Page:The Valley of Fear.pdf/190

Rh “You don’t know, Jack. You’ve been here too short a time. You don’t know this Baldwin. You don’t know McGinty and his Scowrers.”

“No, I don’t know them, and I don’t fear them, and I don’t believe in them!” said McMurdo. “I’ve lived among rough men, my darling, and instead of fearing them it has always ended that they have feared me—always, Ettie. It’s mad on the face of it! If these men, as your father says, have done crime after crime in the valley, and if everyone knows them by name, how comes it that none are brought to justice? You answer me that, Ettie!”

“Because no witness dares to appear against them. He would not live a month if he did. Also because they have always their own men to swear that the accused one was far from the scene of the crime. But surely, Jack, you must have read all this. I had understood that every paper in the United States was writing about it.”

“Well, I have read something, it is true; but I had thought it was a story. Maybe these men have some reason in what they do. Maybe they are wronged and have no other way to help themselves.” [188]