Sweet Thunder

by Ivan Doig

  “‘Scoop’ is the honored journalistic term.”

  “—and you sit around maundering about why the other fellow didn’t get it instead of you. Can’t stand good luck, ay? Pass the spuds.”

  “I am only saying, it’s mysterious.”

  “Yes, yes, the dog that didn’t bark, we’ve all read our Sherlock Holmes, never mind. It’ll become clear or it won’t.” With that profundity, he turned back to the Thunder front page, with the splashy headline Bronc Goes on Hennessy Shopping Spree and accompanying photograph. I still had trouble believing the evident daredevil in the saddle was me. “Not that I mean to criticize,” Sandison pontificated, studying the photo, “but when the pony takes to the air like that, you really should hang on to the saddle horn instead of your hat.”

  “I must remember that the next time I mount up on Pegasus.” That retort flew by him, as he returned to the newspaper while forking down his meal, sturdy as a Viking while I ached from the bottom up. It occurred to me that in all the confusion and deadline rush, I had not managed to express my appreciation for his holding the flame-wielding culprit at gunpoint. “Ah, thank you for riding shotgun, so to speak.”

  “Hmm?” He barely glanced up. “Seemed like a good idea if you were anywhere in the vicinity.” Favoring his side, he reached for his coffee cup with a wince. “What is it about you? I spent my whole ranch life around people armed to the teeth and never got shot.”

  “You would think,” I said wearily, “guns should be as allergic to me as I am to them. Balance of nature, that sort of thing.”

  This drew me the observation that I was an optimist, which did not seem to qualify as a compliment in Sandison lexicon. Pushing his practically gleaming plate away and untucking his napkin, he leaned back with a groan and addressed the ceiling. “I know what I’d do, though, if a bunch of idiots was gunning for me and setting fire to my horse and so on.”

  You sit up and pay attention when the Earl of Hell offers advice on matters of that sort.

  “I’d let it be known something nasty could happen to them as well as to me,” he drawled, lowering his gaze as if sighting in on me. “Someone in particular, to get their attention.”

  “Threaten Cartwright, you mean.”

  “An eye for an eye. Right there in the Bible, heh.”

  I swallowed hard. “Sandy, I don’t think I have it in me to even the score that way. Do I look remotely homicidal?” A sigh from across the table answered that. “Cutlass is unfortunately as sharp as that damnable pen name. He would know in a flash I was bluffing.”

  “Think straighter than that, man. All sorts of unpleasant things might happen to someone like him that aren’t necessarily fatal.” He steepled his fingers, evidently pondering the list. “Butte after dark can be a lively place,” he plucked an example. “A person could accidentally get into an altercation with someone rowdy. A muscular miner or two, for instance.” His gaze lofted off again. “I’m only saying, that could be pointed out to the pertinent person.”

  Now I was the one pondering, deeply. The bearded old figure across the table had taken a bullet for me and similarly performed heroically in the horseback episode. He could hardly be blamed for wanting to head off any more such incidents. Even besides him, everyone else near and dear to me—Grace, Jared and Rab, Russian Famine, Hoop and Griff, the embattled Thunder staff—was bearing some kind of brunt of Anaconda’s machinations. And there was always the ghost of Quin, the question mark hovering around his death.

  The more I thought about it, the straighter the thinking became, as Sandison prescribed. Why should Cutthroat Cartwright waltz into town to do Anaconda’s dirty work and be left spotless? My verdict did not come easily, but it came.

  “I’ll put the matter to Jared Evans—he no doubt has some way of getting the message across to Cartwright that he had better watch his step,” I met Sandison’s terms with all the determination I could muster. “I take your point, about being on the receiving end of gunshots and equine high jinks and all. Satis superque.”

  For whatever reason—would I ever understand the outsize bearlike book-loving string-’em-up personality across from me?—the Latin tickled him into a rollicking belly laugh. “‘Enough and more than enough,’” he wheezed. “Well said, my boy. You have a touch when you half try.”

  In high good humor now, he poured himself some more coffee and did the same for me, rather a stretch for his usual contribution to our mealtimes. “By the way, figure me into breakfast tomorrow. Bacon and three or four eggs and a stack of hotcakes will do.”

