Dry Rot

by S. L. Stoner

  c2

  Dry Rot

  A Sage Adair Historical Mystery

  of the Pacific Northwest

  By S.L. Stoner

  Yamhill Press

  P.O. Box 42348 Portland, OR 97242

  Dry Rot

  A Yamhill Press Book published on Smashwords

  Copyright 2013 by S. L. Stoner All rights reserved

  Cover Design by Alec Icky Dunn/Blackoutprint.com Interior Design by Josh MacPhee/Justseeds.org

  Printed in the United States. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by any means, without permission. For infor-mation contact Yamhill Press at publisher@yamhillpress1.com.

  Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication Stoner, S. L.

  John Sagacity Adair : dry rot / by S.L. Stoner. —p. cm. —

  (A Sage Adair historical mystery of the Pacific Nortwest)

  ISBN 978-0-9823184-6-1

  ISBN 0-9823184-6-4

  ISBN 978-0-9823184-7-8

  ISBN 0-9823184-7-2

  Northwest, Pacific—History—20th century—Fiction.

  Labor unions—Fiction. 3. Detective and mystery sto-ries. 4. Martial arts-Fiction. 5. Historical fiction.

  6. Adventure stories. I. Title. II. Series: Sage Adair

  historical mystery.

  12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01

  PS3619.T6857J64 2012813’.QBI11-600235

  This Book is Dedicated to

  The Women and Men of Yesteryear Who Walked Out On Strike,

  Risking Everything To Win A Better Future for All of Us.

  And, to Those Who Will Strike In The Future

  Their Hearts Full of the Same Fears And the Same Hopes.

  These Are the Heroes

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Chapter Twenty Four

  Chapter Twenty Five

  Chapter Twenty Six

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty One

  Historical Notes

  Author Info

  Acknowledgments

  Other Books by S.L. Stoner

  Request for Pre-Publication Notice

  ONE

  October 1902, Portland, Oregon

  A fat raindrop smacked the back of his neck and slid down his spine like a cold knife edge.“Damn,” Sage grumbled, twisting his collar tight for about the tenth time in the same number of minutes. He hated the rain. Snow was better any day. It might cake a man’s trousers but at least it didn’t seep through every seam. He stared east, into the sullen gray wall of cloud obscuring the Cascades. For weeks now, the Pacific Northwest sky had drizzled endlessly, turning the ground into a slurry of mud and moldering leaves.

  The sneering voice inside his head said, “Well, fella, it’s not like you’re forced to be here.” True. Back at his restaurant, the pipes carrying city-supplied steam heat would be radiating warmth, driving the damp against the window panes where it belonged. He was here by his own choice. When asked by Vincent St. Alban to help the striking construction workers, Sage immediately agreed. He’d known when he signed on as a labor movement operative that physical discomfort was part of the package. While restauranteur John S. Adair could retreat to the dry warmth of his exclusive eating establishment, Sage Adair, the labor union spy, had to stick it out right beside the men he hoped to help. Two weeks of unremitting rain, however, was starting to douse his enthusiasm for the job.

  He studied the dozen or so men shuffling back and forth before the construction office, their steps stiff with cold, their shoulders bowed low under sodden coats. Each miserable day was exacting a toll. One man losing heart and walking away. Another finding work elsewhere, his apology trailing behind him as he trudged up the road and out of sight. No table-bumping spiritualist was needed to predict the outcome of their efforts The labor strike was nearly lost.

  Sage stood a bit apart from the strikers, alongside the nearly impassable mud road. For the most part, the friendly strikers paid him no mind. They knew him as the dark-haired, droopy mustached kin of their union president. “Nice enough guy, steady but kinda quiet,” Leo told him that was the group’s overall opinion of Leo’s “nephew.”

  Lockwood, himself, had readily accepted St. Alban’s offer of Sage’s assistance. The three of them had settled on Sage playing the role of “Sam Graham,” Lockwood’s just-passing-through nephew. Sage’s only tangible “assistance,” thus far, had been food boxes anonymously delivered to strikers’ front doors. He wanted to do more for the men yet no real opportunity had presented itself.

  The men, making their stand at the road’s end, were protesting long work hours and starvation wages. The hardheaded construction contractor Abner Mackey and Earl, his even more hardheaded son, worked the men seven days a week for as long as there was light. Mackey Construction and Lumber Company was the largest, most powerful construction contractor in the city. The thinking was that this was a do-or-die chance for all of the city’s construction workers who also needed better hours and pay. If the Mackey strikers won, other construction companies would also adopt an eight-hour day, six-day work week rather than risk a similar strike—especially since the Mackeys couldn’t undercut them on labor costs. If the strikers lost, it was just as certain that those same construction companies would fire every pro-union worker, keep wages low and continue to load the hours on without mercy

  So far, none of their tactics had tipped the balance in favor of the striking men. Instead, Sage watched from the sidelines as that balance kept tilting relentlessly in the bosses’ favor.

