The Shadow Conspiracy II

by Phyllis Irene Radford

  “It looks like a musician’s score.”

  Baldwin nodded. “Very like. It’s read by the needles in the rack, transmitting information to the gears. Now that I’ve had a look at the stone, the dimensions of the tunnel, and so on, I can add the new parameters. Thus.” He plucked a pen from the inkwell and with expert strokes he sketched in a new pattern of dots and lines. “Then I cut it out.” He gestured toward a pair of shears. “And transfer it to the copper.”

  “Very neat,” I said. “There’s just one thing more I’d like to know.”

  “What is that, Mr. Sheridan?”

  “Wouldn’t it have been much easier to inspect the tunnel in daylight?”

  Baldwin was silent only for a heartbeat. “Ah!” he grinned. “You’ve caught me. That it would.”

  “Then why didn’t you?”

  “Because there’s no one I can trust to watch Sharpie. I wanted to wait until the men were asleep. This isn’t our first time being where we’re not welcome, Mr. Sheridan.”

  I folded my arms and looked at him carefully. I could discern no change in his demeanour. I thought about challenging him with the conversation I’d heard between John Henry and the girl, Polly Anne. I wanted to believe him and so he could become the comrade and confidant I wished for. I wanted to understand what crackled in the air between us. I wanted him gone and his drill with him so I could stop dreaming, pay O’Malley whatever damn thing he asked and finish off this damned tunnel.

  “All right, Baldwin,” I got to my feet. “But if this contest of yours isn’t seen to be on the level, you’ll have a hard time getting yourself or Sharpie out of this valley in one piece, do you understand?”

  “Every word, Mr. Sheridan.” Baldwin’s face was very still in the flickering lantern light. It seemed to me suddenly that he was wearing a mask, that if I reached out to strip it off I would finally see the real man underneath.

  “I’ll wish you good-night then,” I said stiffly, and I left him there with his tools and his plans and walked back out into the quiet night.

  I was not truly surprised when I got back to my own tent to find Croft sitting up waiting for me.

  “Everything all right?”

  I dropped onto my cot and hoped the friendly dark hid the fact that my hands were shaking. “I’m ... I was wondering if I could tell if that stream drill was rigged.”

  “Like if it was set to break down?”

  I nodded and Croft scratched his head. “You think one of ‘em’s gonna throw the race?”

  “I think they might. I just heard that John Henry talking to a girl in the tunnel.”

  “That nigger cook?”

  “Is there another woman in this camp?” I snapped. “It sounded like Emmett’s made him some promise if he wins. Maybe even his freedom papers. And Baldwin’s drill was right there, and Baldwin himself came out of nowhere when I was getting set to call them out.”

  “Something else you should consider, Mr. Sheridan,” Croft said softly. I raised my brows. “They could both be trying to snooker us.”

  I frowned. “How do you figure?”

  Croft pulled his blanket more tightly around his shoulders. “What if they’re working together? Awfully convenient the two of them turning up like this, isn’t it? A gang of strong men and a big steam drill, and only three days before the payroll’s due.”

  I froze. I’d been so busy with the rivalry between the gangs of men, so disturbed by the feelings roused in me by Baldwin’s presence, I’d forgotten the payroll.

  “Why didn’t you say this before?”

  “I wasn’t sure. But something smells about all this, Mr. Sheridan.”

  I couldn’t argue with that. I glanced toward the tent’s front flap. Maybe that was what this was. My instincts, sharpened by working among rough men for so long had, sensed something was wrong and tried to warn me.

  “So we’ll have to keep a close eye out tomorrow.”

  Croft was silent for a moment. Then, he asked softly, “You want Baldwin’s drill winning this, don’t you?”

  I remembered my vision of the line of gleaming, obedient steam drills. I nodded.

  “So why not just give him the job?”

  Why not? “Two reasons,” I gestured toward the shadowy form of the steam pigeon watching us from its corner of the table. “The first is whatever I do, I’m going to have to explain it to the railway’s directors. I want results to show them. The other is, like you said, no matter how good that drill is, we’re going to need the terriers.” For now, at any rate. “This little contest gives them time to get used to the drill, and to let O’Malley explain how it means they’re going to have to spend less time in a tunnel none of them likes the feel of.”

