Quite a fraternal feeling had existed between the two men murdered on the first of September at Raven Run, Wm. Uren having been a native of the parish of Germoe, Cornwall, England, but a short distance from Sanger's birthplace. He entered the Greatwork tin mines at the early age of ten years, with his father, and remained until about nineteen, when he bid his relatives adieu and sailed for this country, landing at New York in the fall of 1872. After working nearly a year at Dover, New Jersey, he removed to Schuylkill County and was employed by the Messrs. Heaton as a coal miner. While in England Uren was a regular attendant at church and Sabbath-school. In Pennsylvania he kept up the same course, early enlisting as a teacher in a Sunday-school, which place he held at the time of his death. Uren, with other bosses and miners, including Sanger, was coffin-noticed by the Mollies as early as 1874, and in consequence Sanger invited the young man to board at his house. They soon formed an intimate and enduring friendship. The winter of 1875 and following summer, to the day of the assassination, passing peaceably and without any apparent attempt to carry out the promises of the organization, as far as he and Sanger were concerned, Uren began to believe all danger passed or blown over. They thought nothing would actually be done. Thus had it always been. No sooner did a threatened man come to the understanding that his life was perfectly safe, than, in this very peculiar country and with this very peculiar class of people, he was, as too many cases proved, in the exact position to prepare for leaving 442this world, for the fiends incarnate causing all the trouble in the coal region were abundantly capable of waiting for any length of time, keeping their wrath warm and pouring it, at any unsuspected moment, upon the devoted heads of their victims. Therefore, Uren, when set upon, was no better prepared to defend himself against the power of his enemies than his friend, Sanger. There was nothing that either could possibly do but to stand up like men before the deadly pistols and be shot cruelly down.
A more sorrowful scene than that enacted around the couch of the dying Uren was never witnessed. His fellow-countryman, Sanger, was already gone. It was not long before he followed. The funeral of the two men, like their murder, was a double one, and both were buried in the same grave. The parents of Wm. Uren are yet living in England, with four sisters and five brothers. They receive no more assistance from their dutiful son and brother. They know their main help this side of the Atlantic has been cut off by the bullet of the assassin.
McKenna was again in Shenandoah when he received a note from Linden informing him of certain remarks that person had heard made by a citizen of Tamaqua concerning the Secretary. They were not exactly the kind of words generally causing a man to feel more secure of or harbor firmer belief in his personal safety. Said Linden in his letter:
"A citizen by the name of Boyd remarked to me to-day that the only chance for an excitement in dull Tamaqua was when that man with the big head (alluding to the wig, I suppose) and blue coat came upon the street. Then people began to say to each other, 'What a shame that such a fellow (this means you, McParlan) is allowed to live! He ought to be strung up!' You need to keep a sharp look out, wherever you are, for about everybody here is thinking that you are a suspicious fellow generally and a particularly bad Mollie!"
443This was not very inspiriting information for the officer to receive, and, the next day, was supplemented by the following, showing that Linden had called at Shenandoah and not been able to find or communicate with his fellow-operative:
"I was in conversation, yesterday, with several influential men, and it was the universal expression that all would soon have to emigrate or make the Mollies leave. They talked vigilance committee very earnestly. One of the party asked another if 'that fellow, McKenna, was about the city yet?' He replied 'yes!' Then said the first speaker: 'That is the smartest business man of the society! He has the best head and does the most work; in short, is the most dangerous scamp among them!' You will observe that my former recommendation is enforced by this. Look sharp! Don't be imprudent! Have an eye out for breakers, day and night!"
A wayfaring man has, before this, perused letters of a more calming and conciliatory tenor. Indeed McKenna remembered having read passages, even in yellow-covered romances of the blood-and-thunder style of literature, which, torturingly bad as they were, gave him much more unalloyed pleasure than those two missives from Linden. Yet he was thankful to their author for them. His intentions were good, and his recommendations among the best that could be made.
