Wishes on the Wind (3 page)

    Angry and bitter, Sean had whispered to her when Ma was out of earshot that they would pay back Uncle Timothy every penny, but she knew there was rare chance of that coming to pass with Sean's wages at the mine as low as they were.

    Aunt Fiona's attempts to compensate for her husband's grudging hospitality served only to increase Sean's bitterness, but Meghan did not share her brother's contempt for the unhappy, downtrodden woman. The truth was, now that Da and the boys were gone, Ma, Sean, and she didn't fit in anywhere, much less in this quiet, childless household where they were outsiders despite the common blood her mother and Aunt Fiona shared.

    The echo of her brothers' happy voices returned to haunt her, and Meghan's grief stirred anew. Da had allowed them to start work in the mine at the age of seven, as was common practice, and at twelve to go below where the pay increased. Da had wanted an education for his boys, and he knew he could get ahead of his tab at the ''pluck me" company store only in that way.

    Abruptly forcing her thoughts to a halt, Meghan blinked away encroaching tears. She had no time now for dreams that would never become reality when there were more crucial problems at hand.

    Meghan changed her clothes and applied a quick brush to her hair. With a last look at her sleeping mother, she slipped back into the hall. In the kitchen a few moments later, she was warmed by a smile on her aunt's face that was seldom seen in her uncle's presence.

    "Ah, that's better. Ye have a bit of color in yer face now. Glad I am I made ye go off for some fresh air this mornin'. Yer far too pale for a child. And between us now we can finish yer mother's chores so she'll not be pressed when she awakens." Pausing, Aunt Fiona flushed with embarrassment as she continued, "It'll not do to have yer uncle thinkin' I'm encouragin' either of ye to be slothful."

    Nodding, Meghan walked quickly toward the waiting washboard. Strangely, it was not her aunt's embarrassment that   remained with her as she withdrew the soaking clothes from the basin and started scrubbing, but her own and the even sharper memory of David Lang's handsome, haughty face.

    Sean O'Connor emerged from the first shift at the Lang Colliery, momentarily grateful to be lost in the crush. His face and hands blackened from hard labor, his overalls and rubber boots clotted with sweat and coal dust, and the small oil lamp affixed to his cap extinguished until the next day's shift, he attempted to replace the exhaustion on his face with a casual expression. He raised his stubborn O'Connor chin. He would not let anyone know how badly he ached inside.

    Gripping his lunch pail with a numb hand, Sean maintained his steady pace. Every bone in his body hurt, but his greatest pain was not physical. Not even Meghan, dearer to him than his own life from the first moment he stood beside her cradle and took her hand in his, entirely understood his distress.

    He didn't want to be like the miners walking beside him. He didn't want to believe that, at fifteen years of age, he could look forward to nothing more than these men had now.

    Fully recuperated from the temporary illness that had saved his life, keeping him out of the mines the month of his father's death, Sean had again adjusted to the eleven-hour shifts underground. The close air below no longer made him sick and giddy, and he was growing stronger every day. With his bright blue eyes and handsome, Irish face, his resemblance to his father was startling, but he was not his father's match in size and never would be. He lamented that caprice of heredity as he strained to load the twenty tons of coal daily that was the lot of a miner's helper.

    With a bitter smile, Sean remembered earlier days, when at the age of seven he worked alongside disabled miners and other young fellows as a breaker boy. The roar of ore being dumped at the top of the one-hundred-foot breaker, filtering its way in the grading process through crushing equipment and sliding metal screens before it met his bleeding fingers for the final sorting, had been deafening. The dust had been so thick he could hardly breathe. He recalled the mangled limbs he had seen, and the faces of young friends who lost their lives because of a moment's carelessness. He had followed the route of his brothers before him as he progressed underground from there to work as a door boy; then as a mule driver; and finally, just shortly before the accident, to the    position of miner's helper. He had been elated that the best paying job he could hope to achieve underground was within reach.

    But now, as a part of McCarthy's team since Da and the boys were killed, he labored with growing resentment. He split the large blocks of coal blasted from the seams, loaded the cars, helped McCarthy at whatever was needed in working at the breast, knowing that no matter how hard he worked, his meager earnings would keep his mother, sister, and himself beholden to Uncle Timothy.

    Suffering his silent fury, Sean continued walking toward his uncle's house. As the man of the family, he must remain there with his sister and mother until he could support them otherwise, but he despised suffering even one more night of Uncle Timothy's begrudging aid. A familiar hatred welled inside him. Truly at fault were the Langs and the system that kept miners captives of their own debt. It was slavery of the worst kind, and facing that slavery daily was turning his heart to stone.

    Sean looked up at the late afternoon sky overhead, then glanced at the nearby mountainside, scarred by crisscrossing railroad tracks that served the colliery. He remembered scouring those tracks with his brothers for coal spillage to heat their home during the freezing days of winter. He remembered the laughter and song despite their dire straits. He remembered the times they returned with their bags full, assured of a warm night's sleep. He remembered his father's pride in his sons and the dreams he cherished for them and Meghan.

    Sean walked into the yard of his uncle's house and turned toward the kitchen door. That was all in the past now, and his sole consolation came from the knowledge that this night, those same railroad tracks would deliver him another memory to savor. His spirits rising at the thought, he called out as he entered the house, "Meg, where are you?"

    A bright half-moon lit the night as Meghan stumbled on the rough hillside terrain. She strained to see, her only security on the uneven, unfamiliar path Sean's hand as it gripped hers firmly, pulling her onward.