  “And you’re sure O’Malley will do that?”

  “No,” I admitted. “But if he doesn’t, we’ll hire Emmett and his blacks and O’Malley’s men can whistle for their bread.”

  Croft didn’t say anything then. He just reached a hand under his pillow, drew out his revolver. I heard the hammer cock and the barrel spin before he laid it down again.

  The ceremony and stillness at the drill site that morning were unnatural. A tunnel under construction is a loud place. If all’s going right, it’s as good as a fair. There’s shouting and singing and banging and flags waving and men shouting out their orders.

  But that morning we were like the citizens of Rome gathered to watch the strangest pair of gladiators ever seen on God’s green earth. On the northern side of the tunnel stood John Henry flexing his great hands and swinging his arms to loosen shoulders. All the blacks lined the tunnel with him beside piles of steel drills, baskets for moving stone, and a whole stack of hammers. The girl was not left behind. Looking understandably nervous and ill, she stood beside a water bucket and tin coffee pot.

  Emmett waited beside his property, chewing grimly. He paid no attention to his man. His eyes were on the competition.

  Baldwin circled the drill; checking the gears, checking the boiler pressure, checking and rechecking the order of the cards in the codex.

  I had barely been able to choke down my cornbread and coffee for breakfast. What if Croft was right? What if this was some scheme to steal the payroll when it came? What if Emmett had bribed Baldwin to lose? I’d be back where I was, only this time I’d be forced to hire out Emmett’s niggers and he’d probably demand cash up front, and who knew if they’d even stick around after that?

  While I brooded, I heard a muttering and shifting behind me. The crowd of terriers crammed up against the tunnel mouth parted reluctantly to let Croft in. O’Malley stood at their head, his bulging arms folded, refusing to move. Croft just shouldered past him. My foreman had a silver whistle around his neck and the red and green signal flags tucked under one arm. In his hands, ostentatiously, I thought, he held the canary’s cage. He gave me one sharp glance as he hung it on one of the central support poles. The bird tried to chirp, but soon gave it up as a bad job and settled silent onto its perch.

  John Henry stepped up to the blank, rough stone at the end of the tunnel. He didn’t even look at any of us, or the steam drill for that matter. I admired the slave for his calm. He didn’t care for the schemes and cheats of his betters. His mind was already on the mountain. He laid a hand on it, like it was a skittish horse to be calmed.

  “You and me,” I heard him say. “It’s you and me.”

  And then he did a thing I’ve never seen. He hefted up not one fourteen-pound hammer, but two, one in each great hand. He nodded to a needle-thin stripling whom I guessed had to be Skinny Shake. That boy grasped the great iron spike and held it to the mountain’s side.

  Baldwin straightened up beside Sharpie, looked across at John Henry and for the first time I saw the gleam of perspiration on his clean upper lip and smooth brow. He dropped his goggles into place, tugged on his gauntlets, and took his place in front of the drill’s control panel. He nodded once to me. I, in turn, nodded to Croft, and Croft ducked between the two teams with his whistle and
the green flag.

  “Gentlemen!” Croft’s voice rebounded off the stone. “Are you ready?”

  Baldwin nodded. John Henry looked to Emmett, and Emmett nodded as well. Croft blew a shrill blast on the whistle and threw the green flag down.

  Baldwin cranked the drill’s key over and turned the wheels, opening choke and throttle, and then leaped aside to let Sharpie have her head. I heard the chime as the codex engaged, and Sharpie heaved forward on her treads, and her twisting drill hit the stone with a noise like God’s own thunder.

  In counterpoint to the awesome grinding came the sound of John Henry’s hammers, one after the other, faster than should have been possible, hitting the spike, making it ring like a bell.

  And then behind us, there rose a song carried by two dozen deep voices, calling out, keeping time for the hammers and the shaker against the chaotic, crushing roar of the steam drill.

  “Hoe, Emma, Hoe,

  “You turn around, dig a hole in the ground.

  “Hoe, Emma, Hoe,

  “You turn around dig a hole in the ground.”

  Exactly on the half hour by my watch, the drill stopped. Baldwin sprang forward to check the gears and the water and the temperature and pressure gauges.

