Dynasty of Death

by Taylor Caldwell

  He did not speak to Guy again for some time. The youth had brought nothing with him to shorten the gritty hours of travel. He had the seat near the window, and he stared through it for a long time. Compared with the tall and bulky Paul, he was childlike of figure, immature of face and development.

  As the train ran toward the foothills the snow became rain. The little villages and lonely farmhouses huddled drearily under a sky of wet iron. At noon they came to the foothills, gray and dim purple in the rain and rising fog. The engine began to climb, thundering and puffing under the strain. The flat land fell away; they were in a sea of hills, black, snow-patched, cold and implacable. Here and there a ridge of pines marched away from them; the snow patches became more frequent, lying like scabrous spots on the dark hillsides. The rain splashed and rattled and ran over the windows.

  Toward evening the hills became wilder, blacker, more snowy, for they had left the rain behind. The engine struggled more and more. Pine forests bristled over the tops of the shifting hills; the valleys ran with water. Snow had begun to fall again, dropping silently. Through its moving haze a hilltop shouldered and disappeared; the train roared over a bridge, and Guy caught below a glimpse of icy black water between floes of ice. The air, even in the closeness of the train, became colder and fresher.

  Hour after hour had gone by, and nothing had passed between Paul and Guy though they had eaten together. Guy had become exceedingly restless; his quicksilver temperament made itching sensations about his bones and an ache in his back. He was too young and too volatile to be able to keep his mind relentlessly on one thing no matter how important to him. There was something of his father’s character in the way he could decide upon a matter, consummate all details in his thoughts, and then lay it aside, completed, except for the mere mechanics of action. For the whole past hour he had peeped furtively at Paul, alternately admiring that savage concentration and feeling contempt for it. Finally he felt that any conversation at all with Paul was preferable to this sodden silence between them. But Paul showed not the slightest inclination to speak to him. I’ve put a bee in his bonnet, thought Guy, not without satisfaction. He’s got the wind up, and he’ll have plenty to think about. Whatever made Trudie marry him? I thought it was all settled about her and Philippe? His fatigued thoughts grew sharper at the thought of his cousin, Philippe, of whom he was very fond. Philippe, the subtle and nervous, the quick and supple, who had something of Guy’s own volatile instability of temperament and was so clever and full of a swift radiance of color. Guy recalled that Gertrude had written to him saying that her father had practically consented to her marriage to Philippe. And now, the mystery. Overnight she had married Paul Barbour, the favorite of his uncle. I’ll bet, thought Guy cynically and with unusual bitterness, that dear Papa had a hand in this mess. Thinking this, he glanced again at Paul, and it seemed to him that his whole slight and graceful body expanded in a surge of hatred. Trudie, married to this conniver, this contemptuous potential robber of Ernest Barbour’s children, who had not even the decency to be subtle about it!

  It was nearing sunset now, and the hills were giving way to the mountains. In the distance, through the thinning snow, Guy caught glimpses of some terrible black majesty, lonely and towering. Higher and higher rose the solemn ridges; the snow was twisted and deep upon them. The train ran like a furtive little animal through empty valleys and over yellowed floods.

  The western heavens, gloomy and purple, suddenly changed. A crimson slash opened in them. The sun, a round and scarlet ball, pushed itself through the opening. Instantly the landscape became a scene of terror and splendor. Against that lake of cold fire the mountains thrust, black, gaunt, ribbed with snow. The sun poured on this cloudy chaos like a red cataract. Pine forests huddled below, the tops coppered, the valleys sinking down under fog. Brighter burned the lake of fire, and against that ruddy background the mountains rolled wave on wave, black and red and frightful, disappearing into moving walls of mist.

  Now it began to get dark; now the mountains were merely darker shadows against a gloomy and gaseous sky. A faint roaring passed the windows as a wind rose. The engine was heavily laboring, and the thick boiling steam and smoke could be seen as the train rounded curves. The flickering yellow light of the lamps made the interior of the musty car the more dreary. Nearly all of the few passengers had left the train before this at various stops, and only one or two men besides Paul and Guy sagged wearily on the dirty cushions.

