The Valley of Fear
“Well, you see me. This is all there is. What d’you think of me?”
“Well, it’s early days. If your heart is as big as your body, and your
soul as fine as your face, then I’d ask for nothing better,” said
McMurdo.
“By Gar! you’ve got an Irish tongue in your head anyhow,” cried the
saloon-keeper, not quite certain whether to humour this audacious
visitor or to stand upon his dignity.
“So you are good enough to pass my appearance?”
“Sure,” said McMurdo.
“And you were told to see me?”
“I was.”
“And who told you?”
“Brother Scanlan of Lodge 341, Vermissa. I drink your health
Councillor, and to our better acquaintance.” He raised a glass with
which he had been served to his lips and elevated his little finger as
he drank it.
McGinty, who had been watching him narrowly, raised his thick black
eyebrows. “Oh, it’s like that, is it?” said he. “I’ll have to look a
bit closer into this, Mister—”
“McMurdo.”
“A bit closer, Mr. McMurdo; for we don’t take folk on trust in these
parts, nor believe all we’re told neither. Come in here for a moment,
behind the bar.”
There was a small room there, lined with barrels. McGinty carefully
closed the door, and then seated himself on one of them, biting
thoughtfully on his cigar and surveying his companion with those
disquieting eyes. For a couple of minutes he sat in complete silence.
McMurdo bore the inspection cheerfully, one hand in his coat pocket,
the other twisting his brown moustache. Suddenly McGinty stooped and
produced a wicked-looking revolver.
“See here, my joker,” said he, “if I thought you were playing any game
on us, it would be short work for you.”
“This is a strange welcome,” McMurdo answered with some dignity, “for
the Bodymaster of a lodge of Freemen to give to a stranger brother.”
“Ay, but it’s just that same that you have to prove,” said McGinty,
“and God help you if you fail! Where were you made?”
“Lodge 29, Chicago.”
“When?”
“June 24, 1872.”
“What Bodymaster?”
“James H. Scott.”
“Who is your district ruler?”
“Bartholomew Wilson.”
“Hum! You seem glib enough in your tests. What are you doing here?”
“Working, the same as you—but a poorer job.”
“You have your back answer quick enough.”
“Yes, I was always quick of speech.”
“Are you quick of action?”
“I have had that name among those that knew me best.”
“Well, we may try you sooner than you think. Have you heard anything of
the lodge in these parts?”
“I’ve heard that it takes a man to be a brother.”
“True for you, Mr. McMurdo. Why did you leave Chicago?”
“I’m damned if I tell you that!”
McGinty opened his eyes. He was not used to being answered in such
fashion, and it amused him. “Why won’t you tell me?”
“Because no brother may tell another a lie.”
“Then the truth is too bad to tell?”
“You can put it that way if you like.”
“See here, mister, you can’t expect me, as Bodymaster, to pass into the
lodge a man for whose past he can’t answer.”
McMurdo looked puzzled. Then he took a worn newspaper cutting from an
inner pocket.
“You wouldn’t squeal on a fellow?” said he.
“I’ll wipe my hand across your face if you say such words to me!” cried
McGinty hotly.
“You are right, Councillor,” said McMurdo meekly. “I should apologize.
I spoke without thought. Well, I know that I am safe in your hands.
Look at that clipping.”
McGinty glanced his eyes over the account of the shooting of one Jonas
Pinto, in the Lake Saloon, Market Street, Chicago, in the New Year week
of 1874.
“Your work?” he asked, as he handed back the paper.
McMurdo nodded.
“Why did you shoot him?”
“I was helping Uncle Sam to make dollars. Maybe mine were not as good
gold as his, but they looked as well and were cheaper to make. This man
Pinto helped me to shove the queer—”
“To do what?”
“Well, it means to pass the dollars out into circulation. Then he said
he would split. Maybe he did split. I didn’t wait to see. I just killed
him and lighted out for the coal country.”
“Why the coal country?”
“’Cause I’d read in the papers that they weren’t too particular in
those parts.”
McGinty laughed. “You were first a coiner and then a murderer, and you
came to these parts because you thought you’d be welcome.”
“That’s about the size of it,” McMurdo answered.
“Well, I guess you’ll go far. Say, can you make those dollars yet?”
McMurdo took half a dozen from his pocket. “Those never passed the
Philadelphia mint,” said he.
“You don’t say!” McGinty held them to the light in his enormous hand,
which was hairy as a gorilla’s. “I can see no difference. Gar! you’ll
be a mighty useful brother, I’m thinking! We can do with a bad man or
two among us, Friend McMurdo: for there are times when we have to take
our own part. We’d soon be against the wall if we didn’t shove back at
those that were pushing us.”
“Well, I guess I’ll do my share of shoving with the rest of the boys.”
“You seem to have a good nerve. You didn’t squirm when I shoved this
gun at you.”
“It was not me that was in danger.”
“Who then?”
“It was you, Councillor.” McMurdo drew a cocked pistol from the side
pocket of his peajacket. “I was covering you all the time. I guess my
shot would have been as quick as yours.”
“By Gar!” McGinty flushed an angry red and then burst into a roar of
laughter. “Say, we’ve had no such holy terror come to hand this many a
year. I reckon the lodge will learn to be proud of you.... Well, what
the hell do you want? And can’t I speak alone with a gentleman for five
minutes but you must butt in on us?”
The bartender stood abashed. “I’m sorry, Councillor, but it’s Ted
Baldwin. He says he must see you this very minute.”
