The Hanging Women

by John Mead

  “A desirable outcome but unlikely, I expect,” Stevens commented. “There is always someone on watch or wakeful enough in such places. What happens if they can’t breech the front door?”

  “They retreat behind the wagons, pushing them over for cover and return fire from there,” Pinky told him. “The inspector plans to have men on the roof who will try to gain entry from there as well.”

  “The buildings have flat roofs,” Pug said, pulling his horse, that seemed keen to get to its destination, back in line with the other two that jogged along at a more leisurely pace, “he will have two men on the roof opposite as well to cover the upper story windows. Other men will clear the apartments opposite the house we raid so the occupants are not caught by stray bullets.”

  “More men follow on behind,” Pinky looked back as they crossed West 31st Street and continued heading south, but could see no sign of the additional force, “they will cordon the streets to keep onlookers and passersby away.”

  “It sounds a well thought out plan,” Jack commented. “How many apartments in the house?”

  “Five, we are told,” Pug commented. “One on the first floor opposite a kitchen, that extends out the back, then upstairs on the second floor are two apartments and same again on the third floor with stairs continuing up to the roof. The sergeant says they have counted sixteen men inside including Jaunty and Joe, with four fancy girls in addition.”

  “All well armed no doubt,’ Jack assumed.

  “Given what they found when they raided Ruby’s they suspect there may be dynamite as well,” Pinky added with a deep scowl, he had experience of blowing up a house and had not liked the results so did not enjoy the possible outlook of a repeat of the situation.

  “It’ll be hot work then,” Jack commented sourly, he had had his fill of such actions many years previous in the war and preferred those situations he could control as a sniper. “Who covers the gable end? I take it they will have men there to co-ordinate what is done out back with what is happening at the front?”

  “Magnuson on the front corner, another sergeant on the rear,” Pug said, struggling with his horse who still hankered to take the lead. The streets remained near empty as the small convey headed southwest, the delivery wagons and occasional pedestrian taking little heed of them. Jack had expected a destination closer to the stockyards, from what he had previously been told, and was surprised when the wagons pulled over much further to the northwest then he expected. They were on the corner of a street with the wall of the manufacturing works to their left and the gable end of the Kings house opposite, the large communal rear yard could be seen in front of them and the turning into the street that fronted the block of houses was just a few paces beyond the gable end to their left.

  “You all know your orders,” O’Leary told them standing on the driver’s seat of the first carriage and calling back in a stage whisper to the others. “You will follow my lead, I will blow a sharp whistle as we burst in the front door, fire if we are fired on, cease fire once you hear a second whistle.” With that the inspector dismounted, five other men following him to stand at his side. Magnuson and a uniformed sergeant took up their positions at each corner of the gable end, two other constables ran, doubled over, one to the apartments opposite and one through the yard to the house next to the Kings, to tell the officers waiting inside that O’Leary was in position.

  The remainder of the policemen were preparing the wagons to follow the first wave into the street, the horses would be taken off once the wagons were in position to avoid their injury or panic in any gunfire. Whilst the Pinkertons and Jack drew their mounts up ready to canter forward and take their positions at the rear, Jack already decided to ride over to the kitchen extension and clamber onto its flat roof as the raid started. Inevitably things where not to go as planned.

  Inspector O’Leary led his men round the corner and barely before they reached the front door, shouts could be heard from inside followed by the breaking of glass and shots. The inspector’s whistle sounded a piercing blast, followed by shouts of, “Police! Open up!” For a moment the advance force were pinned down, either huddled in the porch or crouched against the wall, though they returned fire as best they could to stop those inside leaning out to shoot them. However, their predicament quickly changed as as the police carriages pulled round the corner and those on board opened fire, as did the men positioned on the roof opposite, pinning the defenders down. O’Leary tried shooting the lock but the door was heavily barred on the inside so he and his men retreated to the wagons, now forming up at either side and opposite the house front.

