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."
The
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