“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.”

“I’m not afraid of you, and don’t you think it!” cried McMurdo. “My name’s Jack McMurdo—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 ill-lit 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, matel 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.