Slocum and the Schuylkill Butchers

by Jake Logan

  The Schuylkill Butchers had attacked after he left and had set fire to the town.

  Slocum gently turned his horse away from the road, and made his way through the very thicket that would have alerted him of the outlaws’ presence. He made some noise pressing through the undergrowth, but he heard nothing to tell him the men along the road noticed or much cared. For all they knew, he could be another of their gang.

  Riding in a wide half circle, Slocum took almost an hour to get back to Sharpesville. The closer he got, the stronger was the acrid stench of burning wood. He felt the heat on his face by the time he came out of the woods just behind the town. If anything remained of the town, he was hard-pressed to figure what it was. His gelding turned skittish at the sight of the flames, now dying down. He kept firm control and worked his way along to the far end of town and the bank.

  Being made of brick, it had not burned. The roof had collapsed, though. If anyone had been inside, they could not have survived.

  “Etta,” he said in a cold, grim tone. He found a spot a hundred yards away to tether his horse so he could scout on foot. The flames had died down there, leaving the remnants of the buildings sooty and barren. Poking through a couple structures near the bank did nothing to bolster his optimism. By the time he worked through the hole in the bank wall, he knew no one could be alive.

  Using a charred timber, he pushed away fallen beams and bricks from half a dozen bodies. The stench almost made him gag, but he examined each body in turn. Slocum wasn’t sure if he hoped he’d find Etta’s corpse or not.

  In a way, it would be a fitting end if she had perished in the blaze. Her misery would have ended. If she had escaped the fire, he doubted she had eluded the Schuylkill Butchers. Being their prisoner again would be far worse than dying.

  Twenty minutes of sifting through the debris produced no other bodies. He had not found Etta Kehoe. He took a deep breath, choked on the smoke, then threw down the timber he had used as a fireplace poker. One more place had to be checked before he figured out what to do next.

  Cautiously crossing the main street, he went to the telegraph office. At first, he thought it had escaped the worst of the fire. Then, he found only the wall facing the street had survived. The other three walls, along with the roof, had collapsed. He had to step carefully because the lead-acid cells had ruptured, sending the dangerous mixture everywhere.

  At the telegraph key, he found the telegrapher slumped forward, thumb resting near the button. The man had died at his job, but had he succeeded in sending out the warning to Miles City and everywhere in between? Slocum wished he knew.

  The sound of horses turned him wary. Slocum went to the still-standing wall and peered through what had been a window, but was now only a burned-out square, in time to see a dozen riders vanish down the street, going away from the bank. Caution had been burned into Slocum when dealing with O’Malley and his gang. He waited and was glad for it. Another dozen rode in from the same direction less than five minutes after the first horsemen.

  It was as if the entire gang was assembling in the husk of a town.

  Using the charred buildings for cover, he slowly followed the riders to a part of town that had escaped the worst of the fires. The structures still stood—and one in particular told Slocum where to find the outlaws. The saloon nearest the bank had burned level to the ground. This saloon had managed to remain untouched.

  Slocum considered how many outlaws he could kill if he set fire to the gin mill, then decided not to do so unless he was sure he killed O’Malley in the bargain. Working his way to the back door, Slocum peered in to the littered storeroom. Barrels of beer had already been opened and drained. Cases of whiskey were knocked from shelves, but enough remained to tell him whoever worked as barkeep for the outlaws would be in this room soon.

  Watching through the partly opened door, he saw not one but two men come in. Each grabbed a case of whiskey and returned to the saloon. Only then did Slocum go inside. At the door leading behind the bar, he spied on the outlaws singing mournful Irish ballads and dancing jigs on tables, each with a bottle of whiskey in hand.

  If they had not all been stone killers, Slocum would have wanted to join their revelry. He watched closely for any sign of O’Malley. The outlaws moved around a lot, blocking a good view of the far side of the saloon.

  Slocum sucked in his breath when he heard a familiar lilting voice.

  “Buckos, listen up now,” called Sean O’Malley. "We done a good job in this town today.”