  But John didn’t stop. He brought his hammers down like he’d never stop. Skinny Shake’s head was bowed but his young hands held steady as he slowly turned that spike. Bits of mountain fell away around them, and their compatriots moved in, careful not to disrupt their rhythm, and passed the stone back down the line.

  “Emma, you from the country.

  “Hoe, Emma, Hoe,

  “Emma you work like two grown men.

  “You turn around, dig a hole in the ground.

  “Hoe, Emma, Hoe.”

  “Checked and cleared!” cried Baldwin as he opened Sharpie’s throttle wide, and the thunder and the dust rose up around us again. A stone chip nicked my cheek and the hand I put up came away red with blood. I snatched my handkerchief out of my pocket and pressed it to my cheek. No one noticed. All eyes were on the battle, on the man and the machine in the smoke and the thunder. I’d been wrong. These weren’t Roman gladiators. They were titans.

  At noon by my watch, when my eyes were stinging so bad I could barely see and my throat was as raw as if I’d been drinking sand, I signalled Croft. He charged to the end of the tunnel, waving the red flag. He didn’t bother with the whistle. We were all deaf as posts by then.

  Sharpie shut down, blowing out its customary cloud of steam. John Henry moved back from the spike and stood there, chest heaving, clutching the hammers in his hands, like they’d grown to be part of him.

  Croft got out his tape and he measured the far side of the tunnel. “Five feet!” he rasped. The announcement was greeted with dead silence.

  Then he went over to John’s hole. John stood aside. Sweat rolled in rivers down his face, cutting black rivers through the white dust and flecks of red that coated his skin.

  “Three feet!”

  Silence. Thick and disappointed silence from the blacks. Grim, suspicious silence from the terriers. Angry silence from Emmett and watchful from Baldwin.

  “All right,” I said. “It’s break for an hour and then we finish this thing. Take your men and get yourselves something to eat,” I told both Emmett and O’Malley. “Baldwin?”

  Baldwin perched his goggles on the brim of his bowler hat. He looked like a strange reverse of a raccoon with white circles around his eyes. He might have been a black himself he was smeared so dark with soot. “I’ll stay here with Sharpie, if you don’t mind, Mr. Sheridan.”

  “Maybe I mind,” snapped O’Malley.

  I wanted to ask O’Malley what he thought Baldwin would do, run that great, thundering drill on the sly? But warning prickled the hairs on the back of my neck. I knew tunnels, and there were a thousand little things that could go wrong in one of them. Or could be made to go wrong.

  “Bring Sharpie out, Baldwin,” I said. He didn’t look happy, for a man who was winning the day, but he made no protest and as we all trooped out of that tunnel, Sharpie’s lumbering, thundering bulk brought up the rear.

  I blinked hard as I emerged into scalding sunlight and air as hot and wet as a barber’s towel. Around us, the men dispersed, the Irish in one direction and the blacks in the other. Emmett paused only long enough to pick up his rifle from where it stood beside the tunnel entrance.

  I was shaking. My lungs felt clogged and I coughed, racking my raw throat, but doing no good, though I hacked and spat, and hacked again. Is this how it feels for Rosamund?

  Croft came to stand beside me, but made no move to ask if I was all right. His gaze shifted from the Irish — lined up in front of Wilhelm and his kettle of stew — to the blacks sitting grouped on the ground with Emmett standing over them. I could make out John Henry at their centre, straight and proud as a warrior king, although he had to know he was already so far behind that he must lose.

  “Call it off,” muttered Croft.

  “What’s that?” I wiped at my mouth.

  “Call it off,” he repeated. “We’ve got no idea what’s going on here. Look at them,” he swept his hand out, encompassing Emmett, Baldwin and O’Malley all together. “What’re they really doing here? What do they really want?”

  “What’s gotten into you?”

  “I don’t know,” he whispered. “But I know I’m right. We’re not seeing it all. We’re being used, Louis.” His hand patted his coat, right over his gun.

  “Get a grip on yourself, man,” I snapped. “You’ve been breathing the tunnel air for too long. There’s brandy in my locker in the tent. I’ll send Wilhelm in with your food.”