The message was unnecessary; for the set, cruel face of the man himself
was looking over the servant’s shoulder. He pushed the bartender out
and closed the door on him.
“So,” said he with a furious glance at McMurdo, “you got here first,
did you? I’ve a word to say to you, Councillor, about this man.”
“Then say it here and now before my face,” cried McMurdo.
“I’ll say it at my own time, in my own way.”
“Tut! Tut!” said McGinty, getting off his barrel. “This will never do.
We have a new brother here, Baldwin, and it’s not for us to greet him
in such fashion. Hold out your hand, man, and make it up!”
“Never!” cried Baldwin in a fury.
“I’ve offered to fight him if he thinks I have wronged him,” said
McMurdo. “I’ll fight him with fists, or, if that won’t satisfy him,
I’ll fight him any other way he chooses. Now, I’ll leave it to you,
Councillor, to judge between us as a Bodymaster should.”
“What is it, then?”
“A young lady. She’s free to choose for herself.”
“Is she?” cried Baldwin.
“As between two brothers of the lodge I should say that she was,” said
the Boss.
“Oh, that’s your ruling, is it?”
“Yes, it is, Ted Baldwin,” said McGinty, with a wicked stare. “Is it
you that would dispute it?”
“You would throw over one that has stood by you this five years in
favour of a man that you never saw before in your life? You’re not
Bodymaster for life, Jack McGinty, and by God! when next it comes to a
vote—”
The Councillor sprang at him like a tiger. His hand closed round the
other’s neck, and he hurled him back across one of the barrels. In his
mad fury he would have squeezed the life out of him if McMurdo had not
interfered.
“Easy, Councillor! For heaven’s sake, go easy!” he cried, as he dragged
him back.
McGinty released his hold, and Baldwin, cowed and shaken gasping for
breath, and shivering in every limb, as one who has looked over the
very edge of death, sat up on the barrel over which he had been hurled.
“You’ve been asking for it this many a day, Ted Baldwin—now you’ve got
it!” cried McGinty, his huge chest rising and falling. “Maybe you think
if I was voted down from Bodymaster you would find yourself in my
shoes. It’s for the lodge to say that. But so long as I am the chief
I’ll have no man lift his voice against me or my rulings.”
“I have nothing against you,” mumbled Baldwin, feeling his throat.
“Well, then,” cried the other, relapsing in a moment into a bluff
joviality, “we are all good friends again and there’s an end of the
matter.”
He took a bottle of champagne down from the shelf and twisted out the
cork.
“See now,” he continued, as he filled three high glasses. “Let us drink
the quarrelling toast of the lodge. After that, as you know, there can
be no bad blood between us. Now, then the left hand on the apple of my
throat. I say to you, Ted Baldwin, what is the offense, sir?”
“The clouds are heavy,” answered Baldwin
“But they will forever brighten.”
“And this I swear!”
The men drank their glasses, and the same ceremony was performed
between Baldwin and McMurdo
“There!” cried McGinty, rubbing his hands. “That’s the end of the black
blood. You come under lodge discipline if it goes further, and that’s a
heavy hand in these parts, as Brother Baldwin knows—and as you will
damn soon find out, Brother McMurdo, if you ask for trouble!”
“Faith, I’d be slow to do that,” said McMurdo. He held out his hand to
Baldwin. “I’m quick to quarrel and quick to forgive. It’s my hot Irish
blood, they tell me. But it’s over for me, and I bear no grudge.”
Baldwin had to take the proffered hand; for the baleful eye of the
terrible Boss was upon him. But his sullen face showed how little the
words of the other had moved him.
McGinty clapped them both on the shoulders. “Tut! These girls! These
girls!” he cried. “To think that the same petticoats should come
between two of my boys! It’s the devil’s own luck! Well, it’s the
colleen inside of them that must settle the question; for it’s outside
the jurisdiction of a Bodymaster—and the Lord be praised for that! We
have enough on us, without the women as well. You’ll have to be
affiliated to Lodge 341, Brother McMurdo. We have our own ways and
methods, different from Chicago. Saturday night is our meeting, and if
you come then, we’ll make you free forever of the Vermissa Valley.”
Chapter III
Lodge 341, Vermissa
On the day following the evening which had contained so many exciting
events, McMurdo moved his lodgings from old Jacob Shafter’s and took up
his quarters at the Widow MacNamara’s on the extreme outskirts of the
town. Scanlan, his original acquaintance aboard the train, had occasion
shortly afterwards to move into Vermissa, and the two lodged together.
There was no other boarder, and the hostess was an easy-going old
Irishwoman who left them to themselves; so that they had a freedom for
speech and action welcome to men who had secrets in common.
Shafter had relented to the extent of letting McMurdo come to his meals
there when he liked; so that his intercourse with Ettie was by no means
broken. On the contrary, it drew closer and more intimate as the weeks
went by.
In his bedroom at his new abode McMurdo felt it safe to take out the
coining moulds, and under many a pledge of secrecy a number of brothers
from the lodge were allowed to come in and see them, each carrying away
in his pocket some examples of the false money, so cunningly struck
that there was never the slightest difficulty or danger in passing it.
Why, with such a wonderful art at his command, McMurdo should
condescend to work at all was a perpetual mystery to his companions;
though he made it clear to anyone who asked him that if he lived
without any visible means it would very quickly bring the police upon
his track.
One policeman was indeed after him already; but the incident, as luck
would have it, did the adventurer a great deal more good than harm.