  Jack and the Pinkertons set out for the rear yard as the whistle sounded but Jack peeled off and pulled his horse against the wall and, using the saddle as a step, hauled himself up onto the flat roof of the kitchen. Almost immediately he found Pinky climbing up behind him,

  “Pug and the others will watch the back,” the Pinkerton, almost gleefully, told Jack as they stepped up to the rear window of the second floor, gable end apartment. Not stopping to look in, the pair smashed the glass with their rifle butts and tore down the curtains, waking a women sleeping in the bed who screamed like a pricked demon. A man, half a sleep, was with her in the bed and the naked pair tumbled over each other trying to get free of the bedclothes. Another man lay in a second cot to the left of the window and, as Jack and Pinky smashed their way in, he sat up gun in hand. Neither Jack nor Pinky hesitated, smoothly reversing their rifles, and fired killing the man instantly.

  The first man, now shrieking to match the banshee wail of his bed companion, threw up his hands and shouted, “Don’t fire, I’m unarmed. Don’t fire!”

  Pinky reached over the woman and clouted the man with the butt of his rifle, knocking him senseless. Then pulled the naked woman out of the bed, shouting, “Get underneath and stay hid, keep out of the way.” Jack jumped past him to the bedroom door that led to the front room, ready to fire as he dropped to his knee in the doorway. There was a man with a rifle already halfway across the room to help repulse the attack on the rear bedroom, another knelt by the window firing out into the street.

  Jack put two bullets into the man advancing on him, a shot from the man’s rifle splintering the wood above Jack’s head. The man by the window turned, firing as he did so, as Jack ducked back. One of the man’s bullets hit the open door, another smacked into the wall beyond the door and the third hit the floor just beyond Jack’s knee. Jack could hear gunfire from both the front of the house and the rear, shouts and calls from all over but through it all he listened intently for the sound of the man moving position and was rewarded by hearing him crash into a chair as he attempted to flee the room. Jack barely had to poke his rifle round the door frame and the man, retreating through the door into the hall, put himself squarely in Jack’s sights. Stevens squeezed the trigger as the man half flew out of the room but wasn’t certain if he had hit the fleeing man.

  Jack was up, but Pinky was quicker and was through the bedroom door and at the hall door before Jack could take a pace, his left leg still slowing him. Pinky put two shots into the man who sprawled on the hall floor, then launched himself out into the hall aiming to cross it and enter the room opposite. However, shots from inside the other apartment, the door of which was open, caused Pinky to do a neat duck and roll to seek cover at the top of the stairs going down to the floor below. As Jack reached the door of the first apartment Pinky was already returning fire with those in the front room of the second apartment. From the cover of his doorway Stevens was in a much better position to see the occupants of the other room, opening fire himself and sending the three men he could see diving for cover.

  Above him on the third floor he could here shouts of, “Police, put down your weapons!” intermingling with gun fire. The men O’Leary had put on the roof had forced their way in and down the stairs onto the floor above and were clearing the two apartments up there of combatants. Jack signalled
to Pinky that they should move to either side of the door opposite so they could shoot into the room at different angles and keep the occupants pinned down. Even as they went to move the gun battle that had raged at the front of the house suddenly went quite and shouts of, “Police, put your weapons down! Hands up!” could be heard from the front downstairs rooms, the police having finally entered the house from the street through the windows, the frames of which had been virtually shot out.

  The battle for the house, with just a few remaining defenders at the rear, was almost over. Jack nodded to Pinky that they should move now and take the room opposite when a roar shook the house. The floor seemed to jump and both Jack and Pinky instinctively threw themselves down. A pall of dust and smoke billowed up from the first floor rear, where the kitchen was, its door blown out by the blast. Shouts, screams and gun fire could be heard from all directions. Jack, his ears ringing, could see figures moving in the smoke through the blown out kitchen doorway below.

