The Shooting of Dan McGrew

Summary

A blizzard-haunted gin-joint, half cathedral, half abattoir: the Malamute Saloon exhales kerosene breath while frost etches cathedral-roses on its grimy panes. At a splintered deal table Dan McGrew—gambler, seducer, living mercury—leans toward Lou, whose velvet bodice strains like a sail against the squall of male gazes. Outside, a sled-dog chorus howls; inside, a stranger staggers across the threshold, ice in his beard, vengeance in his marrow. Jim Maxwell, once cheated of wife and sanity, now a tattered prophet of the Klondike, unloads nuggets for drinks, then coaxes a battered upright into speech. Each minor chord drips with recrimination: the piano becomes confessional, scaffold, séance. Memory detonates—McGrew forged letters, lured Maxwell’s bride, vanished into the white silence; Maxwell cracked, wandered, until on a creekside claim he met the grown daughter who should have been his to raise, her husband framed for a murder committed by McGrew’s own ivory-handled Colt. Salvation, betrayal, restitution blur. Back in the saloon, deputies drag that same husband away in irons while the piano’s lament peaks. Maxwell pivots, pronounces a scarlet verdict; the lamps gutter out; muzzles flash like auroras in the dark; two bodies crash. Dawn finds McGrew cooling beneath a cedar plank, Maxwell resurrected into Lou’s trembling arms, the piano gaping like a jaw with broken teeth.

Synopsis

The opening scene is of the interior of the Malamute saloon. Dangerous Dan McGrew and the lady known as Lou are seen seated at a table in one corner. A dog-sleigh stops outside, and its owner, a tired-looking, bedraggled miner, stumbles through the door. After treating the house, he sits down at the piano and begins to play. Into the soulful, stirring music he pours his pent up feelings of hatred, sorrow, love, and regret. Years before, Jim Maxwell's best friend Dan McGrew had deceived his wife into believing him unfaithful. Their elopement completely unnerved him for a time. But finally he resolved to forget about it, until he next met Dan McGrew. Years afterwards, while prospecting, he met his daughter, now grown to womanhood and married. Her husband had been arrested for a murder committed by McGrew, and Maxwell assisted in effecting his escape. Just previous to the miner's entrance, Nell's husband had been captured in the saloon by the sheriff. As Maxwell finishes playing, he turns about, faces Dangerous Dan McGrew, and tells him, in uncomplimentary language, what he thinks of a man of his type. The lights go out, two guns blaze in the dark, and both men fall. Maxwell recovers and is reunited with his wife Lou. McGrew dies.--May 22 1915.