  “What’s left of it,” someone called. The others laughed heartily. O’Malley joined in, took a swig of whiskey, and then set the bottle on the bar. His back was to Slocum. At one time, Slocum might have been squeamish about shooting a man in the back. After seeing what the Schuylkill Butchers did, such qualms were a thing of the past. He would shoot them in the belly or the back and never think twice about it, any more than he would think twice about putting a slug into a mad dog’s brain.

  “You’re so right,” O’Malley called. “We burned most of it down, but what’s remainin’, that’s ours! We stole ourselves a fine little town. We’ve come a long ways from Pennsylvania and fought ever’ inch o’ the way. Let’s toast ourselves!

  “To the Molly Maguires!” O’Malley cried.

  The chant went up, and died down only when enough of them had to take a deep drink of whiskey to wet their tongues.

  “We own this town, lock, stock, and whiskey barrel,” O’Malley went on. “We got a steady supply of coal comin’ from the hills. This is somethin’ that other railroad fella, Hill, wants but doesn’t have. His crews cut down the forests, but their engines don’t go so far and need more water.”

  “When we gonna start derailin’ those engines, Sean?”

  "Soon,” O’Malley answered. "When Norris finishes his tracks, then we get into action demolishin’ the Northern Pacific tracks. Boys, we’re gonna be rich. Norris has political connections to protect us.”

  “And we got our knives if he don’t!”

  Slocum stared in cold fury as the assembled men pulled out butcher knives and cleavers and waved them high over their heads. A few began stropping the edges against their aprons and thighs, while others fought mock battles among themselves.

  “We’re gonna get our own damned country and nobody’s gonna stop us!”

  Another drunken cheer went up. Slocum realized that O’Malley was crazy enough to think he might succeed. Just because a railroad owner had political connections didn’t mean he would use them to protect a wild band of Irish miners. Whatever game Norris played, it stacked the deck against O’Malley and his men. From what the gang leader said, Norris might use them to derail the Northern Pacific, but after getting rid of his competition—or making James Hill’s railroad more expensive to maintain—he had no need for cutthroats like O’Malley.

  The Irishman might have banged skulls with mine owners in Pennsylvania, but out here he had to fight the entire U.S. Army. They would not take kindly to the men who had slaughtered the soldiers at one of their posts. More than one Indian tribe had discovered that.

  Slocum worried that the telegrapher had not sent the warning. He was working on some scheme to find out if the telegrapher had died before he could transmit the message when O’Malley said something that jerked Slocum back to the here and now.

  “You men keep an eye peeled on Norris. He’s a slimy son of a bitch and will double-cross us when it’s in his best interest to do so. But we got a hold over him.”

  “What’s that, Sean?”

  “Her name’s Etta, and she got auburn hair he’s taken a fancy to. All I need to do is get her a knife, and she’ll slit the little bastard’s throat for us!”

  The Schuylkill Butchers laughed at the irony of it. Slocum felt only silent fury. O’Malley had turned Etta over to Norris again as a sex slave, and intended to unleash her fury to kill the railroad magnate when it suited his purpose.

  Slocum wanted them all dead and buried in unmarked graves.
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  15

  Slocum slipped out of the saloon and into the cold night. Sweat dried instantly and gave him a chill. He had not even realized until this moment how he had reacted so strongly when he’d heard O’Malley tell his gang about turning Etta over to the railroad owner. The woman was being used as a cat’s-paw to remove Norris when it suited the Butchers’ purpose.

  “That you, Clancy?”

  “Yeah,” Slocum said, stopping dead in his tracks. He had been so lost in thought about how to rescue Etta that he had grown careless. The Schuylkill Butchers prowled what was left of Sharpesville, and he had not remembered that until being hailed.

  “Don’t sound like you.”

  “Drinkin’,” Slocum said, coughing. “Lotsa whiskey inside. ”

  “You’re not Clancy!”

  Slocum lowered his head and charged like a bull. His shoulder drove into the man’s midriff and knocked him back two paces. Then they fell heavily, Slocum on top. The man was rattled, but he fought like a wildcat. One punch grazed Slocum’s cheek and twisted his face away for an instant. This was all it took for the outlaw to surge upward and throw Slocum to the side.