  Croft took off his hat and passed his hand over his brow. “Maybe you’re right.” He walked away, ducked into the tent and left me alone.

  I mopped my brow and neck with my dirty, bloody handkerchief. A few hours more, I told myself. Only a few hours more.

  Then something crashed and I jerked my head up. Wilhelm was scrambling toward me. O’Malley’s men were no longer standing in line. They were huddled in a raggedy mob, and that mob was moving toward Baldwin and Sharpie.

  I swore and sprinted toward them. Baldwin had already seen them and he scrambled into the drill’s high seat.

  “Sharpie! Engarde!” Fear and anger rendered his scream shrill as a girl’s.

  The drill roared to life and the lanterns flashed bright even in the noon day sun. The twisting drill dropped down, pointed straight at the Irish mob. Not being complete fools, they fell back, but even as they retreated I saw men bend down to scoop up the plentiful stones from the ground.

  “STOP THIS!” I planted myself in between the mob and the whirring drill. Croft and Wilhelm were right behind me, Croft with the rifle in his hand and Wilhelm with his side arm. “Baldwin! Stop it!”

  Baldwin murmured something, and Sharpie exhaled steam. The drill stopped spinning but did not lower.

  “O’Malley! Come here!” I shot Croft a look, but there was no need. He was planted with his narrow back against Wilhelm’s. Croft faced the Irish, Wilhelm the drill. To the side stood Emmett, rifle at the ready, but whether defending his stock from the men poised on the brink of riot, or to keep the blacks from joining in, I couldn’t tell.

  I tried not to think about it. Rage sang through me as I reached the entrance to my tent and turned to face O’Malley.

  “What the hell’s going on here?” I demanded.

  “It’s what you see, Mr. Sheridan,” he answered coolly “My men don’t take well to this drill of yours.”

  “You and I had an agreement!”

  “To be sure, to be sure.” The mockery of his soothing tone was insufferable. “But I’m afraid the price of that agreement has gone up a wee bit, if you take my meaning.”

  “I’ll take it and stuff it down your ugly Irish throat!”

  O’Malley spread his hands and sighed as if sorry to see me lose my patience over so little. “And that’ll be your privil
ege Mr. Sheridan, but it won’t be gettin’ your tunnel dug now will it? ’Tis as you say, whatever happens, you need us terriers.”

  He’d been eavesdropping. I should have known, I should have thought... “You put the men up to this.”

  “Now, then, Mr. Sheridan, there’s no need for accusations. I will say there’s those among them been listening to too much of that nigger talk. They’re simple men, Sir, and they don’t like it none.”

  “Nigger talk?” I drew back, surprised. “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, that’s right, in your fine tent you don’t hear as much. But we were all sitting up last night listening to those boys telling stories about these new Babbage engines. Talk about them sucking the souls right out of Christian men and how that’s not water boilin’ in there, but lost souls. Talk of how down in New Orleans and over in London the machines are running loose, murderin’ whole families in their beds and filling the boilers with blood to make the dead ones rise up and walk after them, men obeyin’ the machines rather than the machines obeyin’ the men.”

  “Well, which is it they swallow — blood or souls?” I grumbled.

  O’Malley shrugged. “Hardly matters now, Sir, does it? And if it was just the monkeys, that would be one thing. But when young Thomas, straight from Belfast, is talking about the automatic horses that went mad and trampled down a priest and how right afterward the streets opened up and swallowed them whole in smoke and flame, well, that’s another thing altogether.”

  I gazed down at him. His blue eyes were wide and clear, and I would have sworn looking at him there was not a bit of guile in the man.

  “What do you want?” I whispered.

  “I want that drill out of here.”

  “Before it came, your men wouldn’t go into the tunnel and you wouldn’t send them. You can’t have it both ways, O’Malley.”

  “Now that they see the machines have come here too, they don’t mind the tunnel so much.” He smiled pleasantly. “One way or another, Mr. Sheridan, that drill is leavin’ here. If you’re the one that sends it, you’ll still have us terriers you need so much.” He paused again, hooking one dirty thumb around his belt. “I’d advise you to think carefully, Mr. Sheridan. That board of men that want their tunnel so much, well, they’re a long way away, aren’t they? Too far away to defend their interests.”