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.