The Seekers

by F. M. Parker

  Startled, Levi took her by her shoulders and tried to push her back. Her arms dropped to his waist and she clung tightly to him.

  “I don’t know you,” Levi said, applying more effort and extracting himself from the girl’s arms.

  “But I’m Helen. Don’t you remember me, Sammy?”

  “My name’s not Sammy.”

  “Aren’t you Sammy Holbert?” the girl questioned, gazing up with wide brown eyes into Levi’s face.

  “No, miss, I’m not.”

  The girl pulled loose from Levi’s grip. She pressed her hands to her sides and began to back away.

  “Then I’m terribly sorry. I’ve made an awful fool of myself. Please forgive me.” She hastily turned away.

  Errin stepped quickly forward and his long right arm encircled the girl and pulled her to him. “Not so fast, girlie,” he said.

  The girl was instantly fighting him, her hands reaching up to scratch at his face. He captured her hands and yanked her hard against him, driving her breath out with a sharp swish.

  “Check your wallet,” Errin called to Levi.

  “What?”

  “Check your damn wallet!”

  Levi felt his hip pocket. “It’s gone,” he said.

  “Just as I thought,” Errin said. He tapped the struggling girl on the head with his knuckles. “Now stand still while I search you.”

  Errin had seen the girl’s hands, as she had pulled away from Levi, go into the folds of her dress. He slid his hands down her body. Levi’s wallet was tucked into a pocket sewn into her dress at the thigh. He withdrew the wallet and spun the girl around. “You’re not a very good pickpocket.”

  With an abrupt jerk she pulled free and started to dash away. But Errin with one swift step, recaptured her. He held her, feeling her soft and rounded body pressed to him.

  “How did you know she took my wallet?” Levi asked.

  “I’ve known a few pickpockets in my time.”

  “Please don’t turn me over to the Fearless Charlies,” the girl begged.

  “Fearless Charlies, what are they?” Errin asked.

  “The Charlies. The law.”

  Before Errin could reply, a harsh voice shouted from behind him. “Turn her loose.”

  Both Errin and Levi turned to look. A large, heavily built man was hurrying swiftly toward them. His beefy head was thrust belligerently forward.

  “Well, well, the guardian angel,” Errin said. He had seen the same combination of a pretty girl and a tough man teaming up to pick pockets in England.

  “I said turn her loose,” bellowed the man advancing upon Errin.

  “Why should I do that? She’s just a little thief and should be locked up.”

  “If you don’t get your hands off her, I’m going to break your head.”

  Levi glanced at Errin and saw a look of wildness come into his eyes, yet a calculated, controlled wildness. Levi would come to know that expression. It was a warning to the man if only he could read it. Levi checked the girl held snugly against Errin by his arm. Her white teeth were bared like a young animal caught in a trap. As he watched, her expression changed from that of pleading to one of anticipation of being freed from Errin’s hold.

  “You’re not man enough to break my head,” Errin said, his words like pieces of iron hitting together.

  “Like hell I’m not,” the guardian said. He grinned wickedly. “I’ve broken the heads of men a hell of a lot bigger than you.” He moved forward, his eyes squinted almost shut in his broad face.

  “Hold her.” Errin flung the girl to Levi.

  Errin growled, a guttural sound deep in his chest. He leapt at the man, his body moving with unnatural speed and formidable strength. His fist lashed out, a ferocious blow to the man’s face. The guardian halted dead in his tracks. Almost too fast to see, Errin struck again, and again, left and right. The man crumpled to the sidewalk.

  Errin, rubbing his bruised knuckles on the front of his jacket, turned back to Levi and the girl. “Now, Miss Pickpockets, we’ll see about you.”

  The girl, her arm held by Levi, raised her eyes from the man on the ground to Errin’s face. Her eyes were hard with surprise and disappointment. “I don’t want to go to jail. They do awful things to girls in there. Isn’t there some way I can pay you to let me go?”

  “What did you have in mind?” Errin asked.