  His back stiff from standing in one place, Sage ambled a few paces toward the gully where a stream was raging. Leaning against a pile of waste lumber, he closed his eyes, allowing the surrounding sounds to send him somewhere else—an early spring day, a scented forest, the fir canopy overhead sighing in a steady breeze.

  Another freezing, wet drop slithered past his collar, snapping his thoughts into the present. The rushing sound in his ears was not the breeze slipping through tree branches. It was the sound of muddy water shooting down the nearby gully. All across the city, similar streams scoured debris from banks, attacked tree roots and surged against trestle timbers until they thrummed.

  Sage sighed and opened his eyes to study the Mackey lumber mill’s office at the road’s end. It was a one-story, rectangular, unpainted wooden building fronted by a covered porch. Out of that building they operated the mill, tallied profits and dispatched men to construction jobs. Beyond the office building lay the sheet-metal-clad mill and lumber-filled yard. That complex extended north and south along the Willamette riverbank, covering a plot of land over 300 feet wide and 600 feet long. A high barbed-wire fence blocked the far end, a gate in its middle giving wagons access to the yard. The same fencing ran along the north side of the dirt road all the way up to a warehouse building at the top of the muddy lane. On the mill’s east side, the river’s flood made docking perilous. To the south, the mill’s bulwark against trespassers was more barbed wire—this time stretching to the edge of th
e gully’s swift flowing stream. The river, mill, unruly stream and barbed wire fences all combined to prevent trespassing onto the mill property and created the cul de sac where the protestors circled. Not a safe location for the strikers if the Mackeys resorted to violence. Nonetheless, this was their workplace so the workers needed to make their stand here. Still, it was worrisome. This location was a trap if the standoff between boss and worker turned bad.

  The hinges on the office door creaked open, causing the men to turn hopefully toward the sound. Sage straightened. He too searched for some positive sign in the faces of the union’s bargaining team. Leo didn’t prolong the suspense. He gave his head a doleful shake. No compromise, then.

  “Son-of-a-bitch,” a nearby man said under his breath. Most of the other men said nothing, just squished through the mud toward Leo. In days past, after talking with management, it was Leo’s practice to mount the wooden soapbox he carried to the picket line each day and report on the negotiations. This bleak morning, Leo didn’t raise himself above his men. Instead, he rested a scuffed boot on the soapbox and spoke softly. Sage stepped forward. Leo caught the movement because he gestured for Sage to move closer.

  “It’s like this, men. Mackey and his son think they’re sitting pretty right now. What with the rain, there’s little construction underway. You all know that, because of this year’s gol’darn heavy rains, we’d have been sitting home a good bit even if we weren’t on strike.” A few nods among the men acknowledged the truth of Leo’s observation. Late fall and winter always made for lean times in the construction trades.

  “So, the Mackeys don’t feel that they need to negotiate with us about working a six-day week or an eight-hour day. They intend to wait us out. Come spring, if we last that long, we’ll be in a better position. Again, some of the men nodded.

  Leo paused to search the pinched faces of the handful of men who stood looking up at him, their lips faintly blue with the cold. “Autumn isn’t an ideal time to go on strike. I guess we all realize that now,” he said. Again, a few nods.

  “I say we burn the rascals out. The idea of a little heat right about now suits me just fine,” shouted one of the younger men. He was someone Sage had previously marked as a hothead.

  Leo raised a gloved hand to silence him. “I know how you feel. Think, men, if we engage in violence, you know we’d be playing into the Mackey’s hands. As long as we remain law-abiding, public sympathy will keep with us. We don’t want to lose that.”

  The men began to grumble. “My kids can’t eat sympathy.

  I’m tired of nothing happening,” said one.

  “I might as well go home and start breaking up the furniture for stove wood,” grumbled another.

  The rumble of the mill’s huge steel door sliding open snapped everyone’s attention in that direction. Men on horseback poured out of the black maw as two men charged out of the office to drag the fence gate wide open. Fear rippled though the strikers at this unexpected sight. One of them, spying the wooden staves gripped by the horsemen, caught on.“We’re done for, men! Run for it!” he shouted just as the horses leapt forward, their riders’ heels slamming into their sides.

  Sage bolted for a big leaf maple that canted out over the nearby gully. With a leap, he reached its nearly horizontal trunk and began shinnying out along its length, praying that his added weight wouldn’t bear it down into the hurtling water. Other men tried sprinting up the middle of the road, only to have the mud grab their boots and slow them down. As the horses overtook them, the riders’ staves swung downward to hit the men’s heads, shoulders and backs. Screams, shouts and whinnies mixed with the sounds of roaring stream and drumming rain. Sage looked for one of the policemen who’d been standing sentinel these past few weeks. For the first time, every one of the helmeted officers was absent. “No damn surprise there!” Sage muttered.