  Fatigue fell like a blow on Guy, and he went to sleep, through which he was uneasily conscious of the monotonous clicking of the rails and the kerosene-flavored chilliness of the coach. His head fell smartly against the window, and he awoke with a start, hungry, stiff and aching. The train was slowing down; he could see nothing through the windows. Only his own reflection and the reflections of the lamps glimmered on their blackness. Paul was restrapping his luggage after replacing in it the books and papers which had engrossed him all day. His profile seemed swollen with vengeful hostility and contempt; he still did not look at Guy.

  The conductor appeared at the door, holding a lantern and swaying on the threshold. “Pittsville!” he bellowed. Guy stretched and yawned, full of depression. He was still only a boy; what he had come to see with such relentlessness and determination seemed silly and yet overwhelming to him, as though he had no part in it and could not possibly ever have any part. As he shivered in the dank and penetrating chilliness of the coach, he longed for his home passionately, as a child would long. What on earth was he doing here, with Paul, that bounder, in the wild and desolate coal regions? He could well imagine the laughter of his father, and for a moment he felt apologetic toward his cousin.

  The train, steaming, puffing and churning, lurched to a stop, and through the window Guy could see the dreary station with its lantern swinging in the wind and snow. A group of men clustered together on the platform, wrapped in sheepskin coats. In the startling silence that followed the grinding of the train, Guy could hear the bellowing of the wind; in the lantern light huge icicles hanging from the station roof glittered and dripped. They alighted, and the wind seized them. As they struggled with it, the train went on without them, puffing and groaning, and its lights blinked off into the night. Snow stung their faces.

  Dizzy and vague with fatigue and depression, Guy was aware of the men surrounding them. They evidently knew Paul, who had been here once before. They talked to him rapidly; in hoarse tense voices. One was the Superintendent, a Mr. Wilkes, another was an engineer, Mr. Bronston, and the remainder were foremen, detectives, and the chief detective. The wind flayed their rough red faces, which seemed to glower in the lantern light; their voices sounded large and diffused in the wind. Guy caught a word here and there: “State Militia—situation getting worse—the dogs—had to shoot two Hunkies today. The Governor’ll be sorry for this! Anarchy. What does Mr. Barbour say? The Crowder Mines’ve given in, and it makes it god-damned hard on the rest of us! What does Mr. Barbour say? Mr. Barbour—Mr. Barbour—Mr. Barbour—” Then a hoarse expletive: “They hung four Mollie Maguires yesterday. That’s the way to deal with the bastards!” Paul listened, holding his coat about his throat.

  Guy became aware of a sudden silence. They were all regarding him incredulously, finally conscious of his presence. Big hulking men staring down at the slim and shivering youth. Then they stared at Paul, their mouths opening, unbelievingly. “Is this kid with you, Mr. Barbour?” asked the Sheriff, astounded.

  Paul glanced at his cousin with an annihilating eye. “Yes. He wanted to come. Gentlemen, this is Guy Barbour, Mr. Ernest Barbour’s son.”

  The men were petrified. After a long moment one or two of them pulled uncertainly at their hats and caps. “Hullo,” said Guy in his clear high voice. He felt ridiculous, and undefended. “Glad to meet you,” mumbled a few appalled voices. “Master—Mister Barbour.”

  His presence seemed to oppress them and stun them. They glanced at each other, more and more astounded. Then they led the way to sev
eral hacks waiting at the end of the platform. They walked softly and lumberingly, staring in a dumfounded way. The Chief Detective said to Paul helplessly: “The only place for you, Mr. Barbour, is Miz McCloskey’s roomin’ house, and it ain’t overly nice. You and young Mister Barbour, there—”

  “Don’t worry. It’ll have to do,” replied Paul shortly. “We’re not here on a holiday, you know.”

  They climbed into the hacks and lurched away over an unseen but rocky road into the icy and screeching darkness. To Guy, numb and aching and exhausted, it seemed that they travelled and swayed and hurled back and forth for hours. He sat with Paul and the Sheriff and Mr. Wilkes and Mr. Bronston. The dead and bitter air was soon laden with the smell of bodies and the reek of whiskey, the smell of sawdust and manure and dirt and filthy blankets. Guy could see nothing at all, not even the faces of his companions. His feet rested on hard objects which he knew were guns. The men shouted above the unending wind, the rattling and groaning of the hack, the cursing of the driver.