  “Yer one of them local fellers,” the outlaw said. “Thought we’d done kilt ya all.”

  Slocum did not move. He lay on the ground, waiting. His fingers curled around the hilt of his knife, but he did not move to draw it. His patience finally paid off.

  “You hurt? Didn’t hit ya hard ’nuff to kill ya.”

  The man moved closer, kicked at Slocum with the toe of his boot, and then stepped back to see what response he got. Slocum rolled with the kick, his knife slipping free as he moved. He lay on his belly.

  “Awright, let’s git ya into the saloon and—” The man grasped Slocum’s collar and heaved.

  Slocum was surprised at the man’s strength when he picked him up. The outlaw was even more surprised when Slocum drove the knife into his belly. A wet gasp escaped the man’s lips as he sagged down. Slocum left the knife in the man’s belly as he followed him to his knees.

  “Where is she?” Slocum demanded. “The woman O’Malley caught.”

  “Norris’s whore?” The man’s eyes went wide. He reached down and touched his wound. Blood leaked out around the blade and turned his fingers red. In the darkness, he might have been bleeding black ink.

  The man died without saying another word. Slocum pushed him back, stared down at him, and shook his head. He should have forced the man to tell him what he knew about Etta. It was too late now for that.

  Slocum was afraid that Etta was already in Norris’s clutches again, but she might be held somewhere around town, waiting for the railroad owner to come for her. Before he went riding off, Slocum had to know for certain.

  The festivities continued inside the saloon, so Slocum moved down the street. A few of the Schuylkill Butchers had taken over other buildings, but their celebrations were no less enthusiastic. He considered all the spots where O’Malley might have Etta a prisoner, and decided on the hotel near the main street. It had escaped the worst of the fire, but scorch marks marred the front wall.

  Slocum heard boisterous laughter in the lobby, so he circled the building until he found a back door. It was locked, but only for a moment. It yielded to his knife, leading him into a corridor that led past a dozen rooms to the lobby. He saw three outlaws dancing and whooping it up. One of them banged away at a small piano in such a way that showed he had never played before.

  One by one, Slocum tried the doors leading into the rooms. All were empty. A second story required him to get past the men in the lobby. Slocum edged to the doorway and chanced a quick glance. The men were getting drunker by the minute, but he guessed their capacity for booze was far greater than the bottles they had.

  Slocum backed up, grasped a doorknob, and tugged hard enough to pull it off. He wound up and threw the knob, sending it out the front door onto the boardwalk. It rattled noisily enough to draw the outlaws’ attention.

  “What’s goin’ on?”

  “Dunno,” said another. The three crowded through the door to see what the ruckus was. Slocum moved quickly, slipping around the corner and going up the stairs to the second story. He had quick looks into the rooms at the head of the stairs before the men came back in, jostling each other and loudly complaining how their drinking spree had been interrupted by a stray dog out in the street.

  Slocum worked all the way down the hall without finding Etta. Two of the rooms had been used, but there was no trace of the woman in either. Slocum chewed on his lower lips as he thought hard. O’Malley had not exactly said Etta was already in Norris’s hands, but it looked as if this was the case. Hope that he might find her before the railroad owner once more held a leash fastened to her slender throat was gone.

  If Etta Kehoe was not in what remained of Sharpesville, then Norris had her. Slocum went to a window, found a soft-looking spot down in the alley, and dropped out. He had a woman to rescue, and she wasn’t here.

  Finding the railroad construction had not been difficult. Slocum considered what direction the tracks would come from and headed southeast. From a hill, he looked down onto the camp. In the distance, almost at the horizon, rose a long plume of white smoke as a locomotive steamed away. The workers needed a constant supply of wooden ties and rail. The ties could be cut from the forested areas along the railroad bed, but steel had to be moved from foundries. That meant a constant shuttling of freight from farther east and the end of the line.

  Slocum settled down and watched through his field glasses for a spell. The Montana Northern aimed straight for Sharpesville. From there, it would go through the hills directly to the west and on to the coast, completing the line from Minnesota all the way to Washington. Slocum wasn’t all that familiar with the territory, but thought that the Northern Pacific had a harder route if James Hill pushed through farther south. Norris would have freight contracts sewed up tight months ahead of the other road.