  Seeing my surprise at this departure from his routine of breakfasting only with his books, he said defensively, “Don’t drop your teeth. A man has to stoke up a bit to get back on the job, doesn’t he?”

  “Back on the—? You don’t mean downtown, surely.”

  “Unless it’s been moved in my absence, that’s where the public library is.”

  “But you’re still nursing your wound.”

  “Am not,” he said crossly. He tried unsuccessfully to sit up straight without wincing. “Bit of a stitch in my side, is all.”

  “Minutes ago you were describing that to me as a nearly lethal bullet.”

  “You’re worse than Dora ever was for nagging,” he grumbled. “Don’t you see, I have to get down there and tend to the collection. There’s a board of trustees meeting coming up and I need to have things patted into place.”

  I saw, all right, as if a veil had been lifted by a corner. He had to make sure the mingled budgetary funds that steadily nourished the finest book collection west of Chicago—and thanks to the judicious use of the paste pot in his office, grew the number of rare volumes with his SSS bookplate in them—did not show any loose ends. “It’s time I picked up the reins again,” he said smoothly. “Though I’m sure you did the best you could filling in for me.”

  Buried in that was the fact that he would go to any length for his beloved books, even entrusting their care to me. No matter how cantankerously he put it, I was deeply moved. So much so that I could no longer hold the secret in. With the help of seemingly casual sips of coffee, I began: “As long as we are unburdening ourselves about such matters—”

  “Is that what we’re doing? You could have fooled me.”

  “—I have a confession to make. That winning wager I made on the fixed World Series. I, ah, bet your book collection. The inventory I did for the public library, I mean. Butte bookies are used to strange collateral.”

  “Of course you did, nitwit. How else were you going to put up a stake like that?”

  My coffee nearly went into my beard. I sputtered, “You knew? All along?”

  “That’s the trouble with you bunkhouse geniuses,” he waved away my soul-baring disclosure. “You think nobody else has a clue about what’s going on.”

  “You—you’re not angry?”

  “If I lost my temper every time you did something, I’d be going off like Old Faithful, wouldn’t I.” He heaved himself to his feet. “Better get your beauty rest, bronc buster. You don’t get to show off in a parade every day. Tomorrow you have to get down to business and give that Chicago scissorbill something to think about. Heh, heh.”

  • • •

  Despite its name, the Purity Cafeteria seemed to me the apt spot to inaugurate playing dirty with Cutthroat Cartwright, in council with Jared and, of course, Rab, amid the hurly-burly of food fetching and wholesale dining where we would not be suspected of anything except runaway appetites. Sandison informed me he would be putting in late hours at the public library for some time to come, so I was furloughed from supper duty at the manse anyway. Perfectly free to follow the edict of the Earldom of Hell, if I had the courage. I was nervous, not to say a novice, at plotting of this sort. Threatening harm to another human being, even an Anaconda hired gun—I had to regard Cutlass as such, just as much as if he were blazing away at me, so to speak, with pi
stol and torch—did not come naturally to me. A show of brass knuckles when danger stared at me face-to-face had always been as far as I was prepared to go. Now, though, the Highliner’s authoritative, “If that’s how you want to plan your funeral, it’s your choice” rang in me like the opening bell of a boxing match. Wasn’t I merely counterpunching, in the effective style of a certain lightweight champion of the world? Casper never shrank from hitting back, and he won nearly every time. Nearly.

  Beaming, the plump bow-tied proprietor greeted me as an old customer the moment I entered the Purity. “I hope you brought your appetite. You’re in luck, tonight’s special is Dublin Gulch filet,” by which he meant corned beef and cabbage. He knew his business in more ways than one, having made peace with the fact that Butte was a union town by posting prominent notices that the enterprise hired only members of the Cooks and Dishwashers Brotherhood, and always welcoming Jared and other union leaders as though he were an honorary member of their number. Accordingly, the cafeteria was where the Hill ate when it went downtown for an evening out, and it took me a minute to spy Jared and Rab in the crowded room, she naturally spotting me first and waving like a student who knew the answer. I could certainly have used one.

