by Bill Albert
“Guess old Johnnie was right. Damn! Tough break. Wonder if he had the place covered.”
He looked over to where the soldiers were.
“Come on, Herbert, let’s get back to Mrs. Orchard and some hot coffee. Ain’t nothin to be doin here but get ourselves in trouble.”
We started walking up the hill.
“Herbert, I know how ya want to leave the district and I can’t say as I blame ya with things bein as they are. But, before ya go there’s a certain fellow I want ya to meet. He might be able to put ya in the way of somethin, as they say, to yer advantage.”
I gave him a questioning look.
“Ya just come along with me tomorrow and see. Man’s got a proposition for you. A payin job up in Denver, if I’m guessin right. Lots of opportunity for a boy of yer talents in Denver. Whadda ya say?
“What kinda job? Well, let’s say a damn important one. I won’t lie to ya though, it’s kinda, well, I don’t rightly know the exact details. But if ya don’t like the look of it ya only gotta say. Can’t hurt to listen to the man, can it?”
A job in Denver was mighty appealing. I wanted to be well away from the troubles in Cripple Creek and I had also had enough of the mining camps, the day-time saloons, enough of listening to the stories and writing letters. Now Glove was gone I figured it was time for finding a new direction in my life.
Harry leaned over real close into my face and lowered his voice.
“Only thing I’m gonna tell ya for now is that this whole business is mighty confidential. Can’t breathe a word to anyone, not even to Mrs. Orchard, ya know, on account of her disposition. We ridin together on the same wagon?”
As long as the wagon would carry me out from Cripple Creek I didn’t mind who was on it, even Harry Orchard.
11
If anyone ever makes you an offer, assuring you hand on heart that it is one hundred percent foolproof, the only safe bet is that you’d be a fool to believe it and more of a fool to take it up. That’s what might be called Glove’s Lesson Number One. Trouble is that there’s times when you don’t recognize one of those foolproof offers for what it is. Having a talk with a “certain man” turned out to be one of those times.
“This the kid? How old did ya say? Don’t look no more than thirteen or fourteen. What ya tryin to pull, Orchard?”
“That’s him right enough,” Harry confirmed. “But listen now, don’t go lettin his bein so small and scrawny like that and havin no talk fool ya. No sir, boy’s smart as a whip. Proper Eastern educated too. Ya just go an ask him somethin, anythin at all. Writes a clerk’s fancy hand as well. Never seen the like of it.”
Harry pushed me forward. Like Abraham Lincoln Baker’s father and his grandfathers, I was on the block. One minute in and the talk had become a sale. All that was left was to feel my arms and legs, check my teeth. It was right then, too damn late, that I remembered Glove’s Lesson Number One.
“OK, Orchard, so the kid’s a genius. So what? No extra for that. Go on, ya can get out. Don’t let anyone see ya leavin.”
“But I thought we agreed . . .” Harry started.
“We agreed about the boy,” said one of the other men, “that’s all for right now. We’ll be in touch. Ya can count on it.”
“Good-bye to you, Mr. Orchard,” said the third man, who had a strong German accent. “Your helping we are appreciating, of course.”
Harry’s face captured confusion and disappointment. He opened his mouth but then thought better of saying any more and backed out of the room, closing the door quietly behind him.
It was nighttime and we’d come in through the alley so I didn’t know exactly where I was, but the smells and what was stacked up told me for sure it was a grocery store. Dusty light from a single bulb and the three men being on the other side of the room obscured their faces. The late October chill was in the room digging at me. I pulled my coat closer around, cursed Harry and cursed myself for being such a mug.
“Herbert,” one of them said suddenly, “what we got to know first off is where ya stand with the troubles here.”
I tore a sheet of paper off my cord and wrote that where I hoped to stand was as far away from Cripple Creek as I could get myself. I walked over and handed the note to one of the men. Getting a better look at them didn’t tell me much. Three ordinary men, one clean shaven, two with mustaches. In their early thirties probably. For positive they weren’t miners and that meant Citizens’ Alliance or Mine Owners’ Association, which was the same thing. There were only the two sides in Cripple Creek. I stepped back, trying to figure out my next play.
