She opened the letter and began to read.
<><><>
A couple of weeks earlier, while Captain Swain was visiting his ailing mother in Salt Lake City, two messages came to him from Denver. The first was delivered in person by Winnie, Haywood’s mistress. It was Haywood’s instructions: Swain was to go to San Francisco within a week, find Adams and permanently deny him the capacity to testify in Boise. Swain was not to be assuaged by Adams’s attested loyalty to the Federation, nor accept any promise that Adams would lie under oath.
Then, as Swain was preparing to leave Salt Lake, the second message arrived. It was a telegram cryptically advising Swain that Adams and the Pinkertons wouldn’t be in San Francisco for yet another week, and that he was to avoid injury to P-JG. Thankful for the extra time, he stayed with his mother for three more days. Considering the P-JG part, Swain had no idea who that meant, other than guessing the P meant Pinkerton. And as he had no intention of injuring any Pinkerton, he put it aside in his mind.
When he finally did arrive in San Francisco, he quickly learned about the burned city’s most recent tragedies: the Branson family poisoning, and a recent crash at the Ingleside Racetrack where a driver, his assistant, and one spectator had died. The poisoning confirmed Adams’s presence a few days earlier, as Swain knew Branson had been Adams’s target. That meant Swain had been given bad information and arrived too late.
But had Adams then left the Bay? Curiously, witnesses said the Ingleside crash was caused by a fight alongside the back rail, and the dead spectator had been stabbed just before the automobile hit him. When Captain Swain investigated, he learned the corpse was wagoned away by three men showing Pinkerton credentials. So, not only had Adams already been there, Adams had killed a Pinkerton. Might it have been JG? Swain hoped not. If it was, Haywood might blame Swain. Blamed for a killing he hadn’t done—even though he’d come for that very purpose, to kill a man.
Though Swain avoided the memory of shooting the doctor in Castle Rock—violence he’d done for Haywood—at least the doctor had lived. But now he was tracking a man for the sole purpose of taking his life. He was reminded of a similar mission twenty years earlier, tracking Geronimo through the Sierra Madre mountains of northern Mexico. There he had orders to bring the outlaw Apache back “dead or alive.” But for this client, the mission objective was “dead and disappeared.”
Before arriving in San Francisco, Swain’s heart and head had wrestled what he should do. But then he arrived late and a depression of foolishness and ineptitude came over him—he was tired of being a step behind. Only a renewed, locked, and focused resolve could lift Swain’s melancholy. But as it did, so too did it silently evaporate the ethical dilemma.
One thing was probable: Adams was on the run. But in which direction? If Adams went west, to sea, then the pursuit was over and Swain would have failed. He could see it clearly, like cascading dominoes—even though Adams would still not be in Boise to testify, Swain wouldn’t get the credit. Nor would Haywood admit fault in the error of the timing. That would mean Swain wouldn’t be hired further by the union, likely spelling the end to Swain’s career.
Considering that, he decided to have an alternate hunch. He chose to believe Adams fled east, back to familiar territory. Probably to Sacramento, and then into the Sierra Nevadas—perhaps thinking its played-out mines were safe from Pinkertons. If so, then that was good—Swain knew well the high Sierras. Or maybe Adams would travel further east, into Nevada—land scarce of Pinkertons. Or, better yet, on to Utah, where the Mormons would just as soon shoot a Pinkerton as tell him the time. So, as he left San Francisco on an east-bound California Special, Captain Swain’s mind was fixed on murder, without a twinge of moral conflict.
<><><>
– 36 –
SATURDAY
March 9, 1907
General Dodge, president of Union Pacific Railroad, was standing in one of his private Pullman rail cars as it rumbled toward Cheyenne, Wyoming, the train having taken water and coal, and changed engines in Pocatello, Idaho. His bushy white mustache was suspended above a map of the West, a giant cloud floating high over the Rockies. “How do you know this, Detective?” he asked.