  From the pressing of the bodies about him, Guy guessed they were climbing.

  He peered out. The snow had stopped, and between clouds like flying black rags the moon poured out, glacial and savage. Vague looming bulks crowded and shouldered against the sky—the broken ridges of the foothills. They passed mountains of slag, and the wheels of the hack gritted over layers of cinders with a crushing and desolate sound. They passed shacks, with a dim light here and there like a dull moan in the wild night. Once or twice a starving dog howled. They passed coal tipples, gaunt and skeleton-like, like giant gibbets against the moon. Guy, looking, felt a cold and deadly horror in his chest, a sick dropping in his stomach. The coal regions. Men lived here, and were dying here, now, because they had gone mad with hunger and cold and desolation and despair. Outside of the wind, the occasional dog, the crunching of the wheels, there was no sound, though where the clefts appeared in the hills there was an occasional moving and bobbing lantern light, like a feeble candle in a black and freezing and formless hell.

  Paul was listening to everything his companions were telling him. The Militia had been called out today; the Governor had been forced into it, though the bastard had shown it was entirely against his will. But what could you expect of a man whose grandfather had been a miner, himself? That was the trouble with this country! The speaker had an Irish brogue, and his clothing stank of old tobacco and beer. But now that the Militia was out, and there had been some hangings and shootings, they’d soon have the dogs on the run. They were dying like flies, anyway—starving. The women were as bad as the men. One of them had clubbed a detective. But his companion had finished the bitch. They’d had to kick the kids around a bit, too, what with their throwing rocks and coal at the detectives, and setting dogs on them. Mr. Wilkes and the Sheriff and Mr. Bronston laughed hoarsely.

  Paul said nothing. A hot sick sweat had broken out across Guy’s shoulders. I’m going to faint, he thought. But he did not faint. Instead, he began to gasp a little, silently, stiffly, in the darkness. And then, swiftly and gigantically, it seemed to him that a fiery red glow was flowing toward him from the sky and the earth, the black hills and the mountains of slag, and when it focussed in him it became a brilliant and burning incandescence of hate. I hate him! he thought simply, and not childishly, and the face of his father stood before him.

  Then he became aware of a certain awkwardness and loudness in the voices of the speakers. It occurred to him, with an almost hysterical amusement, that it was because he was there. Each man had begun to speak boastingly of his particular exploits in the work of subduing the desperate miners. He could not see their faces, but he felt them turned to him. Then the Superintendent asked him concernedly if he had enough blankets, and apologized that he was unable to have Mr. Barbour and Master Barbour stay overnight with him at his own house in the lower valley. “The bastards burnt it up for me two days ago,” he said savagely.

  The hack was steadily climbing. One of the vehicles climbed ahead, and another scrambled behind. The moon was riding higher, pouring down a cataract of polished steel over the black rounded hills and narrow clefts that were tiny valleys. Even in summer this must be a desolate place, thought Guy; there were no trees about at all. There was a settlement of shacks huddled here, built of clapboards, with low leaning chimneys and windows like holes. None of them were lighted. Yet somehow Guy knew that men and women and children slept behind the sagging doors. They passed a saloon, mean and drab and badly lit; there was no one inside but the bartender, and there was a gun lying across the bar. Now they were leaving the small settlement behind and were skirting the bottom of a hill. The noise of the cinders under the wheels was a constant raw scraping of the nerves, and the air that seeped into the hacks was acrid and deathly cold. The moon showed scabs of snow here and there.

  They rounded the hill. Perched halfway up its side was another shack, a little larger, a little better built than the others. A light, bright and almost cheerful, burned against the formless darkness of the hill. The Sheriff, seeing this shack, burst into obscenity, and snatched up a gun from under Guy’s feet. Each man in the hack came to tense life, “That’s where that goddam traitor, Buzak, lives! One of our own foremen, too! Didn’t he shoot down one of our detectives yesterday, Bill? I been lookin’ for him everywhere. His woman and kids must still be up, curse them!”