Here there arose another apparent conflict between duty and inclination. The first said: "Stay here and procure testimony which shall punish the assassins." The second chimed in with a brhint to pack up his clothing and other goods, purchase a ticket for Chicago, and hasten away toward the setting sun. McParlan thought he had but just commenced his work. It would be time for him to desert the post if forced to do so, or when Mr. Franklin might deem his duty in the country quite complete. In any event, he concluded to stay some time longer, even though the wishes of the citizens of Tamaqua and Shenandoah might be executed. 444He knew that, if the excited people of the vicinity could only be aware of his true purposes, they would willingly carry him in their arms, or draw him in a carriage, shielding him from harm with their own bodies; and this inward consciousness of rectitude, which buoyed him through many a stormy day in the years he had been in my service, kept his head above water and steadied his nerves while he continued his professional work. He knew that, if he lived yet a little longer, the residents of Schuylkill, Carbon, Columbia, and Luzerne Counties would praise and bless him. If he died, they would discover that his life was sacrificed that they, and generations to them yet unborn, might have and enjoy protection from the Mollie Maguires, under the law, and secure immunity from the black dragon which for a score of years had made their land a terror and a shame in the nation.
These and similar ideas were passing through the brain of McKenna, the afternoon of the third of September, 1875, when the perusal of the evening newspaper confirmed his worst fears. John P. Jones was added to the long list of victims of the mysterious society. He had been shot that morning. The operative soon learned the principal facts connected with this assassination and embodied them in a report to the Agency.
John P. Jones left his house, which was in Lansford and contained his wife and seven children, at about seven o'clock in the morning, bound for the breaker where he was employed, carrying his dinner-pail in his hand, and following the pipe-line toward the old railway embankment, which he had been, by Mr. Zehner, Mr. Beard, and others, repeatedly urged not to take, as they were aware that his life was by no means safe. He felt, like Sanger and Uren, entirety satisfied that the Mollies, who had so long been confronting him, were of a more forgiving nature than the public credited them with being or that their desire for his blood had been 445satiated by the several recent sacrifices. Instead of heeding advice, and extracting warning from the deaths lately occurring, and using a locomotive to carry him up and down the line, as he could easily have done, or even refusing to work unless some such course was observed, he put his revolver in his pocket and went off cheerfully to what proved his last journey.
The assassins, James Kerrigan, Mike Doyle, and Edward Kelly, were waiting for him. He saw them not, but continued his walk as though nothing more than usual stood before him. Not a premonition of impending evil; not a thought of coming death; not a glance around, to see if the cowardly assassin was in ambush prepared to kill him.
"Then Doyle and Kelly drew their pistols and fired on Jones."
But they were there, lying in wait, Kerrigan, as usual, standing at a little distance and wholly unarmed. Jones left his home by a rear door and moved down the pipe-line. When the trio of murderers reached the top of the path, he was some yards from the same position. He heard their footsteps and turned aside, patiently pausing for the others to pass. Still not a suspicion could have crossed his mind that he stood at the gateway of death. The men had no intention of permitting him to obtain a hint of their design. They halted, when close to him, and then Doyle and Kelly drew their pistols and fired on Jones. Each discharged one shot. Their victim made a spasmodic blow at his assailants with the tin dinner-pail, when Doyle fired again. Turning off toward the bushes, Jones raised his hands and cried out: "I'm shot! I'm shot!" In a moment he fell forward upon his face. After this, Doyle fired two more bullets into his already riddled body. The Superintendent had not time to draw or think of a weapon, and in a few minutes the life of the man was ended. His heart beat no more. While Doyle was finishing the savage job, his companions were running away across the mountains. The reports of the pistols brought many workmen 446on the railrto the spot, and Jones' corpse was immediately taken to his home. Several persons had seen the assassins retreating over the hill, and one man was so near them as to be frightened, thinking his turn to be shot would come next. He made rapid progress in placing himself out of harm's way.