“Someone in Denver,” replied McParland, sitting on a nearby velvet couch, one hand grasping the knob of his cane, the other smoothing his own obdurate mustache.
Dodge frowned. “You must have high regard for their accuracy, them knowing precisely where Haywood will be.”
“I do.”
“Any other source giving you the same information?”
“Perhaps.”
“Detective, your entire operation—and my attachment of the resources of Union Pacific, its reputation and my men, thousands of dollars in costs, and lost revenue of greater sums—all pivots on one piece of information from one person?”
“We’re already en route, General,” snapped McParland, unfamiliar with the sting of having his decisions second-guessed.
“Hmmph.” Dodge’s eyes narrowed. “We’ll be suspending rail operations across the eastern front range and the heart of our west-bound traffic while you conduct this operation, which may get some innocent people shot, or some run over as you speed back through these towns. I have some experience with this.”
McParland used his cane to lever himself to his feet. “You and I, and Senator Borah and others, have discussed the risks, have we not?” He turned and addressed a group of men at the far end of the car: four Pinkertons playing cards with Charles Siringo. “Charlie, might I get one of those cigars you brought?”
Siringo stood and carried a scowl and a cigar to the detective.
McParland cut, licked, and lit the cigar. Then, adopting a convivial tone, he said, “I’m glad you’re enjoying General Dodge’s whiskey, Charlie, but I advise you not to forget—those other men are sober. You may lose your shirt.”
“Nah, the more I drink, the more I can read a man, see the cards he’s holding. Fat lady’s gonna sing for em.” Siringo turned to General Dodge. “You and I don’t know each other, Sir.”
“You’d best go back,” said McParland, puffing blue smoke.
“Name’s Siringo.”
“Yes, yes,” Dodge said. “I’ve heard some about you.”
“Some true, some not, I reckon.”
“As with me,” chuckled Dodge.
Siringo stepped closer. “It’s no secret I don’t give two shits of a regard for my old employer.” He motioned toward McParland.
McParland shook his head. “Charlie and I are old friends.”
“Time was, I near got myself killed in his employ,” Siringo continued. “Even so, if he says his Denver spy is gold, then he’s gold—or she is.” He winked, adding, “Old Necessity’s got a few ladies working for him.”
McParland winced for several reasons, starting with Siringo’s use of the less-than-flattering appellation. Also, he hadn’t realized Siringo had been listening to their earlier conversation. And most galling was Siringo’s remark that the detective’s source might be a woman. Not that it would surprise General Dodge, but it was much too revelatory of the truth for McParland’s comfort.
“Might be skinning the fish, ears first,” said Dodge. “We’ll see.”
“Suppose we will,” said Siringo, moving through the cigar cloud, returning to the poker game. “Alright, you lily-livered Pink sassies, hand me your money!”
The two older men stepped from earshot of Siringo and the others. “What’s his role in this?” asked Dodge.
“He supplied an important … prop … for our upcoming theatrics,” said McParland. “Plus, he’s my ghost hare. He’s a pariah to the Federation. Known to want revenge on Haywood.”
“What for?” asked Dodge, looking down the car at Siringo.
“This. That. Everything between,” said McParland.
“So his presence in Denver will be known quickly,”
said Dodge.
“Aye. Then, before we run north, he’ll be seen southbound.”
“You think he’ll pull Haywood’s men?”
“Some of them, I hope. If not, then at least it’ll get them talking that direction—once they realize Haywood is gone.”
Dodge nodded. “You’re dusting the air with him.”
“Aye,” said the detective. “Dusting the air.”
“Might get the man killed.”
“We’ll guard him down to Pueblo, then put him onto an A.T. to Texas.”
Dodge nodded faintly, his thoughts having turned elsewhere. “Right after you leave Denver, all rail operations will resume.”
“As we’ve agreed,” said McParland.
“Meaning,” Dodge continued, “within an hour, a hundred armed Federation men will be on the next train north—coming right behind you.”