    Halting impatiently, Sean whispered, "Come on, now, Meg! Now's no time to be actin' the faint maid."

    "But where're we going, Sean? You shake me awake in the middle of the night, tell me to be quiet and get dressed, and pull     me out of the house behind you without a word of explanation. What's this all about?"

    Softly Sean questioned in return, "Have you no faith in your big brother, Meg?"

    "Of course I do, but"

    "Then close your mouth and follow me. I've somethin' I want to share with you."

    The peculiar light in Sean's eyes gave Meghan a moment's pause, but she knew she could not disappoint his confidence in her.

    A few minutes later, breathless and uncertain Meghan kneeled beside her brother, concealed at a vantage point on the hillside opposite a narrow stretch of railroad tracks leading from the coal yard. The excitement evident on his youthful face set her heart to pounding a moment before a whistle sounded, announcing a train's departure from the yard not far away. The sound echoed eerily in the stillness of the hills surrounding them, and Meghan questioned anxiously, "What's to happen, Sean? Why did you wake me to bring me here?"

    Turning from his avid surveillance of the tracks, Sean slipped an arm around her quaking shoulders, mistaking the reason for her sudden shuddering.

    "Are you cold, Meg? It was foolish of me not to think to tell you to bring a shawl against the bite in the air."

    Suddenly angry with her brother's secretive behavior and with herself for her weak-willed response to his concern, Meghan felt her fear mounting.

    "Answer me, Sean O'Connor! Why have you brought me here?"

    A train whistle sounded again and Sean turned abruptly from his sister's questions to fasten his gaze on the steaming locomotive as it roared into sight. He drew her closer to his side. "Now, Meg. Watch! Just a few more minutes and it'll be"

    His whispered entreaty interrupted by a sudden explosion on the tracks below, Sean uttered a low, triumphant sound. He turned briefly toward her with barely restrained exhilaration as the engine lurched crazily from the tracks, dragging the heavily loaded cars behind with it.

    With horrified fascination Meghan watched as the cars fell from the embankment with a groaning ring of crushing steel that reverberated in her mind long after the derailed cars had tumbled to a broken, lethal heap below them. Gasping, Meghan turned   terrified eyes toward her brother, pained by the satisfaction reflected on his face.

    "Sean, what have you done?"

    "Oh, no, not I, Meg! I can't take the credit for this."

    "Credit?"

    Gripping her chin firmly, Sean turned her face back to the scene of the steaming wreck.

    "No, don't look away, Meg. Look and enjoy the only satisfaction you'll ever get for the deaths of Da and the boys, and thank providence for givin' us both the chance to witness it."

    Confused, Meghan shook her head. "What are you saying, Sean?"

    "I'm tellin' you that I overheard a conversation in the shaft this morning, saying the Sons of Molly Maguire would make Master Lang pay for the deaths of Dennis O'Connor and his sons."

    "Sean"

    "The Mollies've hit the bastard in the pocketbook, where he feels it most, Meg! It's a poor vengeance, but the only one we'll see, and it does my heart good to know there'll be a wailing and the gnashing of teeth in the Lang residence this night!"

    "But what of the men who were on that train? Innocent men, Sean, the engineer the
 
others in the crew?"

    "Welsh Modocs, every one of them! Not a man of the old sod amongst them!"

    "Sean!"

    At a sudden rush of footsteps in the darkness close by, Meghan froze. Bursting out of the shadows beside them, three men came to a startled halt, then stared at them in silence for a few terrifying seconds before continuing their flight.

    "Were those the men who set the charge on the tracks, Sean?" Meg's voice was an incredulous whisper. "I know them all good family men, every one!"

    Fear entering his gaze for the first time, Sean grasped Meghan's shoulders and gave her a hard shake.

    "You never saw them men, Meg. Not a one! And you'll say nothin' about the things you witnessed here this night."

    "But, Sean"

    "You'll say nothing, Meg, or it's with your life that you'll pay."

    Nodding, her throat suddenly too tight for speech, Meghan did not resist as Sean drew her to her feet.

    "The Mollies are the only men of courage left among us, Meg.

    You'll soon realize as do I that the Brotherhood is the only place we poor Irish can turn for justice."

    Not waiting for a reply, Sean gripped her hand tightly. He pulled her into motion behind him as he started back down the hill and together they faded into the night.

    "Damn the Molly Maguires to hell, every last one of them!"

    "Martin!"

    Millicent Lang's shocked exclamation went unnoticed by her husband as he stood seething with anger in the spacious foyer of his mansion. Awakened in the middle of the night by a pounding on the front door, Martin Lang had jumped out of bed, tied his dressing gown over his nightclothes, and reached the door at the same time as his groggy servant. Now as he stood glaring at the two, blue-uniformed members of the Coal and Iron Police, his short, wiry figure fairly bristled.

    "I don't need you to tell me this train wreck is the work of the Mollies! The Molly Maguires have terrorized the anthracite fields for over twenty years. Even the President of the United States has avoided confronting them! The members of their damned clandestine group have been at the bottom of every unlawful incident since I assumed ownership of this mine five years ago, but they've gone too far this time!"

    Affixing his eye on the massive Scottish captain who cautiously maintained his silence, Lang continued in a lower tone. "I want to know how that group of assassins found out about that unscheduled shipment long enough in advance to effect a plan. Thanks to their sabotage, traffic on the tracks will be tied up for an inestimable period. The fools! They'll be putting their own people out of work if I have to suspend shifts because of backup in the coal yard. Of course, the layoffs will be my fault, too."