The citizens of Tamaqua were not long in ignorance of the incidents attending the killing of Jones, and the excitement, which before had risen to a high pitch, reached the verge of general madness. People procured arms and went upon the streets in numbers. Men, women, and boys were aroused, and everybody appeared intent upon arresting or killing somebody. The Mollie Maguires alone kept quiet. Finally it was discovered, by some one who had been quietly following the little miner since the killing of Yost, that James Kerrigan was away from his home. Silently and doggedly a few persons kept watch over his house. Early in the forenoon he returned, remained but a short time, and was shortly afterward seen to start out with a small bundle in his hand, and, sticking from one pocket, a flask of liquor. Cautiously the men kept on his trail and tracked him until he reached a spring where Doyle and Kelly were waiting. He had no more than time to give them the refreshments, when the three Mollies, evidently warned by a preconcerted signal from Carroll, who walked along, making himself conspicuous upon the railway track, started to run. But the people confronted and soon captured them. They had no arms about their persons, and when examined at the jail only some cartridges were found in their pockets. A little later, however, some officers, while making a search, unearthed three pistols and a heavy club, secreted under the trees in the leaves near the spring. The sheriff, the next day, escorted Kerrigan, Kelly, and Doyle to Mauch Chunk, where they were committed to prison, to await trial, the crime having been committed in Carbon County.
447The supposed murderers were in a safe place. Was there testimony upon which they could be convicted? It was doubtful. They were unquestionably the guilty parties, and might be well identified as far as descriptions went, but the actual witnesses were standing at such a distance from the scene it was possible that a jury, especially without having corroborating evidence, might be deceived and fail to find sufficient fact to warrant conviction.
One good effect, at least, was produced by the arrest of the three Mollies. The remainder of the members of the order were, for the time, struck dumb. Their hands were powerless. They could perform no further acts of violence, for fear of prejudicing the interests of their brothers then in custody. Peace would be assured, at least until the trials could take place. But that the defendants would be sworn clear by the oaths of the fraternity few were found to doubt.
As in one of the earlier murders of the year, the killing of Jones was, by many innocent and well-meaning but uninformed people, charged upon my detective, James McParlan, alias McKenna. I do not allude to this censoriously. They did not know what they were doing, and were judging from outward appearances alone. Seeing him, for a series of years, the associate of murderers, thieves, and Mollies, and apparently the toughest man among them, it was no more than reasonable they should suppose him really one of their number and a leader in many of their criminal works. Mr. Reese, of Shenandoah, whose life the operative had just been the means of preserving, sent word, on the tenth of September, a week subsequent to Jones' taking off, that he desired to see Mr. Linden. When they met, Reese told my officer that an Irishman named McKenna was supposed to have originated, planned, and assisted in executing the crime, concluding with the death of John P. Jones, of Lansford. He added that, so well were the good people of Tamaqua satisfied of the truth of this assumption, though 448they were without a particle of positive evidence, he, Mr. Reese, had no doubt, if McKenna appeared in the town, they would turn out in hundreds and hang him to the nearest tree. This state of feeling exhibits the closeness with which the operative was doing his work, and is another evidence of his skill. The reader who has followed me thus far can tell how entirely void of all criminal act or intent the record of that officer had been. The public now knows that he was laboring, even at the risk of losing his own life, to clear the country of those who had for years been perpetrating crimes of blood in the anthracite region. It understands that he went there for a purpose, and I hope to be able to show, before the close of this volume, that he was eminently successful in his undertaking.
This feeling, on the part of the deadly enemies of the Mollie Maguires, that McKenna was the deepest and most guilty man in that wicked organization, is an evidence of the discretion and tact the detective had continually exercised. Without seeming to be fully in sympathy with and inside the order, without an apparent acquiescence in its doings, his task would have been abortive. It was this confidence on the part of good people that he was a very bad man, and the belief on the side of the Mollies that he was as hard and as bloody a character as even Tom Hurley, Yellow Jack Donahue, or Jemmy Kerrigan, that gave witness of his standing and efficiency as a secret detective. The mere suspicion, by the fraternity, that he might possibly be other than the party he affected to be would surely have been seized upon as the signal for his death.