  From where he lay clinging to the tree trunk, Sage watched a man lose his footing and sprawl face down into the mud. Seconds later a horse’s plunging hooves slammed down onto the man’s back. The downed man screamed and the horse reared in surprise, its rider fighting for control.

  Farther up the road, the man Sage had labeled a hothead halted his dash toward safety and looked back. After flicking a glance forward, the hothead wheeled and reversed direction, snatching up a length of board. He charged at the horse, using the swinging board to force the horse into shying away from the downed man. The rider jerked the reins, using his boot heels to spur the horse up the road and out of sight. The rescuer flung his board aside and began pulling the fallen man from the mud.

  Another drama grabbed Sage’s attention. About a hundred yards from his tree trunk, a striker was running, knees pumping high, through the brown weeds that covered the narrow space between the mud road and sloping gully bank. On his heels trotted a black horse, its rider swinging a long stave. The fleeing man was struck so hard he stumbled, lost his balance and tumbled end over end down the bank until he splashed into the raging creek fifteen feet below. Even before the man’s terrified shriek reached his ears, Sage was slithering backward down the tree trunk. He raced along the top of the bank, his eyes combing the ground for a sturdy board or stick. At last he spotted a large tree limb and snatched it up, gauging its strength and length even as he tugged it toward the turbulent water. The limb should do. It had to.

  Upstream, the man thrashed about, at least five feet from the bank, a pocket of trapped air ballooning his coat, keeping his head above the roiling brown water. His arms flailed, slapping the surface as he fought to keep his face clear even as the torrent bore him swiftly and irrevocably toward the swollen Willamette and certain death.

  Slick mud underfoot prevented Sage from finding the stable footing needed to pull the heavy limb along with him. He gasped in desperation. Finally, with an “oh hell” oath he jumped over the edge of the bank, landing on his butt, the limb’s big end clutched to his chest. Limb and man swiftly slid down the bank and into the water. Luckily, his boot heels hit firm gravel instead of plunging into a hole. Sage struggled to his feet, looking upstream to see the man careening toward him—now less than four yards away. Grunting, Sage struggled to lever the limb onto its butt end. Once there, he swiveled and dropped it into the water so that it pointed upstream toward the man. Flinging himself atop the limb’s butt, Sage fought to hold it parallel to the stream’s edge and to keep its tip pointing into the current that was trying to rip it from his grasp. With a jerk that nearly tore it from Sage’s hands, the man first hit and then clutched at the limb.

  Sage struggled to maintain his hold, gasping as water pelted his face with such ferocity it was impossible to tell whether it came from sky or stream. Still he held on, digging his heels in and leaning back so that the limb twisted downstream as if connected to a wheel hub. Arms quivering, Sage wrested the limb so that the current began pushing it parallel to the downstream bank. The man clutching its slick surface floated behind.

  At last the man’s feet seemed to find purchase on the bottom, because he began pulling himself up the limb against the current toward Sage. His weight was exerting less of a drag except when he briefly lost footing and floated. By this time, Sage lay on his back against the mud bank, panting, his knuckles dead white and cramping as he fought to hold the limb, his eyes riveted on the man struggling toward him, willing him to make it. And he did. He was there, within reach. Sage grabbed him and pulled him onto the muddy slope of the bank. Gratefully, Sage released his hold on the limb. It shot away fast as a loosed arrow.

  “Hoo whee,” the man gasped, as he lay on his back, his chest heaving. “I thought for certain sure I was a goner. Thank you, Sam. I owe you a beer. Heck, I owe you a whole barrel, I surely do.”

  “Don’t be thanking me just yet,” Sage gasped, as he tried to stand upright on the slippery slope. “There’s still those goons on horses to evade and being’s as we’re so damn soggy, we’ll move like two old buffalo. Not much chance we’ll outrun horses.”

  Both men looked t
oward the safe haven that lay less than thirty feet across the stream. No. Neither one wanted to chance that escape route. As one, they swivelled to look upstream where a thicket of bramble canes snarled the hillside, running from the top all the way down into the water, completely blocking escape in that direction. Escape downstream was also hopeless because that route took them deeper into the mill yard where, as trespassers, they’d be fair game for Mackey’s goons. As if yoked together, both men faced the hill and began climbing, clutching at bushes to pull themselves up. At the bank’s top edge, they lay on their bellies and slowly lifted their heads, to peer up and down the road. What they saw nearly startled them both into sliding backward.