“Sit down,” one offered, pointing to a barrel.
I sat. They continued to stand.
“We’d still be wantin to know about yer feelins, kid. Who ya give ‘em to, I mean?”
“Myself?” he said, looking down at the second note. “By which yer meanin to say ya don’t take anyone’s part in this here business?”
“He knows Haywood,” said one of them. “How can he not be takin a part?”
“Hold on, Scotty, we haven’t got there yet.”
“Ya got any more for us about this, kid?”
I shook my head. I could have told them that I was for the Alliance or for the Union, but I thought in the circumstances it was safer to tell the truth. I mean, having a rush of sympathy for hungry babies and hard-worked miners is one thing; giving them your actual real feelings is something that needs closer consideration.
The man, who they called Casey, upturned a crate and sat down next to me. He pulled a black cheroot out of his top pocket.
“Smoke, kid?” he offered.
I had become extremely partial to a good cheroot, even an indifferent one would do me. I took it, bit the end off. He held out a match. The cheroot was fine.
“Ya know who we are, kid? No? Orchard didn’t tell ya? Well, we’re workin for the folks who want to get things back to rights in the district. Ya know what I mean? Back to normal like they was. The only thing holdin up that bright day comin is a few hotheads and agitators, here and up in Denver. Everybody knows that, don’t they?”
“Ninety-five percent of the miners didn’t want this strike anyways,” Scotty said. “Most of ‘em are just too damned scared for their skins to speak out.”
“So,” Casey continued, “what we gotta do is get rid of them dynamiters and midnight assassins who’ve got ‘em scared so terrible bad. Put ‘em in jail if we have to, run ‘em out of town. If we don’t then we’re lettin down all them decent law-abiding folks who want nothin more than to be able go about their business, provide for their families and live peaceably with their neighbors.”
“What kinda society would we have,” asked Scotty, “if we threw up our hands and surrendered to them cheap socialistical and foreign agitators who’d like to see nothin better than this country run by those damn labor unions?”
“What Mr. Scott is sayin, kid, is that right here in Cripple Creek we are fightin what is no less than a battle in the war to preserve Democracy and the American Way of Life.”
“Sure,” agreed Casey eagerly, “patriotic duty, that’s what it is. Are ya a true patriot, Herbert?”
“Course the boy is,” said Scott expansively. “Ya can see that straight off.”
“That’s the kind of man we’re needin, Herbert, a genuine, red-blooded American patriot. Are you that man?”
An American? Of course I am. It was the part about being a “true patriot” that had me stumped. Was it feeling proud and tingly about Old Glory, the Constitution, the Liberty Bell, George Washington and such like? You might even fit Buffalo Bill in there. If that’s what it takes, Buffalo Bill and all the rest of it, then I’m a true patriot, one hundred percent. But then I don’t recall ever coming across anyone, including union miners, who was against any of that fine stuff.
“I told ya he was our man,” Scotty said.
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“If ya are,” Casey said, “and I’ve got no doubt that ya are, then we got an assignment for ya, Herbert, not a job mind ya, an assignment. Ya get me? An assignment such as a true patriot would not refuse.”
“Could not refuse,” emphasized Scotty. “Wouldn’t be no patriot then would he?”
“And that’s what ya are, ain’t it Herbert? True and red-blooded?”
“Course he is, Casey. Didn’t he write it down there clear for us to read?”
By turns friendly and menacing they pushed me farther and farther until I had nowhere to go but where they wanted me to.
“Denver,” Casey said. “Ya’ll like it fine up there in Denver, kid.”
“Kinda what ya might call an information kinda assignment, is what yer gonna do for us,” Scotty put in.
“Orchard tells us ya know Bill Haywood, that right? Know him real well, do ya?”
