“Well, when I see this skunk there for my foreman things just busted up inside me, ’n’ the very first day at th’ noon hour I laid for him in a quiet place in the yard and I says: ‘Now fight, you God-damned, white-livered son of a bastard German skunk!’ ’N’ Barton hollered for help and a lot of men come running, but not before I’d handled him a little rough—though not half what I could have done with more time. Well, would you believe it, Captain? for that little bit of righteous trifling th’ judge give me six days!”
The aggrieved innocence in the Irishman’s face was too much. Stacey struggled, then gave up and burst out laughing. “Go on! Go on, Jim!” he cried at last.
Monahan, too, had laughed, finally, but at Stacey’s words his face grew dark again. “When I come out,” he continued angrily, “I went back for my job, ’n’ they wouldn’t give it to me, the rotten skunks! ’N’ they’d blacklisted me, too. Not another job in any packing-house could I get.” He paused, with a growl.
Stacey considered him, at once sympathetically and curiously. He noted that in recounting the damning evidence of the flash-light picture and McCarthy’s misinterpretation of his presence at the lynching, Monahan had displayed only a melancholy resentment against fate; it was his later discovery that an organization was against him which shook him with anger. Now McCarthy’s remark had been grossly unjust, and the attitude of Monahan’s employers was not altogether so; yet Stacey understood the distinction—understood it emotionally. His heart went out to Monahan. They were kin.
But the Irishman continued his tale. “ ’N’ then I said I’d do them dirt, ’n’ I done it, Captain. There was a strike among the boys before long, ’n’ ’twas me more than any other that brought it about. ’N’ they knew ’twas me, the dirty packers! but never a thing could they get on me. ’N’ th’ strike cost them money—the only thing that hurts a packer, Captain. Then there were scabs ’n’ fighting, ’n’ I couldn’t keep out of it, ’n’ that time they caught me, ’n’ the judge—a decent sort of man and not knowing the rights of the story neither—give me a month, ’n’ they was sore because they couldn’t fix it so I’d get five years.
“ ’N’ that’s all, Captain. But you can see how I can’t go to the police, quiet-like, ’n’ tell them th’ truth about Sunday night.”
Stacey saw. He meditated.
“Well, look here!” he said at last. “I didn’t say anything about you or why I didn’t bring you in, but Traile” (when he spoke to Monahan Stacey did not say “Lieutenant Traile”) “Traile, though he didn’t know your name was on my list, happened to say something that would lead the authorities to believe you’d left town, along with a good many others. Why don’t you?”
“I dunno,” replied the Irishman sullenly. “I didn’t like to beat it as if I’d really been one of them skunks that lynched th’ mayor.”
“Did you have money? Because I can—”