More Than This by McLean, Jay (free ebook reader .TXT) 📕

“By Gar!” McGinty flushed an angry red and then burst into a roar of laughter. “Say, we've had no such holy terror come to hand this many a year. I reckon the lodge will learn to be proud of you.... Well, what the hell do you want? And can't I speak alone with a gentleman for five minutes but you must butt in on us?”

The bartender stood abashed. “I'm sorry, Councillor, but it's Ted Baldwin. He says he must see you this very minute.”

The message was unnecessary; for the set, cruel face of the man himself was looking over the servant's shoulder. He pushed the bartender out and closed the door on him.

“So,” said he with a furious glance at McMurdo, “you got here first, did you? I've a word to say to you, Councillor, about this man.”

“Then say it here and now before my face,” cried McMurdo.

“I'll say it at my own time, in my own way.”

“Tut! Tut!” said McGinty, getting off his barrel. “This will never do. We have a new brother here, Baldwin, and it's not for us to greet him in such fashion. Hold out your hand, man, and make it up!”

“Never!” cried Baldwin in a fury.

“I've offered to fight him if he thinks I have wronged him,” said McMurdo. “I'll fight him with fists, or, if that won't satisfy him, I'll fight him any other way he chooses. Now, I'll leave it to you, Councillor, to judge between us as a Bodymaster should.”

“What is it, then?”

“A young lady. She's free to choose for herself.”

“Is she?” cried Baldwin.

“As between two brothers of the lodge I should say that she was,” said the Boss.

“Oh, that's your ruling, is it?”

“Yes, it is, Ted Baldwin,” said McGinty, with a wicked stare. “Is it you that would dispute it?”

“You would throw over one that has stood by you this five years in favour of a man that you never saw before in your life? You're not Bodymaster for life, Jack McGinty, and by God! when next it comes to a vote—”

The Councillor sprang at him like a tiger. His hand closed round the other's neck, and he hurled him back across one of the barrels. In his mad fury he would have squeezed the life out of him if McMurdo had not interfered.

“Easy, Councillor! For heaven's sake, go easy!” he cried, as he dragged him back.

McGinty released his hold, and Baldwin, cowed and shaken gasping for breath, and shivering in every limb, as one who has looked over the very edge of death, sat up on the barrel over which he had been hurled.

“You've been asking for it this many a day, Ted Baldwin—now you've got it!” cried McGinty, his huge chest rising and falling. “Maybe you think if I was voted down from Bodymaster you would find yourself in my shoes. It's for the lodge to say that. But so long as I am the chief I'll have no man lift his voice against me or my rulings.”

“I have nothing against you,” mumbled Baldwin, feeling his throat.

“Well, then,” cried the other, relapsing in a moment into a bluff joviality, “we are all good friends again and there's an end of the matter.”

He took a bottle of champagne down from the shelf and twisted out the cork.

“See now,” he continued, as he filled three high glasses. “Let us drink the quarrelling toast of the lodge. After that, as you know, there can be no bad blood between us. Now, then the left hand on the apple of my throat. I say to you, Ted Baldwin, what is the offense, sir?”

“The clouds are heavy,” answered Baldwin

“But they will forever brighten.”

“And this I swear!”

The men drank their glasses, and the same ceremony was performed between Baldwin and McMurdo

“There!” cried McGinty, rubbing his hands. “That's the end of the black blood. You come under lodge discipline if it goes further, and that's a heavy hand in these parts, as Brother Baldwin knows—and as you will damn soon find out, Brother McMurdo, if you ask for trouble!”

“Faith, I'd be slow to do that,” said McMurdo. He held out his hand to Baldwin. “I'm quick to quarrel and quick to forgive. It's my hot Irish blood, they tell me. But it's over for me, and I bear no grudge.”

Baldwin had to take the proffered hand; for the baleful eye of the terrible Boss was upon him. But his sullen face showed how little the words of the other had moved him.

McGinty clapped them both on the shoulders. “Tut! These girls! These girls!” he cried. “To think that the same petticoats should come between two of my boys! It's the devil's own luck! Well, it's the colleen inside of them that must settle the question; for it's outside the jurisdiction of a Bodymaster—and the Lord be praised for that! We have enough on us, without the women as well. You'll have to be affiliated to Lodge 341, Brother McMurdo. We have our own ways and methods, different from Chicago. Saturday night is our meeting, and if you come then, we'll make you free forever of the Vermissa Valley.”