  “I could give you and your friend some loving.” She caught Errin by the hand and held it tenderly.

  “Levi, what do you say to that? Does some loving sound good to you?”

  “I don’t think I want any part of it.”

  “She’s pretty and it was your wallet.”

  “I’ll pass.”

  “We’re partners and agreed to share everything.” There was a smile behind Errin’s eyes. His new friend was even more innocent than he looked.

  “Not girls. That doesn’t seem right. Are you going to take her up on her offer?”

  “Maybe you’ve had a girl recently. I haven’t had one in a very long time.”

  The girl’s eyes fastened on Errin. “How long has it been for you?”

  “Almost five years.” The scent of her perfume and her hand clasping his were tantalizing promises that had awakened all the memories of the pleasure a woman’s soft body could give a man.

  The girl sensed Errin’s desire for her and she smiled and her eyes flashed. “I’ll give you the best time you’ve ever had. Both of you, if you like.”

  Errin ran his fingers along the girl’s cheek. “I’ll surely take some of that. But first.” He bent, lifted the unconscious man, and carried him to a nearby park bench. He laid the man so that it appeared he was sleeping.

  He returned and took the girl by the arm. He spoke to Levi. “Are you certain you don’t want some of this pretty little thing? She’s willing to take both of us on and promises a good time.”

  “You go ahead by yourself. I’ll wait for you.” Levi was looking at the girl and she seemed disappointed at his refusal to join with Errin.

  “All right if that’s the way you want it. Hang around here close somewhere so I can find you when I’m finished. Could be a little while for I’ve a lot to catch up on.” He pulled the girl close and walked off with her.

  The man on the bench began to moan. Levi moved hastily away. He didn’t want to be close when the man became fully conscious, or a policeman appeared and began to ask questions.

  Levi looked along the street at the girl in the blue dress hanging on the arm of the well-dressed Englishman and smiling up into his face. The pair could be taken for lovers.

  Errin had proved himself a fierce fighter, but what kind of a business partner would he make? Would he also become a friend? Don’t worry about that now, Levi told himself, for the arrangement was most probably only temporary.

  Chapter 15

  “I know men in England who became rich by working kids, working thousands of them,” Errin said. “Some of the kids were only six, seven years old. They got only a few pennies a day for twelve hours of the meanest kind of jobs. Orphans got no pay at all, only a little food, damn poor food, and a roof over their heads.”

  “I’d never work kids,” Levi said.

  “It’s nothing but slavery and pure hell for the kids.” Errin remembered becoming aware of the existence of the world about him in the parish orphanage on Turnmill Street in London. He had questioned the overseer about his parents. The man had answered not one query, either not knowing or deciding not to respond. At six years of age, Errin had been shipped away from the orphanage, along with fourteen other boys of like age to the industrial center of Derbyshire, and into the cotton mill that would be his home and place of labor. Twelve hours every day he worked, from cold dawn to weary night with his lungs full of cotton dust. He had proved rebellious from the first day onward. Punishment came immediately and each time it became more severe. He had borne scars long before the King’s prison engulfed him and the cat-o’-nine-tails had cut its signature on his back. F
or refusing to feed the billy bobbin on the weaving machine in the mill, the foreman had whipped him with a leather strap, cutting his tender, young flesh. Then the foreman screwed two iron vises of a pound weight each to his ears. The iron had hung on Errin until he agreed to work. He still had scars from the vises. But that first interval of submission was short lived. Again he refused to work and was stripped of his clothing and hung by a rope around his wrists on a cross-beam above the weaving machinery. After hanging for hours, he had caved in and gone back to work. That was the very last time he had ever surrendered to punishment. Errin remembered his final day as a child slave in the cotton mill. He had fallen asleep in the late part of the shift. He awoke to find his hands still going through the motion of feeding the bobbin with the machinery stopped and all the other children gone. The foreman had made his head count and finding his number short by one, had come back into the mill with his strap. As the man drew back the strap to strike, Errin dove past him and into the day and the world beyond the walls of the cotton mill. The people on the street watched the raggedy, skinny urchin dart past. He vanished into a warren of shacks, raced onward past decaying tenements, running along narrow, tangled alleys choked with garbage and offal.

