The title refers to a spook used to keep workers in line at low wages—capitalists telling of a barefoot man, "a sort of scab," is ready to take their job if they leave it and keep the wage where it is.

Cal Dunne, his mother Roseanna, and his wife Jessie, are holed up in their house waiting for the arrival of the union organizer, whom James P. Shaloo, the strikebreaker, is determined to kill.

Cal and Mother Dunne are prepared to go out with rifles at any time, and along with Tom Turley, who has voted to end the strike but is still not scabbing, get in a fray with Shaloo's man, in an army coat.

Farjeon sets out to kill the five men he deems responsible for the death of Jean and their child—the man in the army coat, J.P. Shaloo, the foreman, Bob Kitto; the supervisor, George W. Paul; and a nebulous fifth person, the owner of the mine, simply known as "the Company"—president unknown.

Eventually he is approached by the man in the army coat, whom readers met briefly at Toby's bar in a part of Glory called Mexico, where many scabs, many of whom—such as Toby—are black, live.