  The gun was in the Sheriff’s hands; he poked aside the curtains of the hack, and then the thin iron silence of the night was shattered by a splintering crash. Instantly the light went out in the shack. There was a prolonged stillness after the shot, as if all the hills had sucked in their breath in horror, and were holding it. Then, as the hack crawled on, the long and jagged red scream of a woman ran after them, a horrible sound of anguish. The Sheriff relaxed, chuckled, dropped the gun. The men made uneasy sounds. Paul, stiffening against Guy, said angrily: “See here, we want none of that unless it’s necessary.” The scream of the woman was becoming a high, gibbering madness. They rounded the hill completely, and the shack was lost, and there was only the night and the screaming growing fainter and fainter, yet the more terrible.

  Then Guy spoke for the first time since he had entered the hack. “You are a good shot, Sheriff,” he said, in his clear boy’s voice. “And it was a good gun, too—”

  The Sheriff, made uneasy by Paul’s sullen and angry silence, responded eagerly. “Kind of you to say so, Mister Barbour.” He chuckled ingratiatingly. “It ought to be a good gun! It’s one of your Pa’s forty-fives!” He patted it with gloating affection. “They shipped in twenty-five yesterday. Best in the country! The old MacIlvain was considered mighty good, but it can’t compare to these here old forty-fives of Barbour-Bouchard.”

  The hacks crunched to a stop, and Guy could see that they had arrived at a dismal and biggish house built of clapboards. The windows glared empty and black in the moonlight. There was a smudge of red smoke lazily vomiting from a chimney. Two militiamen, guards, paced back and forth around it, guns over their shoulders. The snow was thicker here, and there was a little path of beaten ice over it, from the feet of the soldiers. Everyone got out of the hacks. The Sheriff hailed the guards boisterously, and they sauntered toward the group of men, grinning. They were brutal-looking creatures with broad empty faces.

  The Sheriff opened the house door, and they all trooped in. “Miz McCloskey!” bellowed the Sheriff. Someone lit a lamp. They were standing in a small square hall, indescribably filthy and bare, the board floor scarred and soiled with tobacco juice. The kerosene lamp which had just been lit swung gauntly from the ceiling. A stairway ran up into reeking gloom. A woman appeared at the head of the stairs in an old-fashioned and frowsy mob-cap and hideous frayed dressing gown. “I’m here!” she shrilled in a rusty voice. “Lands sake, Sheriff, I thought you’d never come, so I went to bed! Come in, everybody!” She came clumsily down the stairs. The ghastly lamp shone upon her face. She was old and gaunt, withered and cunning. Her speech, her gestures, the glance of her f
iery little eye, were at once impertinent and fawning and servile. Granddaughter, daughter and widow of miners, her sympathy ought naturally to have been with her kind, but it was not. Not because of a delusion of superiority, but simply because of greed. Nor was she hypocritical; greed had induced in her case, as it often does with her sort, a vicious loyalty to the masters and a malevolent hatred for the members of her class. She would have betrayed the latter gladly, without a conscious expectation of reward, and totally without a sensation of treachery.

  She grinned at the assemblage of men, as she stood on the last step. Her yellowed teeth were like a broken fence between her withered lips, and her long out-thrust jaw was like a narrow spade. She clutched her gown about her with talons.

  “Ma’am,” said the Sheriff, “this here is Mr.—Mr. Brundage, like I told you, come from downstate from Mr. Barbour. And this young man here,” indicating Guy, “he’s sort of—sort of secre’ty to Mr. Brundage. Name of Miller.” He turned to Paul and Guy. “Guess Mrs. McCloskey’ll put you up fine and dandy, sir. You’ll have the big room next to mine. It’s got two beds in it, ain’t it, ma’am? Fine! I’ll call you in the mornin’, sir, and we’ll go out to the mines. And Mr.—Miller, too. Mrs. McCloskey,” he added heartily, beaming on the beldame, “is the best cook in these parts, and you’ll find no fault with her breakfasts.”