They painted it up pretty in red, white, and blue, like a fireworked Fourth of July parade, but what they wanted was a sneaking, belly-crawling spy, like Charlie Siringo. A spy who could get them inside information from Federation headquarters. Mind you, at that time in my life I had no decided feelings one way or the other about the Federation. Maybe a trifle for it, I guess, because of what Big Bill had done for me, but no more than that. However, I definitely did not like the idea of being a spy for anybody. I must admit though, that I was perfectly suited for the job. After all, what is a listener if he’s not a spy? And aren’t I maybe the most superbly talented, most perfected listener in the whole state of Colorado? Did they know that? Had my talent been recognized? Had the word spread? Of course not. A really good, high-class listener passes unnoticed. It’s the storytellers that people see and hear, not the listeners. No, for those three men I was valued not for my marvelous talent but because I knew Bill Haywood and because I could be squeezed.
I told them that I wouldn’t be any good at that kind of thing, that I didn’t know Haywood at all well, just to say hello to was all. They smiled, patted me on the back and kept calling me “their little patriot,” kept insisting that I was “their little man.”
“Course,” Casey said, “if for some reason, which I can’t even imagine there bein, ya didn’t want this patriotic assignment, we could always be askin the sheriff to look into why a young boy like you is on the loose and spendin all his time in saloons and other such places of low entertainment.”
“And ya know, kid,” Scott said, holding out another cheroot to me, “we appreciate that feelin the way you do you’d be willin to do this all out of that fine sense of duty, but, we’re fair-minded men and won’t be askin ya to make such a terrible sacrifice. Everyone’s got to be able to earn their keep after all, don’t they?”
“Might even say,” Casey added, “that that’s what we are fightin for here, so everyone can get on and earn his keep without bein dictated to by the likes of Haywood and them others.”
“Well said, Mr. Sterling!” the German declared.
They counted out ten dollars right there and said I could have another ten a month when they received my reports.
I was working out how far that twenty dollars would take me from Cripple Creek and all that trouble when Casey slammed the trap shut.
“And don’t ya be worryin, kid,” he assured me. “I mean worryin about them union boys. No need to. We’ll have somebody there watchin all the time. Real close to ya he’ll be, make sure ya don’t come to no harm.”
So as it worked out I didn’t leave Cripple Creek on a wagon. It was a railroad carriage on the Short Line to Denver. Otherwise, it was how Harry had said it would be—him and me together. When it came down to it, I did mind leaving with him, but there was nothing else I could do.
A foolproof offer? Certainly. For those who’d been doing the offering. Always is.
12
The train hadn’t got but a few puffs out of the depot in Cripple Creek when Harry started on at me.
“These are not men to cross, Herbert. They got eyes and ears everywheres. Ya know that sauerkraut bastard, that Beckman? Well, he’s a Thiel detective pretendin to be a miner. That’s the God’s honest truth. Victor Union Number Thirty-two. Showed me his card. They got more like him too. In the Free Coinage in Altman, over at Anaconda, Independence, even up at the Headquarters, if I don’t miss my bet. Ya play this here real close, Herbert. Course, ya don’t have to tell them everythin. But, if they can learn it from someone else then ya tell ‘em, because if they catches ya out they’ll be hell to pay. For you and for me. Understand? I for sure hope ya do.”
He sat back and stared out the window. A while later when we were well on our way through the mountains he issued the second half of his caution.
“And ya listen to me good, boy. Somethin else. Don’t ya even think about lettin on to Haywood or Moyer or any of them others in Denver about this business we got here. They’re just as nail-hard as them damn detectives, maybe worse. They ain’t stupid neither. They know what’s goin on, know about spotters and Pinkertons and the rest. I heard they found out a Pinkerton spy in the union over there to Idaho Springs. It weren’t pretty what they done to him. Cut off his ears and sent them up to the main Pinkerton office in Denver. Would I lie about a terrible thing like that? Be careful, that’s all I’m saying. Remember it’s my ears too, not just yours. I’m damn close attached to them as well. Aim to stay that way.”
Harry laughed, reached over and yanked hard on my ear.
McParland scratches at his ear.
“They tell you why they wanted you to do that kind of work for them?” he asks. “Seems awful peculiar sending a boy to do a man’s job.”