Despite his apprehensions, which were more excited by the promised formation in the coal region of a vigilance committee than by the information just recorded, or the idea that his identity would be revealed to his companions, the agent stuck courageously to his verbal contract with me; did not desert his post, but, stopping for a time in Shenandoah, 449busied himself, as before, in keeping inside the inner sanctuary of the infernal society with which he was connected. He thought occasionally of going to Tamaqua and resuming his attentions to Kerrigan's wife's sister, and eventually did so, but for the few days following the assassination at Lansford he was almost continually in the company of Thomas Hurley and the rest of the Shenandoah branch. Hurley was fairly famishing for more blood. He had not done, and could not do, enough. The scent of gore had fallen on his senses and he longed for another draught. One day he said to McKenna:
"I tell you, Jim, so long as there is a pot over the fire, the fire must be kept to it!"—meaning that, as the era of murders had begun, it must be continued. The inventive genius of Hurley was constantly on the stretch, manufacturing cases in which the pistol might be used with effect. This was one reason, undoubtedly, that McAndrew took it into his head to have Reese put out of the path. McKenna was the cause of the signal failure of that scheme.
In one of the operative's reports for this date, he wrote, evidently feeling exactly and keenly the sentiment that his pen expressed:
"I am sick and tired of this thing! I seem to make no progress, and the terrible and long-continued state of excitement in the town and the country around here will one day end in something more fearful than has yet occurred. I hear of preparations for bloodshed in all directions. The sun looks crimson to me, and the air is tainted with the smell of blood. We must do something to stop the sanguinary whirlwind that bids fair to destroy everything!"
Long before this I had arrived at a similar conclusion. A crisis in the operation had arrived which demanded immediate, masterly work. Therefore, Mr. Franklin met Linden in Pottsville, the ninth of September, and McKenna was directed to communicate with them at the same place. He 450had little difficulty in cutting loose from his associates, saying that he was forced to visit an adjoining town to meet his principal in the bogus money business, and, after promising that he would only be absent a few days, took cars by a roundabout route and reached Pottsville the same night, making sure that no doubts of the object of his mission had been aroused in the minds of the Mollies, and that none of the order were following him.
Affairs had reached the pass that Linden was, in some places, known as my representative in the coal fields. It was brought about by one of my open policemen unfortunately shooting a man who acted suspiciously and also being himself wounded. O'Brien was arrested, tried, and in due time acquitted. Linden acted as his friend and counselor, and thus revealed his connection with the Agency. It was time, however, the season being ripe for the act. Linden and McKenna must not be known to communicate with each other. Any attempt to do so which would be seen by the Mollies must serve as an excuse for the agent's execution. It was as much as his life was worth to be found with either Linden or Franklin. Still a meeting was necessary, and he did not falter. Putting up at a smaller house, McParlan went, after darkness set in, to the Exchange Hotel, where he knew Linden had his apartment, found that officer at home, and there remained, locked in the sleeping-chamber, until Mr. Franklin came. The three men held a very long and interesting conversation, during which our plans for the future were discussed. The operative detailed all that he knew of the Gomer James, Sanger and Uren, and Jones murders, aside from his written reports, of all of which Mr. Franklin made extended notes. He also answered such inquiries respecting names and localities as were put. McKenna was kept in the room through the night, or until nearly morning, when he left and repaired to his own boarding-place, not appearing on the streets again until the Superintendent 451had left for Philadelphia and Linden was far away, going toward the scene of his future operations in Carbon County.
In a day or two McKenna was summoned to Philadelphia, thence traveled to New York, and had a meeting with General Superintendent Geo. H. Bangs. The result of the journey the ensuing pages will explain.
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