Steve Shell

His daughter's strength was matched only by her relentlessness in pursuit of her aims, and E.P.

set about honing her into a weapon that could be used deftly in any number of situations, depending on his need.

E.P.

needed a tool that was versatile, adaptable, and above all, ruthless.

And Pretty Polly more than fit the bill.

Were their palms to be greased in the halls of government?

Polly's intelligence, her stature, and demeanor demanded respect, even from the human men who played at their petty politics.

Must deals be struck with the wealthy and the powerful?

Polly was a shrewd negotiator and a charming dinner guest.

The foreman at one of the smaller mining operations, taking more than his fair share from the cookie jar, thinking no one in faraway Barrow would notice.

Polly was there to swing the axe and cut off the offending hand.

Grubby roughnecks making a fuss about working conditions in the mine, well, sweet Polly could be counted on to make an example that made a lasting impression.

The need for those examples became more and more persistent as the new century progressed and the unions began to take hold.

The rabble had seized upon the troubling idea that they were owed something by those for whom they toiled beneath the dark earth, and this simply would not do.

Thus it fell to Polly to collapse mine shafts and break spines and mount heads on pikes, wherever a lesson needed to be taught.

It was becoming a rather annoying waste of her time.

Particularly as the workers grew more agitated with the hardships visited upon them by the previous year's stock market crash, it seemed, however, that her father had devised a plan to put the cattle firmly in their places once and for all.

And thus, in the autumn of 1930, Polly's older brother Conrad summoned her home to hear the voice of their patriarch.

The sun had just sunk beneath the hills, painting the sky an orange fire when the sleek black Cadillac pulled up the gently curving paved road that wound up Coal Hill to the stately limestone mansion that had come to be known as Barrow House, which had served as the family's base of operations now for more than a hundred years.

And though they had allied themselves with Lock Rail some time ago to form the Barrow and Lock Mining Combine, the two families maintained a number of separate business interests and their distance.