“I know,” said McParland. “But the ones behind us won’t concern me near as much as the ones that’ll be ahead. According to Senator Borah, every sheriff from Denver to Boise will get a telegram ordering them to board us with a habeas corpus warrant.”
“I don’t want you shooting up my train—or getting it derailed.”
“Our Cassidy stations will work,” McParland said, uneasy with the older man’s recitation of the railroad’s rules for this operation. He moved to the table and looked at the map spread there. It bore a series of inked dots, numbered one to eleven, beginning on the railroad just north of Denver and continuing up to Cheyenne, and then northwest to Boise. The dots were in what appeared to be remote locations, similar to where the brass pins had been in McParland’s wall map at the Idanha Hotel. He rolled his cigar on the edge of a dish, depositing a plug’s worth of ash.
“We were in the middle of Georgia,” began the general, now standing on the other side of the table. “We sped forty miles where the Rebs were thickest, running full bore—like a cat on fire. General Sherman ordered us not to stop and we didn’t. Ran right past three depots. Killed at least one person—a woman who didn’t expect us to come roaring past. That was three depots across forty miles.” He knuckle-thumped the map. “Here you’ve got over nine hundred miles and, what’s that, about seventy depots of one sort or another—all of which you must avoid slowing near, must assume are hostile to your endeavor.”
“Aye.”
“If anyone gets killed, or if some judge raises a fuss,” Dodge said, rubbing his forehead with the back of his thumb, “Union Pacific will deny allowing it. We won’t know anything about it.”
“Mn-huh.”
“So if some lawman gets you stopped, you let him board.”
“I understand.”
“And you’ll have to turn Haywood over.”
“As agreed.”
Dodge pressed on. “The engine crew will be required to stop if they believe the track’s compromised, if the train might derail. You understand, correct?”
“Aye,” groused McParland. Tired of feeling interrogated, he pivoted to take the lead. “Are you confident you’ll have the stations set by Thursday? Water, coal, and engines?”
Dodge’s aged eyes knifed the detective. “Precisely.”
McParland pressed on. “Just to be clear, once you have everything in place—Thursday, hopefully—you’ll have a telegram sent to Mr. Cecil White at the Oxford Hotel, there in Denver. Aye? The name won’t refer to an actual person, of course.”
Dodge nodded slowly. “It will be Thursday.”
“Your message will be ... ?” He lifted an anticipatory eyebrow.
“About cattle business.”
“Aye, setting my operation in motion Thursday evening. I remind you, we must roll from the Union Station the moment Haywood is on board, and no later than Thursday midnight.”
Dodge gave an irked sigh and scratched at his ear.
McParland peered over his glasses. “That’s the only way we’ll be in Idaho before the sun rises Friday.”
“Yes, yes,” said Dodge, his tone terse.
They fell silent. Both were leaning on the table, reviewing the map. And though their thoughts drifted elsewhere, their heads barely moved. Two prodigious mustache clouds floating over the mountains. One gray and stormy. One snowy and aloof.
<><><>
– 37 –
MONDAY
March 11, 1907
Neva once again stood in the expansive Stockman’s Room of the Denver Dry Goods department store, only this time she was with George. They were near the counter. She watched him talk with the milliner steam-shaping the Galena-style Stetson she’d given him. After it was formed to George’s preferences, he put it on and came to sit near her, though not so close as to set any tongues wagging.
“It’s very handsome on you,” she said.
“Thank you for it. It was very thoughtful of you to remember my birthday.” He then lowered his voice. “But the truth is, it’d look better on you—with nothing else.”
She smirked. “That’s true. Come. Sit closer.”
He did, hesitantly. “Why are you so comfortable with this?”
She spoke softly. “I tell you now, George, I’ll never share a house with Bill again. Never again.”
“What happened?”