  “Hold them here, Pinky!” Jack yelled at the detective huddled on the stair top. “The police will join you from above and below in a few seconds.” As Pinky, nodding in understanding, fired a shot through the door opposite to keep the occupant’s head down whilst Jack leapt up and back into the room they had just vacated. As he scrambled out of the window, he had only recently smashed in, he took in two images, one was the naked female coiled up in the corner of the bedroom hands over her head and crying pitifully, and a man half-hanging out of the window above. The latter had obviously been shot through and now hung down his hands flapping like the ends of curtains in the breeze. As Jack moved across the flat roof of the kitchen he saw the Pinkertons, led by Pug, climbing into the rear window of the first floor back room and smashing into the kitchen.

  As Jack reached the edge of the kitchen roof, he saw smoke and dust still billowing out across the street, debris where the wall had been blown out were strewn across the street to the high wall of the works opposite. Figures were running through the smoke, the uniformed sergeant was sprawled in the road unmoving but Jack could not see anything of Magnuson. Jack was stood directly over the hole blown in the gable end wall, a man emerged with a second close behind.

  “Stop! Hands up!” Jack shouted, firing down between them for emphasis that he meant business. The second man jumped back into the building but the first ducked and turned to face upwards pointing both the pistols he held, one in either hand, up at Jack. Jack fired down, two more shots, directly into the upturned face of the man he did not recognise as Joseph Mannheim. Jack quickly let himself down the wall to the ground, he could hear the police and Pinkertons shooting at those now trapped in the kitchen to, “Give up! Drop your weapons!” Jack had no intention of getting himself shot by sticking his head in the hole that gaped in the wall, knowing whoever was to emerge next might come out shooting he backed away a few paces. Then he heard a shot from behind him, from the street they had first paused in, where O’Leary had given his final brief orders, only minutes though feeling a lifetime ago.

  The smoke and dust cloud from the explosion was clearing and, turning to where the shot had come from, he could see two men fighting on the ground. Jack rushed over, his injured leg forgotten, and seeing that one man was Sergeant Magnuson and the other not, brought the butt of his rifle down sharply onto the head of the man who wasn’t a police sergeant. A second man lay prone on the ground a few paces off, another escapee but this one shot by the sergeant before tackling the man Jack had knocked out.

  “Tipwell, Jaunty Tipwell, has made off, down the road,” Magnuson shouted as Jack hauled him to his feet, the sergeant leaping away after the fugitive before Jack could take in what he’d heard. Stevens, slow to follow, turned the corner to the front of the manufacturing works, the back of which was opposite the gable end of the house they had raided. Had the police, that had followed on the heels of O’Leary’s main detachment, not been occupied in keeping a few early workers and residents of the area back from where the raid was taking place, Jaunty might not have gotten through.

  “Which way did they go? Which way?” Jack shouted at no one in particular, “Two men came running this way, which way did they go?”

  “Down there!” a number in the crowd shouted back.

  Then a constable seeing Jack and guessing he pursued someone who escaped the raid, pointed up the street, “Up there, a man run past heading for the stable further down.” Even as the uniformed man spoke, Jack saw a man in a colourful suit burst out of the stable on horseback, it could only be Jaunty making good his escape. A cabman stood in his seat well, leaning on his cab roof so he could get a better view of what occurred over the top of the growing crowd at the works gates.

  “Follow that horseman,” Jack shouted to the driver, running over to the cab and grabbing the door handle.

  “No way copper,” came the emphatic reply, the driver looking down as if at a madman, “I ain’t paid enough by any fare to get myself shot at.”

  “Then get out of the way,” Jack yelled back, using the wheel spokes like a ladder to launch himself upwards and half-leapt half-scrambled onto the seat. The driver, taken by surprise, fell backwards, arms flaying for a handhold to stop him falling. By the time he had righted himself and started to shout at Jack to, “Stop, get out you thief! Get off!” Jack had the reins and was urging the horse to turn and set off.