  Levi heard the sadness and anger in Errin’s voice. Was he once one of the orphans? Perhaps one day Errin would tell him more about his early life.

  Levi and Errin had left the lodging house where they had spent the night and were moving along the sidewalk toward the waterfront. They had talked late into the night about what type of enterprise they should undertake to make their fortune. They had arrived at no plan worth pursuing. They were continuing the discussion as they walked along.

  On the sidewalk ahead, a tall, gangly black man leaned against the side of a building and looked at the people as they passed. He saw Errin and Levi approaching, and noting the quality of their clothing, drew himself up straight. When they were a few feet away, he stepped out into the middle of the sidewalk and whipped off his hat.

  “Good day, sirs, would you gentlemen be needin’ any work done today? I’d work real cheap.” The black man’s words had come in a rush.

  Errin and Levi halted at the man’s sudden movement into their path and his rapid gunshot of words. “What’s that you want?” Errin asked.

  “Work. A job. I need a job.”

  “We don’t have any work for you,” Levi said, surprised at the man’s request.

  Errin saw the disappointment come into the man’s black eyes. “Where’s your master?” he asked. “Does he know what you’re up to?”

  “I’m a free man,” the Negro said, his eyes direct and proud. “I’ve got no master.” Then he smiled wistfully. “Except the master of hunger which is drivin’ me hard right now.”

  “I thought all blacks were slaves in America,” Errin said to Levi.

  “There’s a sizeable number of free blacks in the North. Some even in the Southern states. All of them here will be free since California voted against slavery and supports the Union cause.”

  “What wage would you take for a day’s work?” Errin asked the black man.

  “A carpenter or a bricklayer would make three dollars a day. I’d work for half of that.”

  “How many black men do you know of who are looking for work?” Errin asked. A thought was jelling in his mind.

  “Hundreds. Most white bosses won’t hire us because their white workers pick fights with us. But we got to work to eat same as white men.”

  Errin spoke to Levi. “Hundreds of men who’ll work cheap. Levi, that gives me an idea.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We find work for them.” Errin pointed at a crew of men passing with a wagonload of wooden planks. “The timbers of the streets must always be breaking and need replacing. That’s a lot of work.” He gestured in the opposite direction. “There are many new houses being built on the hills. More work.”

  Levi joined in. “I saw a big warehouse and a new pier under construction on the waterfront, and two new steamships being built for the Union Navy at the shipyards.”

  “Right. And the foundries, factories, and weaving mills are all busy. We should be able to find work for a hundred men.”

  “Two hundred,” Levi said.

  Errin spoke to the black man. “Meet us here in say three hours. Just maybe we’ll have a job for you.”

  “I’ll be here, unless I find one myself.”

  “What’s your name?” Errin asked.

  “Isaiah Green.”

  “All right, Isaiah Green, wish us luck.”

  “I sure do,” Isaiah said.

  “I think we’re onto something good,” Levi said.

  “Yeah, we can take a cut of every man’s wage that we find a job for. Let’s try the foundries first. That’s some of the hardest work to be found and should be the easiest place to contract out some workers.”

  * * *

  “Stoking the furnaces and pouring the hot iron are the meanest jobs,” said the foundry owner as he studied the two neatly dressed young men. “The workers don’t like the hellish heat and the fumes. The men don’t last long before they quit.”

  “We’ve got men that’ll last,” Errin said. “They’re black and they’re hungry.” He was looking past the man and through the inner office door into the foundry with its strong wooden benches laden with large molds and castings. Twenty or so men were hard at work. The furnaces were at the far end of the foundry. Still he could smell them and feel the heat coming through the open door.

  “I don’t hire blacks. They bring trouble.”

  “They’ll work cheaper than the white men,” Errin said.