  If he ran his railroad through Sharpesville.

  Slocum saw no reason why that wouldn’t happen. If anyone in Sharpesville had opposed the railroad—and he doubted that since the iron horse always brought prosperity to the towns it went through—they were long dead. Norris had a willing accomplice in Sean O’Malley. Even as he considered their unholy alliance, Slocum saw a heavily laden wagon rattling in the direction of the construction crew. From the look of the cargo, O’Malley had been actively mining more coal from the hills above Sharpesville. This fuel allowed Norris to run his train until the hoppers were empty, refuel with coal, and then return for more steel rails.

  Slocum suspected that J.J. Hill had to burn wood his crews chopped down. Better to occupy them with cutting timber for railroad ties.

  Norris not only worked faster, he worked cheaper, thanks to O’Malley and his gang.

  After a long observation, Slocum decided he could learn no more about the railroad camp. He mounted and rode slowly down the gentle incline toward the men driving spikes and laying rail. One looked up, wiped his florid face, and bellowed, “Whatcha needin’, stranger? We ain’t hirin’ nobody’s that not Irish.”

  Slocum tensed at this. He looked around at the number of ginger-haired men. Some leaned on their hammers; others kept hard at work setting spikes and praying that the man with the sledge didn’t take off a hand with a careless aim.

  “I got a message for Mr. Norris,” Slocum said, playing his only trump card. “Supposed to deliver it straight to him and him alone.”

  “He ain’t in camp.”

  “When’ll he be back?”

  “Cain’t rightly say. He left a couple days ago on the train. Gonna pick up more rail and supplies and be back. Maybe tomorrow.”

  Slocum tried to figure that out.

  “He’s not been around for a couple days?”

  “Ain’t nuthin’ wrong with yer hearin’, so it must be your brain that’s missing a few pieces. That’s what I said.”

  “I need to talk to his woman.” Slocum watch
ed the expressions. Nothing but puzzlement.

  “Don’t know what yer talkin’ about, mister.”

  “His . . . companion. Might be calling her his secretary.”

  “Ain’t nobody like that. Hell, it wouldn’t matter if she was as ugly as the ass end of that horse. Jist seein’ a woman would be mighty pleasant, and you kin bet none of us’d miss it fer the world.”

  “We’re workin’,” piped up another worker, “to git on into Sharpesville. They got whores there. First wimmen we’ll have seen in weeks.”

  “Since that last town,” said the man Slocum took to be the foreman. “I swear, never seen wimmen so ugly in all my born days.”

  If they had seen Etta Kehoe, they would be bragging on it. But if she wasn’t in camp and Norris had left two days ago, where was she? Slocum had a sinking feeling that her body might be in Sharpesville’s smoldering ruins after all. There had not been any way to look everywhere. If she had escaped the bank, there was no telling where Etta might have tried to take refuge. Any of a dozen devastated buildings might be her tombstone.

  “Won’t be around for a while? Norris?”

  “That’s what I heard, but what do I know? I’m only the foreman of this gang of loudmouthed drunks.”

  “You men always been working on the railroad?”

  “Naw, we was miners, but the mine owners got uppity and locked us out.”

  “Molly Maguires?”

  The foreman looked sharply at Slocum. “Proud of it, though bein’ in that labor union don’t put food on the table no more. Me and the rest of these reprobates moved West, got jobs doin’ what we’re doin’. Life’s hard, but better fer us.”

  "You and Sean O’Malley,” Slocum said. He shifted in the saddle so his hand was closer to his six-shooter if he needed to shoot his way out.

  “That’s one clever Mick,” the foreman said admiringly. “We git our coal from him. Unlike us, he kept on minin’. He’s gonna make us all rich.”

  “How’s that?” Slocum asked.

  “Mr. Norris, he’s promised bonuses if we git to the coast ’fore the Northern Pacific. O’Malley’s guaranteein’ us that we’ll all see an extra hunnerd dollars.”