Siringo sits up from his slouch.
“Clever, though,” he says. “Damn clever when you think on it. Haywood’s not going to suspect a boy like this, is he? They knew what they were doing right enough.”
“Did they?” McParland rejoins. “If they knew so much how come this non-suspect boy and Orchard, who was also supposed to be working for them, became hired killers for the Federation?”
Siringo laughs.
“I guess you can’t always call them, Mr. McParland. Not like they turn out, you can’t.”
McParland ignores Siringo. He reaches out a hand and squeezes my arm.
“Go on, boy,” the old man urges. “Write it out. You’re doing just fine.”
He doesn’t know. I haven’t told them about Glove or any of that, only about Harry and the detectives. I’m not going to give away any more than I have to. I’ll just ride alongside of McParland’s story and wait to see where the road forks.
Orchard had deposited me and my Gladstone outside the Mining Exchange Building on the corner of Fifteenth Street and Arapahoe. I craned to see the statue on the tower, a bronze miner holding something in his outstretched hand.
I thought back to a statue on top of another tower in New York, at the Madison Square Garden where my new life began. Another statue, possibly another direction for me in Denver. In fact, Denver, with its tight-packed blocks of high-storied office buildings and hotels, its trams, city crowds and harsh city noise, reminded me powerfully of New York. Smaller, of course, and with wider streets. Also when you looked down to the end of any of those streets you were looking at the Rocky Mountains, not the jumbled-up masts of ships.
“Here’s that address I promised ya,” Harry said, handing me a scrap of paper. “Ya tell Mrs. Winkler how yer a friend of Harry Orchard’s. She’ll take good care of ya. Clean room, good food.
“Up there on the sixth floor,” Orchard pointed at the Exchange, suddenly anxious to get away. “Good luck to ya, Herbert.”
He shook my hand and walked off hurriedly without a backward glance. I watched his rounded shoulders disappear behind a passing tram.
I thought it was strange that the union should have its offices in the same building as the mining companies and the Stock Exchange. Obvi
ously, so did the mining companies and the exchange dealers. A few months later the Federation was booted out and had to move over to the Pioneer Building on Larimer and Fifteenth.
“Gee Fizz!” Bill bellowed. “If it isn’t little Jewish Mary! Mullan wasn’t it? Of course it was! Well, I’ll be. Looking a mite peaked, although I can’t see you’ve changed all that much. Drop that bag and sit down right over there for a minute or two. Go on, take yourself a chair. I’m awful busy right now, but we’ll have a good visit soon as I clear some of this dam paperwork off my desk.”
The Federation headquarters took up four large rooms. Desks piled high with papers, cupboards full with papers, crates on the floors with more papers, stacks of the Miner’s Magazine everywhere, and two big gold-scrolled vaults, their doors hanging open and heaped up with thick ledgers. Men in shirtsleeves were bent to work at each desk. In the anteroom other men stood or sat apologetically on the edge of chairs—miners wearing their Sunday-go-to-meetings and clutching their hats—waiting. Underneath the thin layers of cigar smoke there was a persistent stir and racket of activity. Urgently loud conversations, the telephone ringing, Western Union messengers coming in and out, typewriters being pounded by stenographers, orders being shouted out. Every once in a while there was a sudden lull as if an angel had passed over, as if everything and everyone was pausing to catch a breath. Then noises from the street below would push faintly in through the windows, tram clatter, shouts, a chorus of city rumble filling up the temporarily vacated space. A second later the angel would vanish, taking with it the sounds of the city, and the office was once more full of itself and up to full steam.
Bill’s office was the best organized of all. Papers were in neat stacks and everything on his desk—green blotter, inkstand, pen tray, paperweights, books—all were set down at clean right angles to each other. He may have talked Anarchist, like the detectives said, but that wasn’t how he went about his work.
“No point doing a job if you don’t do it right. The trick is having a good, solid system. Otherwise all you have around you is chaos, and chaos doesn’t produce anything but more of the same. Method is all in this game.”