  “That doesn’t make any difference. I still don’t want them. My white workers would leave.”

  “Maybe there’s a way to get them accepted by the rest of your crew,” Levi said. “I saw it work in Cincinnati. Tell your white workers that you’ve decided white men shouldn’t have to work at the furnaces. That those jobs are suited only for blacks. Whites should always have the better jobs.”

  The foundry owner looked sharply at Levi. “The whites might buy that. How cheap will your blacks work?”

  Levi and Errin looked questioningly at each other. “You decide for I don’t know your wages here,” Errin said.

  “What’s your usual pay?” Levi asked.

  “Two dollars seventy-five for a twelve-hour day.”

  “How many furnace men do you work?”

  “Four.”

  “We can supply four men who’ll work for two dollars.”

  “One seventy-five,” quickly countered the foundry owner.

  “One-ninety,” Levi said.

  “Done. When can they start?”

  “Tomorrow morning.”

  “What guarantee do I have that your blacks will stay? If my white workers buy my story about the job at the furnaces being fit only for blacks, they’ll not want to go back to them.”

  Levi looked inquiringly at Errin. “How can we guarantee they’ll stay?”

  Errin held out his hand to the foundry owner. “You have our word that if the blacks don’t stay, Levi and I will work the furnace for a week. We’ll bring two white men with us. That should show whites are not too good to do the work.”

  The foundry owner shook Errin’s hand and then Levi’s. “Then we have a bargain. Work begins at six in the morning and ends at six in the evening.”

  “All right,” Errin said. “You pay us and we’ll pay our men,” Errin said.

  “What are the blacks really working for?” asked the foundry man.

  “One dollar and ninety cents,” Errin replied. “We receive a few pennies for finding them jobs and guaranteeing their work.”

  “Fair enough. I’ll see you and your blacks tomorrow morning at six sharp.”

  Errin and Levi left the foundry. Once clear of the door, Errin clasped Levi by the shoulder and playfully shook him.

  “Well done, partner. That was our first test and we passed. Was that the trut
h about the workers in Cincinnati?”

  “I was told that by a friend, so I’m sure it’s so.”

  “Let’s find Isaiah Green and have him get us the men we need.”

  “Then we’ll find more jobs to fill.”

  “Some of them should be for white men,” Errin said. “We can catch the new arrivals coming fresh off the ships. In a new country I believe they would want us to help them find jobs.” He smiled. “Don’t tell any of them we just got here, too.”

  “We’re honest-to-God businessmen,” Levi said proudly.

  “We need an office. You rent us one, and a house. I’ll start rounding up workers and finding jobs for them.”

  “Right,” Levi said.

  Errin smiled inwardly. This was the very first time he had made an honest penny since he was a child. After running away from the weaving mills of Liverpool, he stole to survive. A daring lad, he became a sneak-thief, a “snow gatherer,” stealing clean clothes from off the hedges where they were hung to dry. Used clothes had value and could be easily sold. He drifted back to London where he became a “star glazer” cutting the valuable panes of glass from shop windows in the night. There were fences always willing to pay for the expensive, hard-to-obtain glass. As his size and courage increased, he became a “snoozer” sleeping at railway hotels and decamping with some passenger’s luggage that happened to be left unguarded for a moment. For several years he earned his food, good food, and stylish clothing in this manner. Then a grand opportunity opened for Errin. In one set of rich luggage stolen from the Hellspont Hotel, he found a brace of silver-inlaid pistols. He had held the beautiful single-shot, cap-and-ball pistols in his hands and marveled at them, and what they could mean to him. The top of the heap of thieves was the highwayman. He would become one of that elite class. He went often into the countryside and practiced with his pistols. His hands seemed to have a natural aptitude for the weapons. When he was satisfied with his skill, he traveled to Birmingham and stole a beautiful gray horse. He became a “two pops and a galloper,” a mounted highwayman with two pistols prowling the King’s highways and “bailing up,”—waylaying and robbing—the rattling coachmen.