  “Get off yourself,” Jack pointed his colt at the driver, causing him to freeze, as the cab started to bound off, the horse jerking it forward. “Jump down or ride in the back but get in my way and I’ll put a bullet in your dammed guts.” The driver, ashen faced, took his cue and jumped down from the side of the moving vehicle, landing on his feet then tumbling head over arse in the road, ending up sitting upright in the middle of the road staring in disbelief at the back of his vehicle racing away.

  As Jack settled to his task of getting to grips with the reins and setting the horse off to a fast trot, his Winchester on the seat beside him, his colt back in his shoulder holster, he realised the rider not more than a hundred paces in front of him was Sergeant Magnuson; Jaunty Tipwell being nowhere in sight.

  Pug and O’Leary were both covered in dust, so much so that they looked like walking statues of themselves.

  “Pinky will be bringing the women out, he has found them sheets and blankets enough to cover them,” Pug explained, spitting to clear his throat, as he coughed up more smoke and dust. “Where do you want them, sent to your station or somewhere closer.”

  “We are still getting the injured and dead away, until we have appropriate covered carriages free have them put in one of the houses across the street,” O’Leary instructed him. “The good people living opposite have opened their doors for the comfort of the wounded. There is water to be had in there,” the inspector went on as Pug continued to cough, “to clear your throat.”

  “A good idea, I feel like I have eaten a bucket of dirt,” Pug nodded his thanks as his throat was starting to feel raw. “What is the tally?”

  “Fifteen men from the house are accounted for, five are killed, two others badly wounded from the explosion, the remainder with minor injuries,” the inspector recited, the numbers were indelibly engraved on his mind as this had not been the normal raid that had left a few with broken heads and bruises but something far more deadly. “Of our officers, one constable is fatally wounded and there is a priest with him… ”

  “God give him comfort,” Pug muttered, seeing O’Leary’s dour expression beneath the layer of dust that covered his face. The Pinkerton realised this one death meant more to the inspector than the the others combined.

  “Yes,” O’Leary seemed grateful for the few words, “we pray for him but the doctor has said it is beyond hope, he was shot twice in the chest. Sergeant Henley has a broken arm and is still dazed by the explosion but otherwise uninjured, three other men have minor wounds that need tending, the others have nothing worse than cuts and bruises.”
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  “Given the number of bullets fired back and forth we are lucky the count was not higher,” Pug opinioned. “Is there any news of Sergeant Magnus or Stevens in their pursuit of Tipwell?”

  “None,” the inspector said, turning away to help Pinky and another of the Pinkertons to assist them in escorting the fancy girls, all of whom seemed shocked and distressed by the events they had witnessed, “though I take that as a good sign as they have obviously not given up their pursuit to report back.”

  Jack soon realised their chase was a bizarre one, both Jaunty and Magnus must have taken animals from the stables that were being prepared to be hitched to wagons, just how this occurred Stevens had no idea but it meant both men rode without a saddle, hanging on to what little harness had been placed on the animals. Both animals, being unused to being ridden, barely reached a canter, just fast enough to out distance a running man but little more. Jaunty, a city boy all his life, was the worst of the two riders and more than once nearly fell off his mount, bouncing around on the beast’s back like some clown in a wild west show. Magnuson was, therefore, slowly closing the gap between them but so imperceptibly that it would take a couple of hours for him to actually catch-up to the man he chased.

  Jack drove the carriage pell-mell, the horse was strong and seemed to savour being given its head, but dragging the cab behind gave it a considerable handicap. On the straights he actually managed to make up ground but each corner or swerve round another road user put them back and slowly they were losing ground on the two riders. As morning broke the roads were getting busier and presented more obstacles to Jack and the cab than the men riding horses. At one busy intersection Jack almost caused a collision which was avoided only by his mounting the pavement with a crash and bump that almost threw him over. Almost having lost sight of those he followed, Jack had stood up, whipping his horse on; the game animal responded with a turn of speed that would have rivalled that of an ancient chariot charging into battle. Cornering was now a game of russian roulette with the cab in considerable danger of turning over, other road users cursed and struggled to avoid the out of control cab that hurtled down the centre of the street.