“Actually, it will happen soon.” Her eyes sparkled as she leaned toward him. “I know you won’t speak of it. I didn’t even tell Winnie. No one. But I just have to tell you.”
He shook his head. “What? What’s going to happen?”
“You’re going to faint,” she said, her voice light.
“I doubt that.” He grinned, happy to see her so effervescent, but alarmed all the same. “All right. So tell me.”
“One night this week, they’re coming to arrest him.”
George gave a stunned grimace. “What?”
“Yes. They’re taking him to Boise.”
“No. Truly?”
“Un-huh.” She smiled. “In the suites. I’m staying at the house. I gave them a map of the suites. It was the most fun. I’m sorry, but it was. I had to tell you.”
“Darling, what did you do?”
Hearing his icy pitch, she frowned. “Well, hell’s bells, George, I did what I told you I would do—what I might do. I found a way to help you.”
“I need to understand. What exactly did you do? Who’s coming for him?”
She lowered her nose, giving a look that told him the answer.
“Pinkertons? McParland?” He inhaled and held it. “Oh my.”
“After they’re gone, I’m having the locks changed. Everything will change.”
“Ok. Ok,” George muttered, his mind racing. “If Bill’s arrested, I’ll be president pro tempore—I believe. The Federation holds the lease on your suites. Oh, this could be really unfortunate.”
“Unfortunate?” snapped Neva.
“Yes. Maybe. Especially if Detective McParland isn’t successful. Or what if Bill gets loose before Boise?”
She froze. “Could that happen?”
“What do they have that might show you helped them?”
“I mailed him a drawing of the third floor, our suites.”
“Is that all?”
“That’s all that’s written. The other, we just said.”
“What other?”
“What I received for helping. What I got for you.”
“You talked to the Pinkertons about me? Neva!”
“Don’t raise your voice. Don’t ever raise your voice to me.”
He recovered. “I’m sorry. I just—”
“He agreed that if—”
“Who agreed?”
“Detective McParland. He said if any embezzlement investigation arises, you’ll not be a suspect. You did nothing improper.”
“You talked about the embezzlement? With the Pinkertons?” He lower
ed his voice to a grumble. “Who brought that up?”
“I did, I think. But he knew all about it.”
George blinked a few times and shook his head as if to get her words, now afloat in his mind, to settle into some sequence of sense. “You— You, the wife of the president of the Western Federation of Miners, met with the chief detective of the Pinkertons?”
“No. We talked on telephones.”
“You dear woman. I know you were trying to help, but if this goes wrong, if they don’t get him to Boise, if they don’t convict him, he’ll come after me, and maybe you.”
“Then they must succeed, mustn’t they,” she said—jaw tight, nose up, chin resolute.
He exhaled loudly and stood. Giving her a sallow smile, he began rolling her toward the elevators. “You didn’t tell Winnie?”
“No.”
“Yeah,” George muttered, “I wouldn’t trust her either.”
<><><>
It was not until Colorado Supreme Court Chief Justice Luther Goddard left his Seventeenth Street office and walked three blocks to an intersection just beyond Denver’s Oxford Hotel that a white-shirted Pinkerton approached. With a polite gesture, the man motioned for the justice to step inside the hotel. Goddard obliged and, upon entering, found the well-appointed parlor vacant, the bellman’s stand barren. The man motioned him further. Past the registration desk, they entered a small office where Detective McParland was half sitting on a dilapidated desk, pipe smoke swirling up past his mustache and nose.
“Good afternoon, Your Honor,” offered McParland, bracing himself on his cane as he stood. “How are you on this fine day?”
The bowler-hatted justice hesitated before shaking McParland’s hand. “That was a silly piece of writing: you with Sherlock Holmes.”
“I couldn’t agree more. Aye. I was as surprised as anyone by that. I’m not sure it was a compliment,” McParland said, lying. Of course it was a compliment. He was delighted Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had written a “fictional” character named “Pinkerton Detective James McParland” into a recent Sherlock Holmes novel.
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