  I waited until the three of us had been through the serving line and were seated with heaped plates of corned beef and cabbage before broaching the topic of Cutthroat Cartwright. Rab listened sharp-eared as if she were at a keyhole, while Jared chewed on his Irish filet mignon as well as what I was saying in roundabout fashion. When I was done citing Sandison and counterpunching and otherwise trying to put the best appearance on the topic, he asked, poker-faced, “So what is it you and Sam the Strangler want us to do, Professor? Drop Cartwright down a glory hole some dark night?”

  “Mr. Morgan!” Thrilled as a schoolgirl but trying to stay proper as a teacher, Rab examined me with fresh eyes. “You really want”—detention school language came to the fore at a time like this—“his block knocked clean off?”

  “No, no, I didn’t say that,” I protested guiltily. This conversation was veering uncomfortably close to the memory of my brother’s long walk off a short pier. “I’m merely suggesting giving Cutthroat a taste of what might happen to him if he keeps trying to live up to his nickname at my expense. It would be good for him.” Not to mention, for me.

  Veteran of life-and-death battles far beyond my experience, Jared considered the mission. “Tempting to give him the works, though, isn’t it. Twice now the ones he fronts for have tried to put you where you’d be pushing up daisies. That’s asking for it.” When Rab, her conspiratorial nature notwithstanding, had to exclaim at that, he winked it away. “Trench talk, is all. You should have heard us sit around in the mud all the time and discuss what we’d like to do to the Kaiser, too.”

  Glancing around casually one more time to make sure we were not being overheard, he got down to business. “It sounds to me, Professor, that you’re prescribing a dose of muscle for our friend Cartwright.”

  “Uhm, within reason. A taste.”

  “Tsk,” he pulled that oh-so-straight face again, “where ever will I find lugs of that kind in Butte? I’ll have to look long and hard, don’t you think? Especially in Dublin Gulch around Quin’s old neighborhood.” He brushed his hands. “It’s settled. He wants to play tough, we’ll show that conniving—”

  “No army language now that you’re a senator, remember,” Rab sweetly admonished.

  “Chicago scissorbill,” I filled the blank for him.

  “—that, too,” Jared blithely added the term to the military pile, “that he can’t use you for target practice.” He leaned across the table toward me, reaching aside for Rab’s wrist as he did so to hold her attention in more ways than one. “Professor, we’re going to need you and your editorials more than ever,” his words were quiet and stronger for that. “Hard times are coming fast now. People did themselves proud thumbing their nose at the lockout yesterday, but it won’t be long until kids start going hungry and women are scavenging coal down by the tracks and the men start to get antsy about no work and no pay.” I thought he could not have summed up the gamble any better: “Anaconda holds the cards—we have to stay in the game any way we can until they fold.”

  “Or there’s a draw,” Rab anted her two bits in. “Rome was not won in a day, a wise teacher I once had used to say.”

  Sudden interest in my corned beef and cabbage let me duck that, while Jared sighed mightily. “Up against the cardsharp I’m married to and some earful in Latin, am I. Lucky thing Russian Famine is on my side—throw that left hook until it makes them dizzy, isn’t that the ticket, Professor?”

  “By the way,” curiosity was getting the better of me, “where is our star athlete? Surely he hasn’t lost his appetite?”

  With a little crimp of concern between her eyes, Rab checked the large wall clock with PURITY IS SURETY FOR GOOD FOOD! across its face. “Selling his papers down to the last scrap, I expect. But it’s not like him to miss a mea—”

  Just then the proprietor came bustling toward us from the front of the cafeteria, and inasmuch as I was going to be a regular customer, I tried to get ready whatever compliment corned beef and cabbage was owed.

  “Your boy!” he cried as he came up to our table. “He’s outside, somebody worked him over!”

  We rushed out, Rab in the lead. Sagging against the building as if on his last legs was Russian Famine, clothes torn, face bruised and nose running with a mix of blood and snot, and his Thunder newspaper bag showing dirty footprints where it had been stomped on.

