The Complete Sherlock Holmes

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.”
The Valley Of Fear
703
“I’m not afraid of you, and don’t you think
it!” cried McMurdo. “My name’s Jack Mc-
Murdo—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 illlit
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 hardearned
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?”