so furred to keep out the coldthat he could not lay his hand on his pistol. They had pulled himout and shot him again and again. He had screamed for mercy. Thescreams 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 akilling, and they had shown the Scowrers of Gilmerton that theVermissa men were to be relied upon.