  Before we could even ask, he spat out through bloody lips the word Posties. Painfully he wiped his lips. “Bigger ’n me. Three of ’em run me off my corner. One of ’em held me and the other two whaled me.” He did not quite meet the gaze of the furious Rab, freshly attacking him with a wetted handkerchief to dab away blood and such, or Jared’s deep frown. “They didn’t like it that we was in the parade.”

  I asked weakly, “The left hook didn’t . . . ?”

  The beat-up boy shrugged thin shoulders. “Wasn’t enough,” he reported, trying to hold back tears. “I’d no sooner get one of ’em knocked down good than the other two’d pile in on me from the other side.”

  Three against one were simply too high odds, all right, yet I felt I had failed him. Rab was inveighing against the Post’s junior auxiliary of brutes and vowing to give the chief of police a piece of her mind about hoodlumism running wild in the streets when Jared, hands on knees as he leaned down to the beating victim, spoke up.

  “You did the best you could, we know that. Now it’s time to get you out of the line of fire, trooper. We’ll put you on the carriage route.”

  “That?”

  The boy’s quick cry of despair was painful to hear, but Jared’s reasoning was hard to argue with. The Thunder was most swiftly delivered to newsstands and cigar stores and similar vendors in the middle of downtown by way of a baby carriage stacked full of newspapers, a trick Armbrister had picked up on one of his journalistic stops. That safe route literally would save Famine’s hide, with no bloody corners to be fought over. Wiping his nose with the back of his hand, the teary youngster mumbled something.

  Rab was instantly attentive. “What? Famine, tell us.”

  “Makes me feel like a sissy.”

  “Never mind.” That came firmly from Jared. “The carriage route will keep you on the job, and that’s what counts, right?” Famine mumbled, “Whatever you say goes.” Jared rewarded him with an encouraging grip on the shoulder, then decisively turned to me. “And we’ll move on that other matter prontissimo, Professor,” he said grimly. “It’s time the other side licked a wound or two.”

  • • •

  Sick at heart over Russian Famine’s beating, feeling I had let him down in the boxing lessons, I knew nothing to do but watch and wait for some better turn of fortune in the days that followed. It was a tens
e time, with the feel of something major about to happen, some storm about to break, but there was no telling when. After the mile-high, mile-deep amplitude of the Fourth of July parade, Butte fell as quiet as if it had temporarily lost its voice. The mute mines of the lockout stood as empty as ever, an apprehensive stillness blanketing the neighborhoods as foraging food for the table and scrounging coal for the stove became the daily challenges of households without paychecks. Even speakeasies were subdued, according to my newsroom colleagues, where clots of miners speculated in low tones what would befall them if the union could not withstand Anaconda’s ruthless shutdown. Out in the prairie towns and tawny ranchlands, the standoff was being watched as a prelude to the statewide vote on Jared Evans’s brainchild, the tax commission that at long last would fix a price tag onto Montana’s copper collar. High stakes, great issues, which to my and Armbrister’s surprise the Post continued to tiptoe past in the immediate days after the parade, an editorial quietus from Cutlass as baffling as his passing up the chance to ripely reminisce about Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders’ conquest of San Juan Hill.

  At first I wondered whether my foe had indeed met his fate in a bottomless mine pit, but when I cautiously sounded out Jared on that, he only smiled mysteriously and said, “Don’t concern yourself, the scissorbill is still in one piece.” The battle of words had only paused, in short. Meanwhile, I actually had leisure to write AOT editorials about matters other than the eternal battle over the Richest Hill on Earth—“spitwads,” Armbrister cackled over such offerings, just enough impact to them to annoy the opposition with our persistent presence.

  In this lull, Sandison alone seemed to thrive, resuming his post at the public library like a potentate returning from exile. “He’s here at all hours,” Smithers of the periodical desk confided to me when I stopped by to check on the impatient patient, “and not the least little thing anywhere in the building escapes him, I tell you.” Imagining Miss Runyon like a rabbit under the gaze of a hawk, I tried to keep a straight face. Smithers, a lively sort, was in his element as confidant. “And get this. When the janitor left the other night, he heard our man Sandison in his office singing ‘The Bluebells of Scotland.’ Out loud! It’s a changed place around here, Morrie.”